American muscle cars with high horsepower and a hot-rod image rank among the deadliest vehicles on the road, both for their own drivers and for people in other vehicles, recent calculations by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety show.

Six of the 21 vehicles with the highest driver death rates for model year 2020 are variants of the Chevrolet Camaro, Dodge Challenger, Dodge Charger and Ford Mustang, while eight others are small cars or mini-cars. Eighteen of the 23 vehicles with the lowest driver death rates are minivans or SUVs, and 12 are luxury vehicles.

“We typically find that smaller vehicles have high driver death rates because they don’t provide as much protection, especially in crashes with larger, heavier SUVs and pickups,” said IIHS President David Harkey. “The muscle cars on this list highlight that a vehicle’s image and how it is marketed can also contribute to crash risk.”

It’s not all about vehicle features and capabilities. Several of the luxury vehicles with the lowest driver and other-driver death rates pack nearly as much horsepower as some of the muscle cars that rank among the worst performers. For example, relative to their weights, there isn’t a huge difference between the 275-305 horsepower provided by the entry-level Camaro, Challenger, Charger, and Mustang and the 241-252 horsepower provided by the Audi A4 and Mercedes-Benz E-Class. So why are muscle cars among the worst performers and luxury cars among the best?

The explanation may lie in the image of the vehicles. Luxury cars are associated with ease and comfort. In contrast, the muscle cars on this list are associated with the early days of the drag strip, as illustrated by features like racing stripes, hood scoops, and spoilers, and that seems to influence how they’re driven.

Marketing for the Dodge Charger HEMI, for example, focuses on its “ground-shaking” power, its acceleration “bolting off the line” and its “racing-inspired” high-performance brakes, while the Chevrolet Camaro promises buyers the ability to “dominate on the daily” with an “extreme track performance package” and the Ford Mustang offers “adrenaline chasers” the power to “keep ahead of the pack.”

“These two lists illustrate some of the intangibles of crash risk,” Harkey said. “We can measure horsepower and weight and test for crashworthiness. However, the deadly record of these muscle cars suggests that their history and marketing may be encouraging more aggressive driving.”

“Overall, newer vehicles are much safer than those of the past,” said Chuck Farmer, vice president of research and statistical services, who calculated the rates. “But unfortunately, there are still major differences in the levels of protection that various models provide. There was also a spike in speeding-related fatalities during the pandemic, which may help explain why we find so many muscle cars among the worst performers for this period.”