Here we go again—man the battle stations! Ford is at your doorsteps with pitchforks and torches—and they’re here for your souls. (Aren’t they always, though?) For any of you who have been paying attention throughout the last 100 years, there has been an epic battle of the titans going on, right here in our backyards. The collateral damage, as it would turn out, would be performance cars from two massive manufacturers, as both duke it out for market supremacy. (And to be honest, I’m completely okay with it.)

But what would it take for one to achieve a larger market share than their competitors? That question has been answered many times over the years, mostly with new-and-improved models that could “go faster” than the other guy’s. But that’s only half of the Chevy versus Ford argument. The other half—the more subjective half—is arguably more important to the overall effort. After all, who cares if you have a more-powerful tow package when nobody wants it?

The key, then, to achieving high unit sales is clever marketing, but with the most effective form of marketing being the one that auto manufacturers have the least control over. How do you leverage this? After all, they can say whatever they want, but it’s the owners’ opinions that anyone really pays any to. And therein lies the problem: Ford owners are pumped up with so much obsequious hype about their blue ovals that you’ll seldom get straight facts. But don’t take my word for it. How many times have you seen Ford guys pull these moves, especially when they’ve run out of favorable arguments for their cars?

20 Compare Apples To Oranges To Win Arguments

You may have seen this picture before; it may have even mildly upset you, too. If it did, that’s silly, and you should know it. To propagate that this could have ever even been a fair match is malarkey. The Chevy is missing one axle, half an engine, and anything else that could be stripped from it after she became too tired to continue on. The third-generation C/K-Series pickup trucks passed the torch to the next design in 1987, but this truck is potentially two decades the senior of the mid-90s Fabtech fantasy riding up her bed as if he owns her.

19 Act Like The Mustang Was The Holy Grail Of Performance

Leave it to the blue-oval fanboys to wave the pony flag high above their heads, desperately clutching for superiority. The Mustang may have slid into pole position as the initial propagator of the “Muscle Car” era by default, but that was just because it happened to hit the scene at just the right time. What has the Mustang done since then? Some cool stuff, honestly; but nothing cool that was ever sitting in your garage! Carroll Shelby pumped out some legendary ones, yes, and the Mustang has definitely had its moments. But the only Mustangs worth getting excited about from the factory weren’t ‘even from the Ford factory at all.

18 Act Like The Power Stroke Is The End-All Be-All

Ok, one thing you’ll only seldom ever hear mentioned in the Power Stroke versus Duramax debate is the issue of seniority. And usually, those facts are conditional, at best. Power Stroke boys will be quick to endow their diesel’s seniority all over yours, citing the Power Stroke’s inception seven years prior to the 2001 release of the Duramax. While this may be something of a technicality they have over us, they always seem to forget to addend one of the most important facts of the domestic diesel timeline. All monikers aside, GM has been producing diesel V8s for our C/K pickup trucks since 1982. Ford didn’t have a light-duty diesel until their 6.9-liter, which was introduced in…1983. BAM!

17 Hyper-Focus On Flattering Specs

The manufacturers are equidistantly responsible for disseminating only the most flattering specifications; duh, right? The 2018 F-150 kids are always squawking about their 3.3-liter V6 being able to put down five more ponies than the equally-rated Silverado, but do they ever mention the Silverado’s eclipsing torque ratings? At 305 lb-ft on the spec sheet, our 4.3-liter V6 produces 14% more torque than the 3.3-liter Ford’s 265 lb-ft rating. Not a bad price to pay for five horsepower. But it’s that same type of misguided methodology that Mustang guys try to leverage on Camaro guys every time the two of them end up at a car show together. We can hyper-focus on time slips if you want to, ponymen!

16 Exaggerate Our Unfortunate Mistakes

Ok, so we’ve had a few minor “infractions” along our lengthy, and noteworthy, production history; but who hasn’t. As incorrectly as it’s applied here, the “weakest link” principle never fails go get covered, over and over; Ford guys just can’t seem to lay off the Vegas and Citations—and don’t even get them started on the Celebrity. It figures that they would take the absolute worst example of a car they can find, and use it as the poster children for their diluted arguments. If the only thing they can find to poke fun at is this 1980s failure of a car that should have never slipped through an assembly line, then we must be doing something right.

