I think a Mustang would be a great car to own, especially with a V-8 and manual transmission, but social media has ruined it for me. There are non stop videos of Mustangs crashing when leaving meets such as Cars With Coffee. Now, the Mustang brand is synonymous with this type of driving. If you bought one you would immediately be looked down upon.
> Brooke Rennert, a 21-year-old from Rochester Hills putting herself through welding school by working as the only woman at her oil-change job, isn’t having any of it. “I don’t like electric cars. I like the sound of a heavy engine. I like the power,” she said. “An electric vehicle has power, but in a different way. It’s not like a big V8, big-block sound.”
This, IMO, is exactly why they are dying. They are more expensive than regular cars and the only reason anyone likes them is because they are loud and obnoxious.
There's just fewer and fewer people that need a loud noise maker to be happy, certainly not when that noise maker will cost you $60k you likely don't have since inflation has gone crazy while salaries have stagnated.
The people that do end up gravitating to the noise makers will choose a loud motorcycle instead.
I can't remember where I heard this but it stuck with me: Teslas are the new American muscle car - fast in a straight line, but otherwise poor build quality and lacking the attention to drivers' experience you get from European brands.
Imagine you're getting smoked by a 7 year old dad-mobile with paddle shifters. And I'm not even running a Cobb tune. That isn't a muscle car. That's a synthol car.
My dad is a gearhead's gearhead. The sort of guy who, if there were a car from the 1930s to the 1970s visible in a movie, could identify make, model, and year at a glance.
He had a 2000 Cadillac Eldorado he was very fond of. Drove that thing everywhere. He had to junk it -- the whole thing -- because some rain got into the sun roof and messed up one of the computers -- and aftermarket motherboards were not available. If he were willing to entertain computers in cars before, he wasn't afterward. Purely mechanical is where it's at. Me, I'm concerned that encroaching electronics means turning cars into smartphones on wheels. Things that want to shut down and do software updates when you want to go for a drive. And heaven help you if the update has bugs in it, or if the manufacturer decides to try out innovative new UI paradigms! (Patch 4.3.21: You can now use the gearshift to select songs in the media player! Great!) And that's before we get into the "features that are in the car, but disabled and paywalled with nothing but a software flag" issue.
I have a feeling that the enshittification of vehicles means there will be a small but vocal community of young people who rediscover the joys of purely mechanical vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s, the same way young people have discovered and appreciated 80s music, or video games from around the turn of the millennium.
A related issue: Analog radio is going away. It used to be that you could put together a crude but serviceable AM radio using a handful of spare parts. Kids would build them with components bought for a few bucks at Radio Shack. This could let you receive, for example emergency broadcasts in a pinch. If everything is converted to packetized digital radio, or worse, TCP/IP "radio", suddenly the complexity threshold you need to pick up a broadcast jumps.
Some of the most fascinating technologies to me are ones that are relatively simple, but which get you far. The Polynesians were able to explore much of the vast Pacific Ocean using sturdy canoes and navigation techniques that required no special equipment, just observation and a body of knowledge passed down through the generations. Our complex culture seems to be losing the ability to build and make use of simpler technology (though as concerns marine navigation, the US Navy has reintroduced navigation by LORAN and astronavigation as a part of cadet training).
>Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine)
It's not freeing because it's been saddled with all sorts of financial burdens raising the cost while at the same time younger people are poorer than ever.
It's not just cars, tons of traditional "coming of age" things are going away for the same reasons.
The crazy thing is there's nothing stopping manufacturers from making electric muscle cars. Instead, we get boring aerodynamic cloned appliances sold as "SUVs".
As I've grown older though, I noticed that the less I need to drive, the happier I am. So I don't really need more than an appliance, I suppose.
Same here. Although I own a nice car I much prefer my ebike which is not affected by London's 1000+ fine issuing cameras, 20 mph limits, jams, congestion charges, ULEZ charges, parking fees, road closed signs, construction works etc.
There's a similar issue to muscle cars in that although in theory my thing can do 155 mph down some autobahn, in practice it's way slower than the 15 mph ebike in town.
Here in Australia, Mustang V8s hold their value pretty well. When I was looking for a sports car (which I've now learnt is very different to a muscle car), the Mustang was top of the list because there was nothing else out there with:
- manual
- V8
- 2 doors
- under <$100k
I spent a week with one, and while I quite enjoyed it, it required you to really rev out the engine to feel anything (which is nice!). Except that would push you into 130km/h+ which means instant loss of license for 6 months and a forever tarnished record meaning insurance is much more expensive for the rest of your life.
