0-60 The 12 Quickest Cars of The 60’s as Tested by Car & Driver

Car and Driver spent the 1960s testing everything from factory Corvettes to a road-going Ford GT40, all reduced to the same simple number: 0-60 mph. Two Shelby Cobras claimed the top two spots, one of them clocked at a scarcely believable 4.3 seconds, while a small-block Mustang GT snuck onto the list ahead of genuine big-block muscle. Read on to see how all twelve cars stacked up — and why the testing methods behind these numbers deserve an asterisk.

Twelve cars, one decade, and a single number that separated legend from footnote in Car and Driver’s testing garage: how fast could it actually hit sixty. The list spans a Porsche factory racer, a Le Mans-bred Ford GT40, and enough Detroit iron to fill a used car lot, all reduced to the same stopwatch reading. There’s an important asterisk worth knowing before diving in, though, because testing standards back then were nowhere close to today’s controlled, repeatable methods. So which car actually claimed the top spot, and does its time still hold up against what we know now?

The Rules Were Different Back Then

Reading this list requires context that Car and Driver themselves would probably admit to today. Many of the cars that reached the magazine’s test track in the 1960s arrived in a state of tune well beyond what an ordinary customer would actually drive off a dealer lot, and factory drivers occasionally ran cars on sticky racing rubber that had no business being called a street tire. Different surfaces, different tire compounds, and drivers pushing harder than any showroom buyer ever would all factored into the numbers that follow.

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A Four-Way Tie at 5.3 Seconds

Four wildly different cars ended up tied at 5.3 seconds to sixty, occupying spots nine through twelve on the list: the 1969 Chevrolet Corvette 427, tested in September 1969; the 1968 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 302, tested in July 1968; the 1966 Plymouth Satellite 426 Hemi, tested in April 1966; and the 1964 Porsche 904, tested in September 1964. Four completely different machines, from a European sports racer to a homologation-special pony car, united only by a stopwatch reading that flattered all of them roughly the same amount.

Mustang Cracks the List With a Small-Block

Sitting just ahead of that tie, at 5.2 seconds, was the 1965 Ford Mustang GT with the 289 V8, tested in October 1964 — proof that Ford’s small-block pony car could hang with genuine big-block muscle when Car and Driver’s testers got it right. It’s a reminder that outright displacement wasn’t the only path to a quick sixty-mph time in this era; the right gearing and a light enough car could close the gap in a hurry.

Two Hemis, Two Very Different Cars

Two Hemi-powered cars appear on the list, and they landed at noticeably different spots. The 1969 Plymouth Road Runner 426 Hemi tied for seventh place at 5.1 seconds in a January 1969 test, while the 1968 Dodge Charger 426 Hemi claimed fifth place outright at 4.8 seconds in a November 1967 test. Both cars shared the same legendary engine, yet the Charger’s result sat noticeably ahead of the Road Runner’s — a gap that speaks to how much testing conditions, gearing, and individual car preparation could swing a result even with identical power under the hood.

The Sports Cars That Snuck Into a Muscle Car Conversation

Not every car on this list was built in Detroit. The 1964 Porsche 904 shared its 5.3-second tie with three domestic muscle cars, and the 1967 Ford GT40 Mark III — a road-going version of Ford’s Le Mans-winning racer — tied for sixth place at 5.1 seconds in a June 1967 test. Their presence on a list otherwise dominated by American V8s is a reminder that Car and Driver’s “quickest of the decade” ranking wasn’t limited to muscle cars by category, just to whatever posted the quickest time.

Corvette and GTO Close In On the Top Three

The 1967 Chevrolet Corvette 427 claimed fourth place at 4.7 seconds in a May 1967 test, edging out its own stablemate from two years later, and the 1964 Pontiac Tempest GTO took third place outright at 4.6 seconds in a March 1964 test — a genuinely remarkable result for the car widely credited with kicking off the entire muscle car category that same year.

The Shelby Cobras That Owned the Top Two Spots

The top two spots both belonged to Shelby, and both belonged to the Cobra. The 1963 Shelby Cobra 260 claimed second place at 4.5 seconds in a March 1963 test, an impressively quick time for a car running Ford’s smaller 260 cubic-inch V8 rather than a big-block. That result set the stage for what came two years later.

One Car Stood Above the Rest

At the very top of the list sits the 1965 Shelby Cobra 427, which Car and Driver clocked at a staggering 4.3 seconds to sixty in its November 1965 issue — a number so far ahead of the rest of the list that nothing else on it seriously challenged the result. Claims of the Cobra 427 breaking four seconds flat exist too, typically tied to factory driver Ken Miles pushing the car harder and on stickier rubber than any standard magazine test would allow. Whether the real number is 4.3 seconds or something quicker still, this list captures a decade where a handful of cars, built with almost no regard for comfort or practicality, redefined what acceleration actually meant in America.

What These Times Would Look Like With Modern Equipment

Modern Car and Driver testing relies on GPS-based timing equipment and controlled surfaces that didn’t exist in the 1960s, which is exactly why some of these numbers look almost too good against today’s supercars. A modern methodology would almost certainly push several of these times slower, not because the cars themselves were slow, but because 1960s testing simply couldn’t isolate variables like tire compound and surface grip the way today’s controlled runs can.

A List That Still Shapes How These Cars Get Valued

More than half a century later, this kind of period-correct testing data still shapes how collectors and auction houses talk about these exact cars. A documented 4.3-second 0-60 time from a respected magazine’s own archives carries real weight at auction, giving buyers a historical benchmark that a modern dyno pull or GPS-timed run simply can’t replicate for a car built and tested sixty years ago. Sixty years on, that gap between period testing and modern precision is part of the story, not a flaw in it.

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