The Tuning Differences Between JDM Cars And Muscle Cars

05 Jun 2016

Muscle cars and JDM sports cars are quite different in their tuning and their intended purposes. Either car could be track monsters or drag strip rats but their intended purposes and factory tuning can isolate them into single categories. JDM sports cars tend to more tuned towards track days and canyon runs. Focus is put on making the car lightweight, the engine more oriented towards high end horsepower and stiff suspension to deal with corner transitions.

Most muscle cars have soft suspension for better drag launches, more comfort and a motor with a lot of power all over their rev range. They too can be track warriors, there are a bunch of track editions of the Camaro and Mustang that could potentially win autocross events. However, in order to unlock their full track potential, most people overhaul the suspension and chassis with some weight reduction to boot (and for the hardcore build a roll cage).

Most muscle car drivers won’t be carving canyons, which is why most muscle cars don’t come from the factory ready to autocross; with JDM sports cars, that’s a different story.

Comments

“Most muscle cars have soft suspension for better drag launches, more comfort and a motor with power all over rev range.”
Tiny rev range though. You’d almost think that they’re diesels.

Yes, compared to a Mazda RX-7 or a Honda S2000 a muscle car has a “tiny” rev range

vf2 ss commodore revs into the 6k range. 6.2l v8 n/a

Well 70s muscle car engines did have diesel like outputs of near twice as much torque as HP.

I always think, that Muscle Cars are a bit more verstatiale (not an native English-speaker), because you don’t have to modify the engine very much. And for the rev range: that doesn’t matter to me. If I hit the limitir, I shift up, if I don’t have another gear, I give it less throttle (atleast this is what I do in Videogames, because I’m not old enough to drive)