15 Forget About The Edsel

When reading about the infamous Edsel, you’ll likely come across many phrases like, “planned,” “developed,” and even “manufactured.” That is because all of those things are true: the Edsel was a real car. Another thing that happens to also be true is the fact that it never really sold. It surmounted to being one of Ford’s biggest economic failures, as well as one of the costliest business blunders in recorded history. At barely over 110,000 units sold (less than half the break-even point for the project), the Edsel ultimately cost Ford 2.3 billion 2016-adjusted dollars. Way to go, guys: the Citation out-sold the Edsel eight times over (at a fraction of the cost).

14 Unwavering Adulation

Ok, I’m going to give credit where credit is due; despite my affinity for the bowtie brand, I’m, admittedly, a Ford-lover as well. I also like Dodge, for crying out loud. I just like cars! And even if you hate Fords, you really can’t deny this sick combination of a cabover/roadster display I found at the Pomona Fairplex. Immaculate construction from bumper to glistening…flatbed. Seriously, it’s nice! Unfortunately, we’ve all seen the Ford guy that thinks his custom is on “this” level, just because he had it sprayed at Macco. Sorry guy, that’s not how this works. The six-digit setup you’re looking at is pristine, yes, but reference back to the “six-figure” part. Now, deduct what you’ve dumped into your project and you can almost buy a house still.

13 A Bad Example For A Weak Argument

You’ve all heard this one before. It’s that thing they like to do, where you take the most pitiful example of what your opponent has done, and try to twist it up into a culmination of everything the bowtie stands for. Case in point: the C3 Corvette. First off, it’s our flagship, and we owe a lot of “where we are now” to “where it was then.” As history would have it, one of the places the Corvette happened to be was at the bottom of the performance trough of the 1980s, like everyone else. It’s not surprising then, that the anemic, 180-hp LG4 motor found its way into a few Corvettes. (Ask them about the ZR1, though, next time you hear this.)

12 Forget About The Firestone

Because no Ford-Chevy debate would be complete without at least a brief mention or reference to the Firestone controversy. Usually, the word itself is enough to bubble up memories of the numerous news features we watched on a seemingly weekly basis. The sight was all-too-familiar: a capsized Explorer on the freeway with blown-out tires. Unfortunately, this is hardly a laughing matter, and many people were hurt as a result of Ford’s gross negligence (and subsequent failure to enact a resolution in a timely manner). It’s less about the actual product failure than it is about the slow response times that caused the fiasco to escalate to epic proportions before being corrected.

11 Make It Faster – With Double-Sided Tape

Many of us are guilty of “wanting” to do this to our cars at one point or another. There’s a certain, undeniable attraction that the upper-performance packages offer. So much so (in some cases) that you almost start to believe the erroneous emblems yourself after too long. But we know we can’t do that. It’s just not cool. You can get away with it on a “classic” car, as half of the fun is bending your creation to your will. But when you have a brand-new, 2.3-liter, four-cylinder Mustang (turbocharged or not) I don’t want to see any Super Snakes on your fenders! Go home!

10 Blind Loyalty

This aspect of the argument is kind of important, in a way. The loyalty factor cannot be denied, and should not be outwardly condemned. But just because we like a brand doesn’t mean we should stand behind every piece of machinery adorning their emblems.  Maybe the car or the brand holds sentimental value, you never know. But sentimental value can only take you as far as it’s worth. It’s just not worth it to me, to sit in a cocoon of cracking plastics and fading fabric, just because I like my old Ford—much less a hot hatch in bright blue with all the appeal of a plastic toy.

9 Pick On Base Model Engines With A Mid-Range Motor

Here’s one you’ll catch ‘em doing all the time, without fail. Leave it to a Ford guy to single out the small-sliver of cars that he can actually stomp out, and laser focus on the fact that he has the almighty 5.0-liter. The 5.0-liter isn’t that great, guys. I mean, it’s an OK motor and you can make it do some cool stuff if you have the money, but I’m saying there’s really nothing to write home about. Don’t tell a Ford guy that, though, unless you want to hear “the most-definitive opinion in the world.” He’ll be more than happy to share everything he doesn’t know about the 5.0.

