Although at its lowest from a numbers perspective, the muscle car game has never been as exciting as it is now. We have two key players: Ford dominates the ICE class with the latest generation Mustang, and Dodge takes it up a notch with the EV and ICE (non-V8) versions of the new Charger.
General Motors has temporarily left this class, with the final Chevy Camaro rolling off the line almost half a year ago. GM promises the nameplate will return, yet no one knows when that will happen and if the next-gen Camaro will stick to the ICE recipe or dip its fingers in the EV game.
Now, it's not about the future Chevy Camaro, nor the latest Mustang or the Charger duo (coupe and sedan), as this story goes back to the previous pony models from Ford and Dodge. Two of them faced each other in a head-to-head battle down the quarter mile at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, proving that any muscle car is dreamy as long as it has a V8 engine under its hood.
Mind you, it's not a balanced battle, as one of them holds the upper ground in terms of sheer power. That would be the Dodge Challenger, which appears to be in the SRT Hellcat Redeye configuration. That means almost 800 brake horsepower is deployed to the rear axle every time the driver abuses the loud pedal. The supercharged V8, which has a 6.2L displacement, allows this beast to reach 60 mph (97 kph) in a little over three seconds.
Photo: Screenshot Youtube | Wheels
Thus, the Redeye is a supercar slayer in a straight-line sprint, anyway, as it can give blue-blooded beasts a less exotic run for their money. In the other corner sits the Ford Mustang Mach 1. This model doesn't feature a supercharged V8 but a naturally aspirated one, with the 5.0L motor developing 470 horsepower. As a result, this model is far less punchy than its ad-hoc rival from Dodge, yet how does this difference translate in a 1/4-mile battle?
The answer lies in one mouse click below, in the quarter-mile race recorded in Las Vegas, presumably not long ago. The video was recently uploaded to YouTube by Wheels and is a little over one and a half minutes long. It starts by showing the two contenders lining up at the start line and warming up their tires before blasting down as quickly as possible.
At the end of the course, one was clocked at a little over 11 seconds, with a 123+ mph (198 kph) exit speed, whereas the other was a little over two seconds slower and did almost 109 mph (175 kph). Do you know which one was faster? There is only one way to find out.
After a series of unfortunate events put an end to Cristian's dream of entering a custom built & tuned old-school Dacia into a rally competition, he moved on to drive press cars and write for a living. He's worked for several automotive online journals and now he's back at autoevolution after his first tour in the mid-2000s. Full profile
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