When things reach this status in the Mustang Shelby GT500 (read: sideways), you should be a bit worried. You see, Ford may have tweaked that live rear axle over the years much like Porsche worked to improve the rear-engine configuration of the 911 and yet the two aren’t comparable. Once you go past eight out of ten, the Shelby starts becoming unpredictable, so your tail might end up switching places with the nose.
Like many of you, we’re a bit amused by the crop circle drama that’s been going on for so many years. Thus, we just couldn’t help ourselves and drew some of our own. We only had a Shelby Mustang at hand, so the result is a bit different to what people are used to see when these words are mentioned.
For the 2013 model year, Ford brought major updates to the Shelby GT500. As far as the eye is concerned, the gaping radiator grille, if we can call it so, is the greatest change. Don’t worry though, once the airflow enters the engine compartment, it receives good care. For example, it is taken through a series of ducts that also provide downforce.
Ford has bored the block to 5.8 liters (previously 5.4 liters) and it explains that this is the maximum displacement it can squeeze out of it. By the way, the block is now cross-drilled, as futher channels for the engine coolant has to be created. Once you get to spend one minute with this supercharged Hulk of an engine, you’ll feel the need to shake the hand of a SVT engineer. We know who to thank for the powerplant in our tester.
The cue ball shifter adorns the upgraded Tremec TR6060 six-speed manual in the Shelby GT500. Despite sharing its gearbox with the third-generation Viper, the implementations couldn’t be more different. While the Viper’s gearbox basically sucks in the next gear when you feed this to it, you have to arm wrestle the Shelby a bit in order to do the same thing.
The side view is the part of this Mustang that has the least amount of changes to reveal. Take a closer look and you’ll notice the enlarged brake discs though. And speaking of the visual transformation, you can check out the wow factor of this muscle car in the Full HD photo gallery of our 2014 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 review.
Google News