American muscle by the numbers: Which car comes out on top?

BENCH RACING THE LATEST CROP OF DOMESTIC PERFORMANCE CARS

    The muscle car wars are in full swing again, with high-horse machines from Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge all hitting the streets at nearly the same time. From Ford, there’s the Shelby GT350, which we just saw at the LA Auto Show. Chevy has theCamaro brothers and Dodge is pushing its Hellcats all across the country. We even threw in the Corvette and new Z06, which we just drove, because they're both such a steal at current prices.

    We thought it would be a good time to put all the stats together, open up Excel, and pontificate on which muscle -- or sports -- car is the best, on paper.

    We skipped EPA numbers, trunk space and interior accoutrements since none of that makes a bit of difference when you're on the track.

   Starting with the newest of the new, there’s the Shelby GT350. Ford didn’t give us the whole rundown of specs, but we know it’ll get 500 hp from its 5.2-liter flat-plane-crank V8, and rumor has it that it’ll come in at about $53,000, though Ford will neither confirm nor deny that. For our spec chart purposes we took a shot at the curb weight and made it 100 pounds lighter than the 2015 Mustang GT.

    From Dodge there are the Hellcat twins; we’ll be concentrating on the Challenger in this story. It gives buyers more than 700 horses for less than the price of a topped-out BMW 3-series. The 485-hp Challenger SRT ain’t no slouch, either.

    Chevy brings the 505-hp Camaro Z/28 to the fight, armed with the engine from the previous Corvette Z06; the latest version of the Z06 gets 650 hp from a supercharged 6.2-liter LT4 V8.