Is there such a thing as a European muscle car?
Not really no. This is because muscle cars, and especially pony cars, were imitators of the European stuff, but meant to be sold cheaper and for more people.
They also had larger engines because the market in America enjoyed drag racing, whereas Europeans had a lot of country roads with the twisties.
Now, this is always repeated, how true it is, I'm not sure. I do know a lot of muscle cars had trouble going as fast for two major reasons:
-The chassis construction system in the '60's was not as advanced as now, which meant that lots of power could twist the chassis and even the body panels in a turn--the Chassis makes a big difference.
-Because these engines only had two valves per cylinder (although Zora Arkus Duntov, Father of the Corvette and one of my heroes, experimented with three valves in the 327), to get lots of power and torque meant large displacement. Large displacement meant big block engines (back in the '60's)= lots of weight = front heavy car = nose diving/burned brakes
Now of course, there were exceptions. The GT 350 with a four spd was very fast and competed with Corvettes...it sounds ridiculous today, but back then, the Mustang was about the same size/weight as the Corvette. Depending on the engine size (i.e. L88 Big Block or 327 small block) the Corvette could be a sports car or a full blown muscle car.
That's probably one of the coolest things about the 1960's...every pony/muscle car had the potential to be modified for how the owner wanted it to perform.
Small blocks and Big Blocks may have the same displacement, it has nothing to do with that, but how big/heavy the actual block is. For example, the actual engine size of the Audi 4.2L V8 is the same size as the Corvette LS9 6.2L V8.
Now, people who raced/tooled around with sports/muscle cars in the '60's, consider anything with a V8 a muscle car today. This goes for M3s, Mercs, etc. To them, muscle cars could handle, some better than others. Motor Trend did call several muscle cars "canyon carvers," which was the term for such cars, but most muscle cars had big block engines and therefore were very front heavy.
Of course, there were several aluminum engines, mostly from Chevy. Zora Duntov, brilliant man really, experimented with the concept and also experimented with a fuel injected and electronic fuel injected 427. He also tooled around with tuning the 327 as I mentioned earlier.
A lot of people think of Yenko or Shelby when they think innovation and power, but Duntov was really responsible for a lot of the innovations when it came to V8s and kept the other companies on their toes.