There Goes the American Muscle Car

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

I would challenge you that it is your proclivity for logic that is causing your identity crisis. If you enjoy a certain aesthetic, the pursuit of that aesthetic is reason enough. You are already putting constraints on the concept of a car because strapping a rocket on wheels with wings is going to have much more performance than an EV. Redefine your pursuit to be the most performant muscle car and everything is squared. No identity crisis needed.

* Don't change lanes if the blinky light on your side mirrors tells you not to

* Don't back up unless the image in the backup camera tells you it's safe

* Stop reversing when the beeping from the park distance sensors get too insistent

* AEB, lane departure warning, rear traffic assist radar, etc.

Don't get me wrong, people have used this "old man yells at cloud" point of view to call "real cars" dead for many decades; fuel injection, ABS, automatic transmissions, whatever. But we've definitely gotten to a tipping point where most of the fun is gone.

I'm not saying we should go back to x% more deaths per year by getting rid of XYZ nanny system, I'm just saying car enthusiasm is largely dead in new cars.

I don't think it's ever been logical but it ticks important emotional boxes so that makes sense.

I'm old and I drive a refurb'd Leaf and have never ever cared that my vehicle was not sexy. I've never been "normal" so never had the appeal but I understand it.

Besides, Muscle cars are often more about torque and the front-engine rwd layout. In the 70s they were all slow as shit but could still peel tires and do burnouts.

Also, for those in-the-know, the mid 2000s Honda Accord v6 was about as fast as the mustang of that time, but obviously drove very different.

A Suzuki GSX-1000 can do it in 2.5s.

I had a MINI. That was a build quality disaster. Major engine issues after only three years. I now have a Silverado 1500 LTZ. It has obvious build quality issues. Interior isn’t as good as it used to be. Gearbox has a banging sound. My Teslas seem so much better than either of those or most other cars I interact with really. I sat in my friends Toyota Camry the other day. The interior seemed so much cheaper, the sound quality so much worse, the cabin was so much more loud than my humble Model 3. What about my car has poor build quality that I am oblivious to?

Maybe more importantly, either of the above had an appealing visual style (to some!) and had their own community around them. Teslas are pretty visually boring, you can't really modify them, but I suppose they have a community of their own who debates which version of software drives the car for you better.

My electric family sedan (Tesla model 3 long range) has everything I've ever liked about muscle cars - in abundance. 498 horsepower, a "first gear" that will wind up past 200 kph, instant throttle response. The only thing missing are the impracticalities - the noise, the small back seat, the smell of tires and soot and oil leaking from somewhere. Oh, and the oil changes, and the plug changes, and the stolen catalytic converters, and the coils that go bad, and the fan clutch, and the PCV system, and the fuel/oil/air filter maintenance, and the drive belt, and the injectors, and the exhaust manifold gaskets, and the muffler, and the yearly smog checks.

A nice, tactile gear change is particularly pleasurable as well. And sounds do go along with all this, but they don't necessarily need to be loud.

I can imagine a bizarro version of this comment where a future person in a world where all of your caloric needs are met by a pill you take daily, ranting about how food enthusiasts insist on shoving their smelly food up your nostrils as you walk by an unnecessary-in-this-day-and-age restaurant, and how they only do it to annoy other people.

The sound profile of a V8 is very different from the 4-cylinder and similar I’m shopping for of course, but the principle still applies. I also just don’t want to be my neighbor who finds it necessary to come and go at odd hours in the most abrasive manner possible.

> There's just fewer and fewer people that need a loud noise maker to be happy,

Come to south Queens NYC and you'll find plenty of these people. There's a shop around the block from me that builds these noise makers and I get to hear them test drive them up and down the block.

Also, the loud sound != big. V8 != Loud, esp when many v6 motors are close in displacement to Ford's 5 liter V8.

Mustangs got the reputation because they were cheap power with a solid rear end which made peeling out into a turn incredibly unstable.