If there’s one thing American car companies know how to do, it’s build a V8 engine. Ford Motor Company popularized the V8 for the masses when it introduced the 1932 Model 18, but it’s the legendary small-block V8 from General Motors that cemented the engine configuration as an American icon. It first appeared in the 1955 Chevrolet lineup as the “Turbo-Fire” V8 and has, in one iteration or another, remained a GM powertrain staple ever since.

Now, a decade after the Chevrolet Impala SS last had a V8 under the hood, the redesigned 2006 model gets eight pistons pumping power to the road. The 5.3-liter V8 in the 2006 Chevrolet Impala SS is smaller than the big-block 409 that was optional in the very first Impala SS of 1961, and it doesn’t make as much horsepower as that pavement killer did, but the new car is certainly quicker to 60 mph. Forty-five years of engineering prowess has netted a 0-60 acceleration time that’s faster by 1.5 seconds.

Of course, the differences over the decades amount to more than straight-line speed. The newest Impala SS is a safer automobile, more fuel efficient, more comfortable to drive, and a much better handling machine. Nostalgic types may lament the fact that it’s a four-door instead of a two-door, that it’s dragged around by its front wheels instead of pushed in a cloud of blue tire smoke by the rears, that it’s barely different in style and appointments from a standard Impala – but they’d be missing the point.

The 2006 Chevrolet Impala SS represents honest value. It’s a good car at a good price that has landed, unfortunately, into one of the largest segments of the market, a segment populated with several great cars at great prices. The problem with the Impala SS isn’t its engine, or even the front-wheel-drive architecture on which it rests unless drifting to the office and back is your style. The problem is that nothing aside from a rear spoiler and big wheels makes it stand out from the crowd like many Impala SS models of the past. Then again, that makes the 2006 Chevrolet Impala SS a classic sleeper, the kind of car that rises up and smacks you silly when you least expect it. Just ditch those garish “SS” badges and your secret will be safe until you rocket away from the next traffic light.