A new episode of Regular Car Reviews just went up earlier today, in which Mr. Regular Cars tackles the most powerful production Mustang to-date: the 2013-’14 Shelby GT500.
If there’s one prevailing judgment that can be gleaned from this video review, it’s that the 662-horsepower Shelby GT500 is an exercise in utter excess.
“When you get into the question of ‘need,’ well, no; no one really needs a 5.8-liter, 32-valve, V-8, supercharged engine,” says Mr. Regular Cars. He goes on to call it “an ode to mythic American muscle – an attempt to out-sixties the nineteen-sixties, and the ridiculous, boastful reputation sixties cars gladly accept on Barrett-Jackson’s auction blocks.”
Such claims do indeed have some merit. The 2013-’14 Shelby GT500 was powered not by the familiar, 5.0-liter Coyote V8 that propelled 2011 and later Ford Mustangs, but by a 5.8-liter Trinity V8, fed pressurized air by a 2.3-liter Eaton TVS (Twin-Vortices Series) supercharger. The result was a claimed 3.3-second 0 to 60 time and a wanton 202 mile-per-hour top speed.
Yet despite this, as Mr. Regular Cars notes in his review, the rear end features a rather moderate 3.31:1 ratio, coupled with a transmission that features two overdrive gears for a not-so-terrible, EPA-estimated 18 mpg combined fuel economy. And, rather unlike today’s more track-dedicated GT350R Mustang, the Shelby GT500 wasn’t left devoid of all creature comforts by default, making it a loud, fast, “excessive” car that one could actually live with every day.
For more, check out the full review above.
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