Top 10 best muscle cars

If there was ever a car type which screams power, freedom and beauty then look no further than the humble American muscle car.

It's been almost 80 years since the first muscle car, the Oldsmobile Rocket 88, was let loose onto the streets. In the years and decades that have followed, the muscle car class has delivered some fierce rivalries between manufacturers intent on creating the very best muscle car they can and beating the competition. 

What is a muscle car?

Before we can even consider what the best muscle cars of all time are, we need to address a simple question. What is a muscle car? 

For many, a muscle car has to follow a specific recipe. A muscle car must…

• Be an American-made two-door coupe (and therefore built by the likes of Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge or Ford)
• Have a big and powerful V8 engine 
• Be rear-wheel drive.

When we think of the top muscle cars, it’s classic American automobiles such as the Dodge Charger or Ford Mustang that many regard as the cream of the crop. 

Quite often, these older vintage cars have had their iconic status cemented in the public consciousness thanks to starring roles in film and TV cult classics, such as Ford’s Mustang in Bullitt, Pontiac’s Trans Am in Smokey and the Bandit, or Dodge’s Charger in the Dukes of Hazzard. A little like the hot hatch that emerged later in Europe, the muscle car democratised power and served as the people’s performance car.  

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History of the muscle car

In truth, these legends from the sixties and seventies did not start the muscle car craze. 

All the way back in the late 1940s Oldsmobile decided to shoehorn a V8 under the bonnet of a model designed to use a less powerful six-cylinder engine. Following the tyre tracks of Oldsmobile, in 1957 a V8-powered Rambler Rebel arrived and found much success on the drag-strip – which is basically an American institution. 

It wasn’t long before other US car brands were slotting large engines into everyday cars and using motorsport success to help drive sales. The sixties and early seventies are considered to be the ‘peak muscle car’ era.

Marketing departments loved the ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ philosophy. Soon muscle car power outputs were getting close to (and sometimes exceeding) 500bhp – but the 1973 fuel crisis soon cut demand for these big capacity, petrol hungry models. 

If it hadn’t, who knows how crazy the performance figures would have got. A terrifying thought considering early muscle cars weren’t exactly known for their stopping power, or ability to go around corners very well.

The seventies also marked the USA’s introduction of the American Clean Air Act – which ushered in more emissions control equipment. No bad thing, but the technology hampered engine performance. As such, the American muscle car slipped into the shadows for quite a few years.

The muscle car revival

Since the early 2000s, the muscle car scene has had something of a revival. 

Pontiac was the first marque to get things going again in the mid-noughties when it relaunched a GTO model, while Chrysler and Dodge soon followed with a new 300C and Charger. All were powerful, modern-day takes on cars that had ancestry dating back to the muscle car’s heyday and retro-inspired styling to boot. 

Since then we’ve seen new interpretations of a range of classics including the Dodge Charger, Dodge Challenger, as well as revamped versions of the Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang, all sticking to the same formula while packing a monster V8 under the hood.

Top 10 best muscle cars of all time

Click the links in the table above or read on for our top 10 guide to some of the best muscle cars to ever tear up the tarmac…