Video: V-8 Muscle Car Challenge: Acceleration

Now we've got the Camaro SS, the Ford Mustang GT, and the Dodge Challenger, R/T Scat Pack all with the six speed manual transmission. And we're going to see which one is the fastest in 0 to 60 and quarter mile acceleration. Let's see how they do. We took all three cars to Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park in Chandler, Arizona to test 0 to 60 and quarter mile acceleration. Now we went there with the instruction of, we wanted this track prepped like a fun run testing tonight, which meant they sprayed some traction compound down. They cleaned the track. Cause any night you go to a test and tune, you're going to see Camaros, Mustangs and Challengers, and we want to replicate what kind of conditions someone might encounter in these cars. And also what those times would mean, are times use one foot rollout like they do at the drag strip. And we had some great conditions for track driving. It was nice and cool, and only about 50 degrees high. So these cars were making great power. In third place was the Mustang GT with 5 liter V8. Now our Mustang came with the optional GT performance package that includes the 373 rear axle ratio. It did 0 to 60 in 4.7 seconds and the quarter mile in 13. 2 seconds at 111.3 miles an hour. Even though the Mustang was the slowest, it really didn't feel that slow. It was extremely hard to get off the line at the track. There was a lot of wheel hop and we even countered this issue where with stability control off, the car would cut power. We're not exactly sure why that happened. We had a call with Ford engineers and they were stumped as well, but on a really hard one where we felt the car left the strongest, it would just fall on its face. Now we had to ease off a little bit to get the best time, which was also the slowest without that issue. But Challenger R/T Scat Pack with 6.4 liter placed second with the 0 to 60 in 4.8 seconds, a little bit slower than the Mustang, but with the faster quarter mile time at 12.9 seconds at 111.6 miles an hour. The Challenger Scat Pack by far was the most muscle car-like of the group. You had this big honking, 485 horsepower engine trying to channel all of its power through these skinny 245 size rear tires. It was quite the effort to get that thing out of a hole, and then it would bark the tires in second, third, and fourth gear. When you're looking down the track, you can see the tire marks where you're banging the gears, and it's leaving rubber and also time on the track. By a wide margin, the Camaro SS was 6.2 liter V8 left the others in the dust. 0 to 60 came at 4.3 seconds. And the quarter mile in 12.3 seconds at 114.3 miles an hour. More than just sheer power, the Camaro put down all of its power effortlessly. It was the easiest to launch at a high RPM, and you could bring the revs up to about 4,000 RPM slowly, let out the clutch and just rip from the starting line without any wheel hop, without any tire spin, and those picked up and then you were just gone. It shifts smooth, easy, and it just pulls all the way down the track. Just embarrassing if the rest of the car is here. (trunk door slams)