(Wandering offtopic, pehaps this will need to be split off)
id put 426 Hemi cuda up against a Honda civic anyday. Hell Id put just about any 60's, 70's muscle up agaisnt those anyday. but the 426 is probably the pinacle.
either way at least with a Cuda, Duster, Charger etc you can do it in style and hairstanding rumble, the Pea shooter civics on the other hand make people cringe everytime they go by cause they have to cover their ears from the horrible noise and plus eveyone has one not that everyone has one that is actually fast and can actually perfom but everyone who slaps a spoiler on the back of a Civic thinks they do, you can tell by the Holly Carbs and Edelbrock stickers they got on it lol.
At the National Championship a couple of years ago, a TV show called "Sports Car Revolution" ran an absolutely pristine SuperBird Hemi (the Daytona version with the big ass rear wing) on our championship course, against a brand new minivan - it was either a Caravan or an Odyssey.
The minivan CRUSHED it. I'm not talking a near miss here, I mean it CRUSHED it. SECONDS faster.
The simple fact of the matter is that modern car technology is so far in advance of the 60s-70s musclecars that it's not even funny - especially in terms of handling. That poor old SuperBird looked like a bus the way it wallowed around, and it had monster understeer, horrendous brakes, and didn't put power down very well either. It looked cooler, and made a cooler noise, but if you wanted to win a race, you'd be way better off in the minivan.
And for the record, I cut my chops on musclecars. I owned two Chevelles and a pair of late 70's Firebirds/Trans Ams before I wound up in the imports. My Talon, back when it was stock, was faster than all of them when they were stock (mid 14s off the factory floor, compared to low 15s for the musclecars) and handled way better than all of them. Once modified for racing, the Talon was the equal of Porsche 911s and Corvette Z06s.
During my racing career, I got the opportunity to drive a lot of different race cars. About two dozen different Vipers, some Prowlers, Mustangs, Camaros, boatloads of Corvettes, some Porsches, Mitsu EVOs, Subaru WRX STis, Neons, Civics... No Ferraris, although I raced against one once. And let me tell you, a properly set up Civic handles really snappily, and while it's not the torque monster that say a Viper is, they're still pretty quick and a blast to drive.
Now that's not to say that there aren't idiots out there... but that's nothing new either. I know when I was a kid, I couldn't wait to slap those chrome valve covers and open-element air filter on the ol' Chevelle... and the noise the Green Beast made was *legendary* (thanks to a pair of Thrush header mufflers - and little else in the exhaust system) There's nothing new under the sun, and he who is without sin cast the first stone.
DG