You can't compare those numbers as tire technology was so poor in the '60s that muscle cars couldn't get traction off the line. If you put some decent tires on a GT500KR and the 0-60 drops to mid 5 seconds.
Our Fiesta's wouldn't stand a chance in a straight line against most muscle cars assuming they had modern tires.
I have to disagree with this statement, because I've actually driven a lot the classic muscle cars. First, the Hemi's, L88's, LS6's and ZL1 cars were quite rare. What was common was 325 HP SS396 and 383 Road Runners. So you had something like 330 crankshaft HP in a car that weighed in around 3600 lbs. Were they peppy, darned right they were, but they weren't brutally fast. Basically our FiST had the power to weight ratio to pull a few car lengths in the quarter against a base SS396 and would humiliate the SS396 off the line.
Note, the reason for the Fiesta being faster off the line is simple, it's that Turbo torque curve. Back in the day the peak torque on those V8's typically was around 3700 RPM and most of the HO engines really didn't start building torque until 2800-3000 RPM. The only way to get a good launch was to use the clutch as an extra low variable gear. What you had to do was "ride the clutch" to keep the RPMs up around 5 grand and feather the clutch engagement until first gear was fully engaged. Do that too often and you got to crawl under the car with a buddy to pull the transmission and swap in a new clutch. BTW, back in the 60's those trasnmission cases were cast iron and heavy. If you had an Automatic you were hosed, sticky tires would bog you down and
street tires would spin up to 70 or 80 mph.
BTW,
street tires did produce a LOT less traction than tires today but a set of Mickey Thompson 10 inch "cheaters" were rather cheap and did have excellent traction and a distinctly short "Tread life". BTW, 20 to 30 passes and they were toes up for traction. So, way back when you could get these cars to hook up well provided you were willing to pay for it.