Settled for an ND2 MX-5 that I throw around corners now. It means I have to have a "normal" car as a daily (as the MX-5 isn't that practical) but it also means I can have fun without getting pulled up by the gestapo
Given the advancements of EVs, the death of the muscle car was inevitable. They are almost universally faster, more performant, more efficient, and more "cool" in their designs. Do gear heads dislike them? Sure, but they aren't going to be the market forever. As energy costs rise, natural market forces will shift the demands of the buyer.
The sound a crossplane V8 makes is especially delightful due to the [necessarily] asymmetric firing order. Crossplanes fire every 90 degrees, flatplanes every 180. Flatplanes produce a metallic yowl, crossplanes a fruity burble. Beats and timing are hardwired into human psychoacoustics somehow. Beats are counts without explicit numerals. The idea of mathematical aesthetic standards are appealing cf golden ratio. Crossplane firing asymmetry tickles my aesthetic fancy somehow via the Beats. So my overpowered Merc V8 is music to my ears!
Classic muscle cars are obsolete. Most cars today have 0-60 times a 1970s Dodge Challenger could only dream of.[1] Plus, they can now go around corners.
Here's an old movie: "Hot Rod Girl" (1956) [2] The opening scenes are of a real drag strip in Southern California. Technical advice from the San Fernando Drag Strip and the National Hot Rod Association. Accelerations are so low that those things would be obstructing traffic on a freeway onramp today.
Acceleration times say nothing about the character of a car.
Anyone can launch a Model S or Taycan at insane accelerations just by pushing a pedal and letting the computer sort things out.
Trying to do so in a 1970s Camaro or a 1980s Sierra XR4 requires skill and practice whilst listening to the howl of the engine, feeling the texture of the road through the steering and sensing the suspension loading-up. All of that has been lost.
Driving has been reduced to an ordeal to be ensured with as little interaction with the vehicle as possible.
The original hot rods were invented because young people could literally go to a junkyard and build them. They were practically free junk/trash. It was a totally different world. When built from junkyard parts became $100,000 it became a lot less popular.
Americans today are also a lot more stuck up/image conscious. Grandma thought it was cool/impressive grandpa built a car out of junk, the average date today would call that worse than a poverty wagon and make someone undateable. I have a stick shift Ford Focus ST. It's incredibly fun to drive, practical, good for the environment, but it definitely turns dates away because it's a poverty wagon.
I got upgraded once to a yellow mustang in San Francisco. I admit, I wasn't unhappy about that. I reserved the economy car, I ended up driving around the valley in a yellow mustang. With a big smile on my face.
But it wasn't necessarily a great car. It had a lot of condensation on the inside of the car in the morning. I've never seen that in any other car. My suitcase barely fit in the back. Etc. A lot of form over function in that car.
I don't own a car. In fact, I've never owned one. I just rent cars when I need them, which isn't all that often these days. I live in Berlin which is a big city that wile car friendly (by European standards) is a bit of a PITA to get around in by car. And there's public transport. And it takes about fifty minutes to even leave the city in a car because you are stuck in stop start traffic. But if I ever move out, I might need a car.
If I ever buy a car, it will be electric. ICE cars are relics of the past. That mustang makes pleasing vroom vroom noises (and they are very pleasing) but that's about it. That's what they are optimized for. Even a modest EV has more torque (the whole point of a muscle car), better handling, etc. And they are just a lot more practical. EV performance breaks the illusion that a muscle car is, well, a muscle car.
As for EVs being boring. Many of them are. Especially those in the US because it's currently cut off from the rest of the world and not exactly state of the art at this point. If you want exciting EVs to lust after, go to China. They have them in every shape and size. The new xpeng looks great, there's the huawei car, the BYD u7 and u9. And some of those are quite affordable (in China). They are unobtainium elsewhere of course, which adds to their desirability.
I don't speak from experience of course, but I do watch a lot of EV reviews. There's this myth that EVs can't be fun. They can be. It's not about the noise but it is about the highly tunable driving experience, ridiculous torque, etc. What works for muscle cars (big engine, light weight car) also works for EVs. Some of the more affordable fun options are smaller, lighter cars. Even retro conversions of classic sports cars can be a lot of fun apparently. And some of those end up being lighter after their conversion and handle better than the original.
And I bet there are a few classic muscle car conversions. Are they still fun if you take away the vroom vroom noise but otherwise increase all the performance metrics? I don't know. It probably still is quite a lot of fun to drive one.
I agree with almost everything you said, except for the idea that ICE are a relic of the past.
I think they will be one soon, say, 25 years from now, but I don't think we're quite there yet, at least not in America where a family fun trip can be 5 days of driving thousands of miles for camping or tourism purposes.
