5 weird things about driving an American Muscle/Pony car.

(1.) Cubic Inches

Most of the world makes sense, and thus most of the world uses the Metric system. You’re used to hearing about displacement in engines being 2.0L, 5.0L, etc. Just about any car guy is going to know what you mean when you say a car has X.X Liters under the hood.

Well prepare to throw all that out the window.

You see, back decades ago in the United States (especially in the 50’s-60’s), engine size was expressed in cubic inches. Since pretty much all performance cars were V8’s, it was a quite reliable method to determine how powerful a car was by its “cubes” under the hood. More cubic inches = more power. So guys always bragged about how many cubic inches they had. If you had over 1 HP per cubic inch, you actually had a decently efficient engine power wise.
So what even is a cubic inch? Well 1 Liter is about equal to 61 cubic inches. So now when someone tells you they have a 350 Chevy small block, divide that number by 61 and you get your answer (5.7 L).

This was not only took me some time to understand, it caused a lot of awkward situations. When middle aged adults at Cars & Coffee saw my Camaro they would engage in conversations about how they had a 496 cubic inch (8.1L) first gen Camaro back in the day and loved it to death. I just stood there, nodding my head when people would talk about engine displacement in cubes because I quite honestly had no idea what that meant. After time I got used to it, and now I have a “feel” for how big cubic inches are, just how most car guys have a “feel” for Liters. So now I tell everyone I have a 346ci LS1 under the hood, but before I bought it I would have never known.

(2.) Muscle cars DO attract women, but not in the way you think.

The only thing about as old as big V8 cars in the US is women posing with them. There’s a ton of posters and pictures online of pin up girls and models posing with these things. So that’s where the whole idea of “muscle cars get you girls” come from.
And muscle cars DO get you girls, but not the way the posters make it out to be.

Maybe this is just a Southern US thing, but people here are “raised” in Ford, Chevrolet, or Dodge families. Many of the parents and grandparents had one of those brands for either their truck or muscle car and they are lifelong diehard fans of the brand. It’s like how other people around the world treat their favorite Fútbol team. And the girls raised in those Chevy/Ford/Dodge families are also diehard loyal. So when a “Chevy” girl sees your Camaro parked outside, she instantly becomes attracted to you because you’re part of her “tribe”. I literally have never been so freaked out in my life as when I walked back to my car in The Middle of Nowhere, South Carolina and this girl with a Chevy baseball cap comes up behind me and yells, “OMG THAT’S SUCHA NICE CAMARO! CAN I GO ON A RIDE?”. “Uh…sure.”, I said, and proceeded to break about 2 or 7 different driving laws. She was so happy I’m pretty sure I made her whole week.

Your choice of car can have the opposite effect, however. I remember matching with a girl on Tinder once and the conversation turned towards cars. She had a Dodge RAM and asked me what I drove, and I told her a Camaro. She unmatched me in an instant or possibly quicker than that. There’s also girls that try to flirt with you but know nothing about cars at all. Also on Tinder a girl asked what I drove and I said a Camaro and sent the pic you see at the top of the article. She said, “that’s not a Camaro…”. I told her that it was, in fact, a Camaro and she got pissed. “I’ve seen Camaros all around, they were even in Transformers. I know what a Camaro looks like dumba$$.” She obviously was referring to 5th-gen Camaros, but knew so little about cars she didn’t know 4th-gens existed.

(3.) Little Kids and Middle Aged adults both love your car.

Remember how I said earlier older adults at C&C would come up and talk to me about what they used to have? This is a common occurrence. Big V8 cars were about as common back in the US in the 60’s & 70’s as Herpes at your local nightclub. Pretty much everyone had them since they were so cheap (until the oil crisis). So adults will reminisce with me about how at my age they also got a big V8 car and tore up the road like a little speed demon, but that they have kids and stuff now so they can no longer enjoy something as irresponsible as that. Talking about cruising with the t-tops off, putting Holley carbs on, you name it.

Little kids also love your car too. Mainly because it looks fast and is loud. I’m not the only guy I’ve talked with that has had kids stare at their car, ask you for a rev, etc. I remember driving by a school where a whole class was walking single file on the sidewalk to the woods or wherever, I downshifted and floored it. About half the kids stopped and just looked in joy as a drove by. Stuff like that is what makes future car guys, so I’m glad I can continue passing the torch along.

(4.) You have a new presence on the road, and that is both good & bad.

