Repeat after me: NO CAR SHOULD HAVE A SOLID REAR AXLE ANYMORE!

Just another example of bringing a flint-lock to a Glock party.

What century is this, again?

 

Well this is definetly all a matter of opinion, there's no fact to back up any side of this arguement. I asked my Dad about this because he lived in the heyday of musclecars, late 60's early 70's. He had a '70 Camaro SS with the Z28 350. I asked my Dad whether he thought of the mustang as a "pony car" or a muscle car. He said, "Well a mustang with a 302 or a 351 cleveland was most definetly a muscle car." I guess the mustang with the 427 Cobra Jet is a pony car Whether the car is mid sized or not doesn't even factor in. Hot roding back in the day was about big motors in little light cars, the mustang was perfect, one of the smallest and lightest of the big three's cars. To say today's mustang isn't midsized is wrong too. The mustang is in no way small, sure it doesn't compare to the land yachts produced by those guys at Chrysler, that doesn't make it small. It's as simple as this, a muscle car is an American car with a V8 2 doors and a 2+2 type seating. Pony cars were muscle cars, regardless of how you try to look at it. There's no real definition, thefore it's a matter of opinion. The GTO I can't really say is a muscle car, it's not American at all, it's an austrailian design with pontiac badges. The Charger fails to be a muscle car simply because it has 4 doors. The Corvette is a sports car not a muscle car. What it comes down to really is straight line power, that's what muscle cars were all about.

 

here's the picture of it.

 

My .02: the Mustang redesign reinvigorated the Muscle Car category. If the other retro muscle car concepts get off the ground, we'll have a new definition for muscle car for the 2000's than we had back in the 60's and 70's.

I'm not a C&D reader, but did they even have a muscle car category before 2005? If so, who won it before?

 

I was a sales manager for a mazda lincoln mercury and a sales man asked me what I thought between the Mazda rx8 and my GT and I said the RX8 is a sports car and my Mustang is an American MUSCLE CAR!!!

 

That's funny. That's the very reason I almost bought a GTO. The Mustang won out because the top drops down. I'd be poopin' in tall cotton with IRS.

 

Alright good

 

I think the argument over the definition of a muscle car is an attempt to define a term that become popular without the narrow scope we are trying to put it in.

There was a more definite classification with respect to the term "pony car." I don't remeber what it was but there was an SCCA classification that included cars like the Mustang, Javelin, Camaro and Trans Am. It was called the Trans Am Pony Class I believe. Oddly enough it was dominated by the Javelin.

I agree that the Mustang can be considered both.

 

I always found it odd to say the mustang is not a muscle car but a pony car as I've read people say on various boards. I mean what more do you want to make a muscle car? If you think about the actual term "muscle car" all it is, is a car with some muscle or power. The mustang definately has that so why can't it just be considered a muscle car instead of pony/muscle car?

 

Ooh, I have to disagree on that one... I know you said "car" but if Jeep ever stopped building Wranglers with front and rear solid axles, they'd stop selling... period.

As for the Mustang, I like the solid axle for it's simplicity and cost-effectiveness. If I'd really wanted a IRS-equipped handling machine, I would probably have opted for the 350Z which is another great car which a rich history. But, I wanted that brutal axle-tramping old-fashioned musclecar feeling so it was Mustang all the way! Now, all we need is a good-ole massive big block under its gorgeous hood and it'll be perfect!

 

lets try and avoid any more IRS/solid axle debate, its been beaten to death and beyond.

As for muscle/pony car designation, however you want to define it, it is still the best performance bang for the buck out there.

 

The original Mustang (64-1/2) was never refered to as a "muscle car until the 428 CJ's came out in late 68. The original muscle car was the 64 GTO.

 

hey guys it figures lol

 

The Mustang has become a veritable rolling-Rorschock test, with anyone seeing it as darn near whatever they want it to be, but perhaps that's become part of its enduring appeal in that is has been able to fill the shoes of a secretary's stylish ride, a reasonably sophisticated sport/GT coupe, iconographic Pony Car, knuckle-dragging Muscle Car and probably a few other personnas I haven't mentioned.

The Mustang was, as often mentioned, conceived very much and quite purposefully as a sort of anti-muscle car -- rather, more of an American interpretation of an inexpensive European GT coupe. It did have a V8, of course, but only the new, smallish, higher winding 260 then 289 small block, hardly the big, heavy rumbling muscle car big blocks. It's size was quite tight and tidy too compared to the lumbering leviathans of the day. Indeed, it was, of course, the very progenitor of the "Pony Car" moniker.

So, depending on how far back you care to look for the Mustang's true heritage and roots, it might be seen any number of ways.

If you choose to arrest your rearward gaze into time to, say 1967 or 1968 and the advent of the big-block Stang, you might well see its heritage as that of a muscle car. But that was a later development, quite a grudging one for the original Stang developers apparently, coming 3-4 years after its storied introduction.

If one chooses to look all the way back to the very beginning and birth of the Stang, you will see a very different car and personality, that of the Pony Car..

My concern is that many, Ford included, seem to be constricting the image of what the Mustang was, is, and thus, might be, to that, simply, of a muscle car. Well enough for the line to include that automotive personality type, but it would be a huge loss should it discard the rest of the Stang's rich birth and history and become the only real, narrow performance identity of the Stang.

The development of the GT and, more concerning, the GT500, do little to allay the fears of this constricted view. My hope is that future SE's, rather than marking some various mid-points on a narrow Muscle-Car linear criterium, branch out and flesh out the other performance aspects of the Mustangs as exemplified by the 289 K motor GTs, early Shelby GT350s, Boss 302s and various well-balanced SVOs and SVTs.

 

I'll agree 110%

 

The stang exudes muscle.thats what I love about it.