Fast charging needs to be ubiquitous, and charging needs to be faster, batteries need to get better, ranges need to get longer, and EVs need to get cheaper, and you need to give the whole system time to transition once those do become available.
All of that has to happen in order to relicize the ice vehicle.
New cars are being made. Sure this might kinda suck. But most of the enthusiast are driving and loving cars from the 1970's that have been out of production for decades right?
Saying EV's kill muscle cars is like saying Cars killed of horse riding.
Sure, there are less breeders for day-to-day travelling requirement style stuff, but the hobbyists keep everything going, and in some ways I would imagine it will bring round a golden era where these things aren't required to be useful as day-to-day options and can just be for fun
I disagree with the article substantially; the truth is that Dodge is a dying brand, and the charger and challenger were never practical muscle cars - mostly because Dodge is less part of any racing series. The Ford Mustang is having a resurgence in actually being a sports car, because Ford is investing in Lemans and Imsa.
Honda, Toyota, Cadillac, Ford are the major performance cars these days... And Hyundai has a much bigger investment than Dodge. The consolidation of Mercedes, VW, Porsche, and Audi is an interesting challenge to the segment; Bmw and Mazda are also in the game.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 54.5 ms ] threadThis, IMO, is exactly why they are dying. They are more expensive than regular cars and the only reason anyone likes them is because they are loud and obnoxious.
There's just fewer and fewer people that need a loud noise maker to be happy, certainly not when that noise maker will cost you $60k you likely don't have since inflation has gone crazy while salaries have stagnated.
The people that do end up gravitating to the noise makers will choose a loud motorcycle instead.
As opposed to the 60k for a nice Tesla??
My 2018 Subaru Forester does 0-60 in 6.3 s
Imagine you're getting smoked by a 7 year old dad-mobile with paddle shifters. And I'm not even running a Cobb tune. That isn't a muscle car. That's a synthol car.
https://www.burnsmotors.com/cdjr-research/dodge-charger-0-60...
We are going through a culture change in society.
Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine)
Combined with the brutal performance of modern EV cars. Muscle cars seem like a waste of time/energy/money/complexity. Logically it makes no sense.
I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this.
No shit...
> The average monthly car loan payment in the U.S. is $745 for new vehicles and $521 for used ones
> In the first quarter of 2025, the overall average auto loan interest rate was 6.73% for new cars and 11.87% for used cars.
He had a 2000 Cadillac Eldorado he was very fond of. Drove that thing everywhere. He had to junk it -- the whole thing -- because some rain got into the sun roof and messed up one of the computers -- and aftermarket motherboards were not available. If he were willing to entertain computers in cars before, he wasn't afterward. Purely mechanical is where it's at. Me, I'm concerned that encroaching electronics means turning cars into smartphones on wheels. Things that want to shut down and do software updates when you want to go for a drive. And heaven help you if the update has bugs in it, or if the manufacturer decides to try out innovative new UI paradigms! (Patch 4.3.21: You can now use the gearshift to select songs in the media player! Great!) And that's before we get into the "features that are in the car, but disabled and paywalled with nothing but a software flag" issue.
I have a feeling that the enshittification of vehicles means there will be a small but vocal community of young people who rediscover the joys of purely mechanical vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s, the same way young people have discovered and appreciated 80s music, or video games from around the turn of the millennium.
A related issue: Analog radio is going away. It used to be that you could put together a crude but serviceable AM radio using a handful of spare parts. Kids would build them with components bought for a few bucks at Radio Shack. This could let you receive, for example emergency broadcasts in a pinch. If everything is converted to packetized digital radio, or worse, TCP/IP "radio", suddenly the complexity threshold you need to pick up a broadcast jumps.
Some of the most fascinating technologies to me are ones that are relatively simple, but which get you far. The Polynesians were able to explore much of the vast Pacific Ocean using sturdy canoes and navigation techniques that required no special equipment, just observation and a body of knowledge passed down through the generations. Our complex culture seems to be losing the ability to build and make use of simpler technology (though as concerns marine navigation, the US Navy has reintroduced navigation by LORAN and astronavigation as a part of cadet training).
It's not freeing because it's been saddled with all sorts of financial burdens raising the cost while at the same time younger people are poorer than ever.
It's not just cars, tons of traditional "coming of age" things are going away for the same reasons.
As I've grown older though, I noticed that the less I need to drive, the happier I am. So I don't really need more than an appliance, I suppose.
There's a similar issue to muscle cars in that although in theory my thing can do 155 mph down some autobahn, in practice it's way slower than the 15 mph ebike in town.
