Defining a Muscle Car In Australia #Blogpost

The definition of the term is heavily disputed, but in America, a muscle car is a usually a medium to large four seater coupe with a V8 engine. Some argue that too great an emphasis on handling, or having four doors disqualifies a car from being a muscle car. I Others don’t. But even the broadest US definition rules out half of Australia’s muscle cars.

What’s a muscle car in Australia? For a start, any American muscle car or pony car, including the Chrysler 300 SRT and Dodge Charger. I mention those last two because in Australia, the number of doors is irrelevant. In fact the majority of Australian muscle cars have four doors. These include various Falcons and Commodores, second generation Holden Monaro and Torana SLR5000 and Chrysler Valiant Pacer. Sedans comfortably outnumber coupes. There have been five Australian muscle coupes: Holden Monaro and Torana GTR, Ford Falcon, and Chrysler Valiant Charger and Pacer. There’s also been one three door hatch (Holden Torana SS) and one five door wagon (Holden Commodore Sportswagon).

In more recent years we’ve also seen utes as muscle cars. Ford and Holden (and FPV and HSV) have been offering high performance versions of Falcon and Commodore utes with six and eight cylinder engines since the early 90s. Utes have never been as fast, or have handled as well as sedans.

Having a V8 engine isn’t a criterion either. Australia has built numerous six cylinder muscle cars that have often been faster than their V8 contemporaries. The six cylinder Holden S4 and Ford Falcon Pursuit 170/Super Pursuit 200 were precursors to the muscle car in the mid 1960s. The first proper six cylinder muscle cars were the LJ Holden Torana GTR XU1 and Chrysler Valiant Pacer. The Torana was a small car, loosely based on the Vauxhall Viva. The GTR XU1 was designed to win Bathurst by out handling the much larger Ford Falcon GTHOs.

The Valiant Charger followed the Pacer and in R/T E49 form, did the standing quarter mile faster than a Falcon GTHO Phase 3. It was the world’s fastest accelerating six cylinder car at the time.

In the 1980s we had the Nissan-engined VL Holden Calais Turbo, which threatened to kill the V8.

When Tickford released the Ford Falcon S XR6 in 1991, it was faster than both the Holden Commodore SS and Ford Falcon XR8. Ford continued to produce muscle cars with straight six engines until the end of Falcon production. The 2002 Falcon XR6 Turbo was followed by the FPV F6 Typhoon in 2004, which at the time was Australia’s fastest car. The 2008 FPV F6 again reset the benchmark for Australian muscle cars, only to be beaten a month later by the 7.0 litre V8 HSV W427.

Six cylinder muscle cars common in Australia, and often outperform their V8 contemporaries.
So is an Australian muscle car just any Australian performance car? Well the TRD Aurion, Ford Territory Turbo and Bolwell Nagari aren’t. Between those three we can rule out front wheel drive, SUVs, and, um, cars that aren’t traditional two seater sports cars?

What definition are we left with? An Australian made rear or all wheel drive low ground clearance high performance vehicle with an element of practicality and six or eight cylinders, plus virtually any American performance car.