8 Make Excuses When His Mid-Range 5.0-Liter Gets Blown Away

Remember that guy with the 5.0-liter that was picking on that 2.0-liter Camaro? Well, wait until he meets a big-boy motor with a bowtie badge that's ready to cross some names off of an ominous list. The LS376/460 is a 495-hp, crate performance engine with a cast-aluminum block and six-bolt mains. The pulsing, nodular crankshaft pounds out the rhythm of an ever-faithful hydraulic-roller cam while the internal balancing makes the 6,600 RPM redline a cakewalk. This motor serves up beatings in large doses with all the punch you can pack into a 10.7:1 compression ratio. It won’t take but a pass or two before pony boy realizes how in-over-his-head he really is.

7 Trash-Talk Till Motor Building

This is one we’ve all seen a million times before, and as flattering as it is, it does work to nullify much of the remaining Ford argument. Ford guys do, on occasion, have some pretty good points. Heck, sometimes, they’re even right about things! But when one of the most iconic hot rods in history happens to favor small-block power from a GM pedigree, you know we’ve built the ultimate motor. When all the dust clears, GM can log over 100,000,000 small block motors to the credit of its various production plants over the long life of the legendary motor. No other competitor has ever even come close. (When’s the last time you found a Chevy with a Ford casting under the hood?)

6 Wear Their Cars On Their Clothes

Here ya go! This is for all the self-adulating Ford fans that can’t get enough of their cars during the drive. You’d almost think the drivers miss their cars, like a case of inanimate-object separation anxiety. Why I need to know what you “like” to drive or what’s sitting out in the parking lot is beyond me. The only person who cares about the shirt on your back is the person wearing that stocking-stuffer of a shirt on your back. It gets even more menial and petty when the little cartoon comes to do his business on other logos—as if that adds any horsepower to your sappy, modular engines.

5 Wear Their Cars On Their Bodies

I’m going to call a life-foul right here. Joe Dirt should have really thought this one through before he let his cousin (who probably just got released from the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections) “practice” his newly-acquired art technique on that arm. First of all, this is one of the worst tattoos I’ve ever seen in my entire life. (Being sleeved, I know what a tattoo should look like.) But that’s not the most curious part about it. Why the lame font? Was this supposed to look tough? I think this is one of those cases where it looked better in his mind before he did it, but there’s really only one way to be “down” with a car tattoo…you gotta go “all the way.”

4 Going “All The Way”

Speaking of “going all the way,” this is how it should be done. I don’t appreciate anything about what this die-hard Chevy fan did in tribute to his automotive affinity (or the way he rendered them on hydraulics). But at least he did it with commitment. There’s no turning back from this one and any self-respecting man would have elected to ink up just about any other part of his body. Not this guy! No, sir! He may be a bad example of machismo, but macho is an archaic principle as it is. At the end of the day, as lame as a tramp stamp is (on anybody) this, here, is the type of commitment Ford guys only wish they could muster up.

3 Deny The Camaro

Sure, it’s a silly design method and the Pro Street look has long since fizzled out into a wafting note of stale vibration since its pop-culture days. But, as retro as it is, that’s what makes it cool, and few cars wear a Pro Street dress as well as first-generation Camaros and Novas. It almost looks like the Camaro was built to accept these ludicrous modifications, fresh from the factory. There’s never a need for two feet of rubber gripping the asphalt under the rear axle, but there’s never a need for a surplus in the first place—and that’s why we need it! Ever seen a good-looking Pro Street Mustang? (Neither have I.)

2 Remind Us Their Ford Is Still A Ford

You know you love seeing this one! It reminds me of Raider fans, as they’re the only other demographic of people whom I’ve seen that will put a Raiders sticker right next to a Raiders sticker, just in case you forgot they were a Raider’s fan by the time you stopped looking at the first sticker. Ford guys love to remind us that they still drive a Ford, and even better with denotations of a performance brand, like Roush. (It makes it faster, right?) The truth is, this guy doesn’t even know what Roush is, and he’d probably blow the spark plugs clear out of his cylinder heads if he tried towing anything too big.

1 Hallucinate

Hallucination is a real epidemic in the tighter knit Ford circles. They’ll never admit it to us (because they know we’d rip it up in a second) but deep down inside of every Mustang owner is a little image of his Mustang (one that only he can see). It figures that it would be one that only he could see. Although they never talk about it, I’m assuming it to look something like this: a bona fide racecar, through and through. While the rest of the world hears a rattily-little squeal as they mash the accelerator into the floorboard, they hear some kinda monster rumbling inside of their engine bays like a titan.

Sources: The Truth About Cars, The Drive, CJ Pony Parts, and American Muscle.