A Muscle Car's Performance Depends on a Lot of Factors

When most people think of performance, they think first of the engine of the muscle car. In truth their is a lot more to it then just the engine; the engine is a huge part of the overall puzzle. Everything must match the engine for the car to perform it's best.

Muscle car performance can be achieved in a lot of different ways, and everybody defines high performance in a different way. My definition of high performance does begin with the engine. The way I see it; the engine must be capable of making at least one horsepower per cubic inch.

If you have a Chevrolet 350 small block engine; you would have to develop at least 350 horsepower for it to be a high performance engine. This really isn't that hard to do these days. It all depends on if you want to get 350 HP to the rear wheels, or just at the crank.

If you want to get the 350 HP to the rear wheels; you should plan on making about 420 HP at the crankshaft. To make this power work the right way, you will need to think about how your going to use your car, is it just a weekend boulevard bomber, or is it your daily driver?

If it's your daily driver you might want to pay close attention to the rear end gears that you choose. Are you going to spend a lot of time on the freeway, or will you do mostly city driving? Will you have an automatic transmission, or will it be a standard transmission.

You will get away with a lot more if you go with a standard transmission; they don't require a stall converter to be street-able. With an automatic transmission you need a stall converter that matches your camshaft's power band.

If your camshaft has an R.P.M range of 2,220 - 7,000 R.P.M your automatic transmission stall converter would need to stall at 2,200 R.P.M. This means that your car would seem under powered until your ending reaches 2,200 R.P.M.

With a standard of course you just need to leave the car in a lower gear to keep it in the R.P.M range of your camshaft. Most people will install a lower gear set in the rear end to help keep the R.P.M up with an automatic, or a standard transmission.

This does have some draw backs for regular street driving though. The first thing that your going to notice, is when you get on the freeway, it will push the engine really hard if you have a low gear set in the rear end; I suggest to stick at around 3.73:1 for your rear gears.

Unless of course your running a transmission with at lest 5 or 6 gears in it. In this case you might be safe going down to an upper 4 series gear set in your rear end. If you match everything carefully together your car will do what you want it to.