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Rare Shelby GT350 Drags Rarer Lotus, Someone Said Muscle vs. Sports Car Brawl?

What happens when you go to visit Canada? Well, people usually head there to see that humongous waterfall, the nation’s natural parks, an iconic tower in Toronto, some old Quebec, maybe a few polar bears, or Vancouver Island. And other stuff like that, right?
Shelby GT350 vs Lotus drag race on Wheels Plus 12 photos
Photo: Wheels Plus / YouTube
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Alas, since we are among automotive industry enthusiasts, a few good folks may also be enticed to check out some of Canada’s four-wheeled facilities. And some of them easily rival their neighboring United States’ best, frankly. But there is no need to take our word for granted, as we have a proper example to present, courtesy of the videographer behind the Wheels Plus channel on YouTube.

He (or she, who knows) is a major fan of MRP, which is not material requirements planning like some of the gearheads might think but rather one of British Columbia, Canada’s premier motorsports facilities. Also known as ‘Thunder by the River,’ Mission Raceway Park is located in Mission, BC, and includes a three km (1.86-mile) motocross track, a two-km (1.24-mile) nine-turn road course, as well as a quarter-mile dragstrip facility which is fully sanctioned by the NHRA – aka The National Hot Rod Association, or the self-described largest motorsports sanctioning body in the world.

Anyway, now that we have cleared the racing air, it is time to admit that we did not gather here for a traditional brawl but rather for a skirmish of the ‘rare and rarer’ variety. Both heroes of the feature embedded below (and uploaded on March 8) are white, but one rare knight is dressed in blue stripes to signal the affiliation to the Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 tribe and the other has glossy black details sprinkled all over the nimbler, smaller Lotus body to show that it belongs to the lightweight British sports car clan. Identified as a Lotus Exige, the brother of the iconic Elise is rarer than hen’s teeth, indeed, especially in North America.

The Shelby GT350 is no mass-market encounter, either, as the third generation of the Ford Performance representative was only produced between 2015 and 2020. Alas, we do have a feeling that more Shelby GT350 units reside in the United States and Canada than Lotus has produced both Elise and Exige variants. Naturally, the setup got us quite intrigued about the result of a classic muscle car behemoth meeting a pocket-sized sports car. Well, as it turns out, at least on this occasion size did matter as the Exige S Series 2 can only count on a 1.8-liter supercharged four-pot from Toyota whereas the mighty Shelby GT350 rocks a Voodoo 5.2-liter FPC (flat-plane crank) V8.

In the end, as always, there can be only one that crosses the quarter-mile mark of the dragstrip with the best ET and trap speed – and that was the Shelby GT350, to the tune of 13.04s (at 115 mph/185 kph) victory against the opponent’s ‘close but not close enough’ 13.82s pass at 103 mph (166 kph).

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About the author: Aurel Niculescu
Aurel Niculescu profile photo

Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution.
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