As the economy takes its toll on Detroit, some look back to the good old days when rear-wheel drive V8 coupes were king. For a time in the late ’60s and early ’70s, the muscle car wars heated up with cheap horsepower and cheaper gas. That created cutthroat competition among the Big 3 (and smaller AMC), with essentially no foreign competition.

In a way, those good old days are back. Chevrolet, Dodge, and Ford each have a redesigned or extensively freshened muscle-car for 2010, and they are better than ever. For a preview, we borrowed a Chevrolet Camaro SS and Ford Mustang GT (we’re shopping for our test cars now) and brought our Dodge Challenger R/T test car to our track.

I hope you have as much fun watching this video as we had filming it!

You can check out this video and more Consumer Reports videos on our YouTube channel.
 
—Jake Fisher