- manual - V8 - 2 doors - under <$100k
I spent a week with one, and while I quite enjoyed it, it required you to really rev out the engine to feel anything (which is nice!). Except that would push you into 130km/h+ which means instant loss of license for 6 months and a forever tarnished record meaning insurance is much more expensive for the rest of your life.
Settled for an ND2 MX-5 that I throw around corners now. It means I have to have a "normal" car as a daily (as the MX-5 isn't that practical) but it also means I can have fun without getting pulled up by the gestapo
I'd rather have an EV conversion vintage VW Westy, Defender 110, Citroën DS, or Ferrari 250 GT California, or a fuggly Thing, Edsel, or Lada.
Here's an old movie: "Hot Rod Girl" (1956) [2] The opening scenes are of a real drag strip in Southern California. Technical advice from the San Fernando Drag Strip and the National Hot Rod Association. Accelerations are so low that those things would be obstructing traffic on a freeway onramp today.
[1] https://www.0-60specs.com/dodge/challenger-0-60-times
[2] https://archive.org/details/hot_rod_girl_1956
Anyone can launch a Model S or Taycan at insane accelerations just by pushing a pedal and letting the computer sort things out.
Trying to do so in a 1970s Camaro or a 1980s Sierra XR4 requires skill and practice whilst listening to the howl of the engine, feeling the texture of the road through the steering and sensing the suspension loading-up. All of that has been lost.
Driving has been reduced to an ordeal to be ensured with as little interaction with the vehicle as possible.
Americans today are also a lot more stuck up/image conscious. Grandma thought it was cool/impressive grandpa built a car out of junk, the average date today would call that worse than a poverty wagon and make someone undateable. I have a stick shift Ford Focus ST. It's incredibly fun to drive, practical, good for the environment, but it definitely turns dates away because it's a poverty wagon.
But it wasn't necessarily a great car. It had a lot of condensation on the inside of the car in the morning. I've never seen that in any other car. My suitcase barely fit in the back. Etc. A lot of form over function in that car.
I don't own a car. In fact, I've never owned one. I just rent cars when I need them, which isn't all that often these days. I live in Berlin which is a big city that wile car friendly (by European standards) is a bit of a PITA to get around in by car. And there's public transport. And it takes about fifty minutes to even leave the city in a car because you are stuck in stop start traffic. But if I ever move out, I might need a car.
If I ever buy a car, it will be electric. ICE cars are relics of the past. That mustang makes pleasing vroom vroom noises (and they are very pleasing) but that's about it. That's what they are optimized for. Even a modest EV has more torque (the whole point of a muscle car), better handling, etc. And they are just a lot more practical. EV performance breaks the illusion that a muscle car is, well, a muscle car.
As for EVs being boring. Many of them are. Especially those in the US because it's currently cut off from the rest of the world and not exactly state of the art at this point. If you want exciting EVs to lust after, go to China. They have them in every shape and size. The new xpeng looks great, there's the huawei car, the BYD u7 and u9. And some of those are quite affordable (in China). They are unobtainium elsewhere of course, which adds to their desirability.
I don't speak from experience of course, but I do watch a lot of EV reviews. There's this myth that EVs can't be fun. They can be. It's not about the noise but it is about the highly tunable driving experience, ridiculous torque, etc. What works for muscle cars (big engine, light weight car) also works for EVs. Some of the more affordable fun options are smaller, lighter cars. Even retro conversions of classic sports cars can be a lot of fun apparently. And some of those end up being lighter after their conversion and handle better than the original.
And I bet there are a few classic muscle car conversions. Are they still fun if you take away the vroom vroom noise but otherwise increase all the performance metrics? I don't know. It probably still is quite a lot of fun to drive one.
I think they will be one soon, say, 25 years from now, but I don't think we're quite there yet, at least not in America where a family fun trip can be 5 days of driving thousands of miles for camping or tourism purposes.
Fast charging needs to be ubiquitous, and charging needs to be faster, batteries need to get better, ranges need to get longer, and EVs need to get cheaper, and you need to give the whole system time to transition once those do become available.
All of that has to happen in order to relicize the ice vehicle.
New cars are being made. Sure this might kinda suck. But most of the enthusiast are driving and loving cars from the 1970's that have been out of production for decades right?
Saying EV's kill muscle cars is like saying Cars killed of horse riding.
Sure, there are less breeders for day-to-day travelling requirement style stuff, but the hobbyists keep everything going, and in some ways I would imagine it will bring round a golden era where these things aren't required to be useful as day-to-day options and can just be for fun
Honda, Toyota, Cadillac, Ford are the major performance cars these days... And Hyundai has a much bigger investment than Dodge. The consolidation of Mercedes, VW, Porsche, and Audi is an interesting challenge to the segment; Bmw and Mazda are also in the game.