The entry level for owning a brand-new piece of American muscle is relatively low, but so will that car's level of performance be compared to its peers.
That is particularly true for the Ford Mustang which, for $26,670, can be had with a four-cylinder 2.3-liter engine developing 310 raggedy horses. The only silver lining here is the six-speed manual transmission that won't do it any favors in a drag race (not that you should really enter one) but will at least make the car a lot more involving on a twisty stretch of the road.
The only way from there is up, and if money is not a problem, Ford will gladly sell you a Shelby GT500 that gets 760 hp out of its 5.2-liter supercharged V8. That sounds like way more power than anyone will ever need - and it is, but only until you come across a Dodge Challenger Hellcat Redeye and its 797 hp.
The FCA monster isn't even the most powerful Challenger on the market - that title goes to the 840 hp Demon - which is pretty ridiculous if you think about it. However, having a lot of power is one thing; being able to use it effectively is completely another.
We've seen how the Shelby Mustang GT500 performs in a drag race: it starts relatively slow, making sure it avoids spinning the wheels and losing traction, and then proceeds to deploy the entirety of its might on the asphalt, usually reeling in its opponent in the process, preferably before they cross the finish line. Since the Hellcat has a similar configuration (RWD and lots of power), the two might as well run side by side the entire length of the race.
Had they managed to synchronize their starts, that's almost precisely what they would have done as it's just 0.24 of a second separating them in the first race. The second race brings a slightly larger gap, but we're still talking around half a second even if one of the combatants clearly didn't try too hard that time.
Before the GT500 goes against the Redeye, however, it first races another fellow GT500. Sadly, it's not the winner of that first run that makes the subject of this video, but its rival, the black one. The blue Mustang is a nine-second beast, and while we don't know whether there's any tuning involved, it could all just come down to the slicks it's got wrapped around those rear wheels. Those would be the perfect illustration of what we were saying before: power is nothing without traction.
"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie) Full profile
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