Muscle Car
Muscle car is a description used for a high-performance American car, by some definitions an intermediate sized car fitted with a large displacement V8 engine. Historically they were all rear-wheel drive, but that changed with technological advances.
Although the term was unknown for another fifteen-plus years, General Motors is credited by some as introducing the first "intentional" muscle car in 1949, when it put its 303-cubic-inch (5 l) Rocket V8 from its full-sized luxury car 98 model into the considerably smaller and lighter Oldsmobile 88. The competition between American manufacturers started when Chrysler installed the 331 cu in (5.4 L) Chrysler Hemi engine in the mid-range Chrysler Saratoga in 1951 that was normally installed in the full-sized luxury sedan Chrysler New Yorker. In 1952 Ford's luxury brand Lincoln introduced the 317 cu in (5.2 L) Lincoln Y-Block V8 and the rivalry began, where the Lincoln Capri was entered in the Pan American Road Race in both 1952 and 1953, and taking first and second place in 1954. This was followed by both the Oldsmobile 88 and Chrysler Saratoga being raced in stock form at NASCAR races across the country.
By some accounts, the "muscle car" term proper was originally applied to mid-1960s and early 1970s special editions of mass-production cars which were designed for drag racing, though it shortly entered the general vocabulary through car magazines and automobile marketing and became used generically for "performance"-oriented street cars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_car
