The 2019 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Packs Plenty Of Smiles Per Mile

The 2019 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Packs Plenty Of Smiles Per Mile

Can you get more all-American than a red-white-and-blue trio of Mustang Shelby GT500s? If you prefer your 760hp track-day Pony cars to come in Skittle-like shades, that can be arranged, too. 18,500 option, but you will appreciate every penny once you get your GT500 on the track. And if you're not planning on tracking it, you're buying the wrong Mustang. The interior is sixth-gen Mustang, but with very good Recaro seats. Unfortunately, the Recaros don't come with ventilation. The first Shelby GT500 appeared in 1967 as a fastback coupe. The nice people at Hagerty brought this one to Las Vegas for us to try out. It's a similar shape to the new GT500, and both have four wheels and a big V8, but at that point the driving experiences diverge. Still, it was a treat to try it out. I'd forgotten how great old cars smell. And how bad their brakes are. And had no one ever thought of bucket seats in the 1960s? LAS VEGAS鈥擳he Ford Motor Company made headlines earlier this year with the news that it's done with cars, at least here in the United States.

Mostly. The Fiesta and Focus and Fusion might have all gone to the great parking lot in the sky, but one car nameplate remains on the Blue Oval's roster鈥攖he Mustang. The Mustang has such cachet that Ford's first long-range battery-electric car will wear pony car styling cues. But we'll have to wait until next month to learn more about the Mach-E, with even longer to go until we get to drive it. Today's Mustang is the polar opposite of that car. It's not electric, it's not a crossover, and while you could drive it every day on the street, it's really designed with the race track in mind. It is the uber-stang. It is the Mustang Shelby GT500. The name comes from Carroll Shelby, a Le Mans-winning driver who turned his hand to vehicle development after a heart condition put an end to his racing days. Shelby famously dropped a Ford V8 into AC's lithe little Ace roadster, creating the AC Cobra, and he was the man Ford turned to when it wanted to make the Mustang go as fast as it looked.

Back in the '60s, you could buy two different flavors of Shelby Mustang: the GT350 and the GT500. The former was meant for circuit racers, with lightweight parts, uprated suspension, and a more powerful engine. Meanwhile, the GT500 was developed with the drag strip in mind, with a massive 7.0L V8 under the hood. Ford revived the GT500 badge in 2005, once again dropping as powerful a V8 under the car's hood as it could for the time. You may even remember this variant from the short-lived Knight Rider reboot of the mid-aughts. The GT500's hand-built 5.2L V8. The result of all this handiwork is 760hp, which is a frankly staggering amount and complete overkill for the street. But the GT500 comes alive on track, in part because of all the work that Ford Performance has done under here. A cutaway magnetorheological damper from Magnaride. If you don't get the carbon fiber pack, you get a small rear spoiler like this one. On the other hand, if you do get the carbon fiber pack, you get this rear wing, which is identical to the one on the Mustang GT4 race car.

You also get a more complicated front splitter/wicker. This green car has less extreme front aero but does have the carbon fiber wheels. All GT500s get those massive 420mm front brakes. The front rotors are bigger than the wheels on the first GT500. The hood pins are ball-jointed. One of Ford's aero mules. In keeping with tradition, the most powerful Mustang's V8 benefits from a supercharger. The GT500 also gets an all-new transmission to send that power and torque to the rear wheels. In this case, that's a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox from Tremec, which is capable of executing shifts in as little as 80 milliseconds, depending upon which mode you find yourself in. There is no manual option for the GT500. That might upset a few graybeards, but they probably lost interest in the current generation of Mustang once it ditched the antediluvian live axle for fully independent rear suspension.

Be glad that Ford's engineers made that switch, because it means that this GT500 is now as capable at a race track as it is the drag strip, which is to say, extremely. Our day in Las Vegas started with a relatively short road drive, from Las Vegas Motor Speedway up into the mountains and back. The first impression, garnered within the first few hundred yards as we pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street, was just how compliant and drivable the GT500 is. It'll even stay under the radar of your neighbors if you put the exhaust in quiet mode. 72,900 base price. You'll probably even have more fun on public roads, because the cheaper, less powerful car runs on far skinnier tires than the GT500, which comes on 305-width rubber up front and 315-width at the back. However, once you've arrived at the track, it's a very different story.