When I had my Corolla, I was just another car on the road. Just there, taking up space, unnoticed, etc.
When you drive a muscle car, you are no longer just another car on the road. People notice you. You draw attention to yourself. You have a presence.
Let me explain. In a normal car, people (and cops) don’t pay particularly much attention to you. You can speed, pass them, pull up behind people at stoplights, etc. and nobody really cares. All that changes in a muscle car.

First, there’s the people that treat you as though you have authority. Your loud, big V8 car intimidates the average driver. They see you pull behind them at a stoplight and they start slowly inching forward as if you’re about to stab them or something. People in the left lane will immediately get over once you enter, and sometimes people give you more space on the road.

Then, there’s the people that treat you like utter crap. I’ve had it before where the guy in front of me in the right lane is going 60 mph (speed limit is 65), so I’ll put on my blinker, going 65, and start to pass him. Then he speeds up. Then I speed up more since he sped up. Then he speeds up more. Then I back off and slow down. Then he backs off and slows down. Then I downshift into third and fly past him. If I had been in a Corolla that type of a$$hattery wouldn’t have happened.
A lot of people in typical boy racer cars like Minis, Civics, and Golfs also feel the need to “prove” to you that they’re fast or something. I’ve been in the far right lane of an Interstate with 4 lanes each way, so 3 lanes to pass me in. I was going the speed limit and there was no one else on the road. Suddenly a Mini comes right up behind me on my ass, tailgates me for a second while he takes the time to downshift, then goes WOT to pass me. All while I was taking up the far right lane and he could have used any of the other ones to pass, he just did it because I have a fast car and he needs me to “know” he has a “fast” car too. I could have downshifted and gone WOT myself and put bus lengths on him, but I’m not wasting my time on that.

Lastly, cops. They’re watching you like a hawk. Waiting for you to either be loud or do something that even looks illegal, like quickly accelerating from a stop light even if the tires didn’t spin and you didn’t go over the speed limit. You’re guilty by default. Nuff said.

(5.) You eventually either lose your patience with different group of enthusiasts or just ignore them all together.

Here in the US there’s a large following of muscle cars, but in the rest of the world, save for Australia, there isn’t. Not only that, but because of Fast & Furious tuner culture became a thing. Turbocharged 2.0L engines 15 years ago were still lethargic due to the lack of money for R&D tuning and the lack of quality for turbos. Nowadays if you’ve got a few grand to drop on a built engine and non-Ebay turbo kit you can get 300+whp out of a Civic.

And everyone wants to make sure you know that.

There’s bascially two things you’re going to hear from some other type of enthusiast when it comes to your car. Either “Your car can’t turn” or “A _ can make just as much power with a 2.0L”.
You can try to dispel such things, by showing your build is made to focus on handling or making the point that if you also dropped a few grand on a turbo kit you’d be making mega power for your displacement too, but it’s pretty much useless. There’s always a reason your car sucks. Whether it’s interior quality, HP/L, or that guy who knows a guy who knows a guy with a 700whp CR-X.

Once you hear the same thing things over and over again, one of two things will happen:
(A.) You start to lose your patience with these guys. You’ll always give an explanation for why their assumptions are wrong. Eventually you’ll probably start getting into heated arguments. Usually most guys do this at first until they realize it’s not worth it, in which case:
(B.) You just ignore these guys all together. Eventually after hearing “your car can’t corner” enough times on the Facebook page you just don’t care anymore. Leave them be, just focus on yourself.

I’m pretty much at option B right now. I appreciate all cars and only got into muscle cars because I wanted as much performance as I could get for the price. I would go to all types of meets with my car, but eventually I pretty much stopped. Most of the meets I would go to would have those types of guys I would describe above. I’d be pretty much the only muscle car there, and everyone just asked me continually if I wanted to race or why I bought the damn thing instead of an Acura CL like I had originally wanted. I’d say stock my car makes 300whp, which for 2000 was actually quite a lot. That’s met with, “THAT’S IT? LOL MY BUILT TURBO B16 MAKES THAT MUCH!” and eventually you just get sick of it. Now the only meets I go to are Cars & Coffee, where 90% of the people in attendance are mature adults, or an actual muscle car club meet where the guys there already “get it”, so you can just talk about mods or recent car news and enjoy yourself. Honestly though, that kinda sucks there’s that divide. It shouldn’t have to be that way, but it is, and will be.

Overall though, it’s a wonderful experience and the main thing I care about is I now have a RWD, manual cruiser to enjoy my commute in.

Thanks for reading!