How To Talk the Wife Into That Muscle Car Buy: A Pro Driver's Five-Step Secret Formula

One ingenious YouTubing vlogger and professional gearhead found a workaround: he got his wife to take the wheel of a 5.0-liter Ford Mustang on a racetrack on a time-attack lap. And it worked; the rowdy muscle car purchase got greenlighted – even though this was never the man’s intention in the first place.

Nonetheless, he might have accidentally found the secret recipe for getting every piston-addict-married woman to at least partially agree with her wrench-turning half’s madness. Here's the story in short: Scott Mansell is the YouTuber in question, and he also happens to be a British former professional racing driver happily married to a lovely lady from Colombia. The nationality is not arbitrarily mentioned here – you’ll see later on why it matters.

On his latest video antics, Scott Mansell – not related to former Formula One world champion Nigel Mansell – had a special guest for the usual ‘fast driver in slow car vs. slow driver in fast car’ challenge. Sayu is the designated driver for the day – and Scott has to put his entire mastery on the line to keep everything under control.

The regular program is pretty straightforward: the pro gets a slow car – a Mazda MX-5 (third generation model) and does a timed lap. The guests then take their turn in increasingly faster, more powerful cars until they beat Scott’s time.

This time, however, the former racer got more than a handful, and there’s not much he can do about it because the amateur is his wife. Things become challenging even before Sayu – Mrs. Mansell's first name – drives the Mazda. Being a manual, the MX-5 is unfamiliar territory for the nice contender, but raging is more than making excuses from the get-go.

With her husband in the passenger seat by her side, Sayu takes a leap of faith and puts her foot down (at times) to get as close to Scott as possible. As it turns out, his 25-year high-speed career on the track pays off, as Scott crosses the line in 63.75 seconds. Whether that’s fast or not is irrelevant since time is the yardstick for Mrs. Mansell - she must get under that result to win the challenge.

Sayu got an eight-second slower lap in the small Mazda, so the rules call for an upgrade. In this case, the husband-beating hardware (no domestic violence suggested) is an Audi S1 that makes 231 PS (228 hp), nearly twice as much as the tiny MX-5 (which has only 126 PS / 125 hp).

With great power comes great ‘adrenalina, adrenalina,’ as Sayu put it after her first high-speed lap in the Mazda. That’s Colombian lingo for ‘I need more power’ because the Audi S1 was not enough to steal first place from Scott. The Audi got within two seconds of the pro’s lap time, with the stopwatch reading 1min 5sec.

So, abiding by the game's rules, more power was duly appointed: enter the 433 PS (427 hp) Mustang 5.0-liter V8. Apart from the fact that the alphanumerical bit of Ford’s nameplate rings exactly zero bells for Sayu, she absolutely loves the car. Play the video at the 06:44 timestamp to see her aproval of the FoMoCo icon.

More to the point, the color – but that’s before she steps on the loud pedal – is a decisive factor for her because she smilingly invites her husband to consider getting a Mustang. In a blunt ‘men can’t read hints at all’ manner, Mr. Mansell instructs his spouse on how to tackle the timed lap in the almighty Ford.

At 07:15 in the video, we can see precisely the ‘Five-Liter Vee-Eight’ aphrodisiac effect of the Coyote motor. Sayu goes from full-on ‘weapons-hot-target-acquired-locked-on-target’ mode to a contagious ear-to-ear smile in the blink of an eye (and the exit from a corner with the pedal-to-metal euphoria rushing through her Latina blood).

‘It’s like flying,’ ‘I love it,’ ‘Oh, my God,’ and the Ford appraisal goes on – one thing is clear: the moment that rapturous Mustang bucks under acceleration on the straights is a piston epiphany of eight-cylinder proportions. And that, gentlemen, is when you propose to your wife… to get that muscle car.

To stay true to journalistic professionalism, let us write down the time – not that it would make any sort of difference from a fun-infused perspective. 1:04:97, just 250 milliseconds faster than the half-as-powerful Audi S1 from the previous round.

Under Scott’s performance, the going gets tougher still for Sayu, with a 400-hp four-liter flat-six Porsche Boxter GTS. ‘This is too fast’ is a description that needs further elaboration, but the side effect of this ‘Fast and Fantastic’ session is a 59-second lap.

A dog with two tails wouldn’t be able to display a more exhilarating manifest of joy than Mrs. Mansell going flat-out alongside her pro racer of a husband. To end the day on a high tide, the last round is an atomic experience. Literally – Sayu sits in an Ariel Atom with a ridiculously power-to-weight ratio, no driving assist whatsoever, and an H-pattern manual gearbox.

The 500-hp, 550-kg V8 missile proved quite a handful for the lovely contender – who, by the way, enjoyed the Atom all the way – and the final lap result is six seconds slower than Scott Mansell’s original 1:03:75. But, boy, was this worthwhile – have you ever seen someone who, after driving only automatics for the last three years, becomes an instant petrolhead after a few quick track sessions?