The muscle cars of the sixties and seventies are the stuff of legend, and every gear head seems to have his own tales about a Mustang Mach 1, a Camaro Z/28, a Chevelle SS or a Hemi ‘Cuda. Most remember these cars as wickedly fast in a straight line, but utterly terrifying to drive in the rain or when the road got twisty. The revived muscle cars of today, like the new Mustang, the new Camaro and the new Challenger, can’t hold a candle to their ancestors, can they? After all, the new Mustang GT gets up to 26 mpg on the highway, so surely it can’t be as fast as one of the legendary Mustangs of years past. To find the answer, Motor Trend recently ran a showdown between classic muscle cars (pony cars, actually) and their modern-day counterparts. Squaring off were a 2011 Shelby GT500 convertible against a 1969 Shelby GT500 convertible, a 2011 Camaro SS against a 1969 Camaro SS 396 and a 2012 392 Challenger SRT8 against a 1970 Challenger R/T. Who came out on top? See for yourself in the video below.

Source: Motor Trend YouTube Channel