This guy makes your pulse quicken with some of his descriptions of his lucky experience of driving the GT500. However, when I read this part:

I felt like he could have been a Ford dealer salesman trying to justify why you should fork over an extra $10,000 over sticker.

Overall, he said he would take the Mustang GT over the GT500.

Here's the link:
http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/01/Auto...t500/index.htm

 

Important observations from that article:

"All Mustangs have solid rear axles, a rarity in cars these days. That makes for some ride-and-handling quirks, most notably a sideways shimmy over little mid-turn bumps. In other Mustangs, I find it attractive, a part of the muscle-car experience. In the GT500, with more weight, more power and firmer suspension, the effect is much more pronounced. Hit a big bump in the road and it really throws the GT500 around."

"If you aren't lucky enough to be an owner, console yourself with this: Owners will get the most enjoyment out of it on a track. The 300-horsepower Mustang GT is at least as much fun, maybe more, where you and I drive every day, on the public roads. It's plenty powerful, light, cooler-sounding at idle and quieter and smoother at speed."

Translation: The GT is the better overall performer, particularly for the money.

But for those who still must have the Shelby, I say: "Oink."

 

And for those who incessantly demean the Shelby, I say: "Jealous."

 

Yep, I been pretty incessant about that.

 

I love this line
Actually it would have been just not with shelbys name on it..would have just been an SVT Cobra. They make it sound like he could have actually make or break whether this car would have gotten made.

 

In other words, what they meant to say was, "This was a 90 cent Shelby badge that, easily, might never have been."

 

Nah, the 90 cent badge was originally planned, but later axed in favor of a slightly heavier 70 cent badge.

 

I think what he meant was $10,000 in real value over a mustang GT!

 

Of What? It's not a Ferrari or exotic. People are disappointed with the GT500 because of what was said of the car a long time back. The bean counters won and consumers once again got the shaft. I knew this was happening a long time ago, given the troubles Ford is in. Ford knows the car will sell amongst the baby boomer crowd because of the name. Why waste time and money building a better car, if it will sell no matter what because of the Shelby name?

 

Yeah, remember IRS and twin screw. As much as I still love the new Shelby, I couldn't justify to myself paying $20k more than I did for my GT vert @ $28.4k.

 

Forgot about the twin screw. That was something that was axed as well.

 

Huh? Ford didn't forget the twin screw. In fact if you think about it, the lack of IRS, heavy weight, and somewhat disappointing performance numbers given the HP coupled with the high ADM/AMV's at dealerships have left a lot of prospective owners feeling quite screwed.

 

You might even say twin screwed..so I guess we got it afterall

 

 

 

This was my biggest worry when I first heard that the GT500 was going to have a SRA like they did for the other Mustangs.
Add to this the fact that they didn't adress the weight distribution issue (instead they just dropped the engine + new components in there and the result is that now the weight distribution is very nose heavy, if I remember well something like 57.2/42.8, right ?) therefore making it worse for the rear suspension to do its job, never mind also those extra horses compared to a regular GT and in my mind I wonder if this car would be much more difficult to handle than a regular GT.
I mean for drag racing, all cool for the SRA...but in real life, if there is a curve you probably need to take it extra easy and careful.
And this, for a 500 hp super car, is a total disappointment IMHO because for sure power is important, but how efficiently it can be handled is even more so...

 

Yeah, some other journalists were emphasizing that when entering a turn, you best slow the Shelby down in a straight line before hitting the turn, then use the throttle and rear end to power out of the apex. And what if the pavement happens to be rough, broken or strewn with unknown blemishes like potholes?

My guess is we're going to see a lot of wrecked Shelby's in the months after the car goes on sale, as it "gets away" from a lot of owners...

YEEEEEHHHAAAAAAAAAA...

 

You totally read my mind, I completely agree with you.
I understand those journalists saying so: imagine someone that is in danger of overshooting a curve, hits the brakes a little bit harder than what he'd normally do, all the weight shifts to the front (that is already almost 20 % heavier than the back), the back being already light gets even lighter by the dynamics of breaking fairly strongly in the curve. Result: total oversteer and who knows if the Trac Control can do anything about it, knowing also that the Mustang's Trac Control is of the pretty permissive kind.
And this in dry conditions...imagine like you said with wet tarmac and/or bumps/potholes and the poor SRA struggling to keep adherence.
What a nightmare.
And also, you can imagine that many guys, especially the macho kind that needs to prove to everyone that they are manly enough, might even disable the Trac Control because they think they know how to handle it.
I see many Shelby's destroyed as well, my friend...

 

I'll be laughing at the first guy who does that who ALSO paid $20K over MSRP. I think this car will command more respect from its owner than anyone going up against it. Potential drivers better be judicious about when and where they "get on it." Me, I'd probably consider a pro driving school so that I could master the car's personality.

 

That's exactly right !
You definitely need to have a lot of skills for such a car (and I would make a pro driving school course mandatory, if you want to buy a GT500) and on top of that you need to use as well your brain (and on average, I am not sure that many drivers out there make a good use of their "hardware" that sits in the skull).
The GT500 with 500 hp, rwd, quite unsettled in its weight distribution, a pretty permissive trac control, a rear suspension that even though it was developed for sure to the maximum of its capabilities but still has its shortcomings compared to a very good irs setup (and on top of that, that sra needs to handle 500 hp, not 300 like the regular GT) leads me to think that we will start seeing casualties pretty soon.

I remember back in Europe when in 1997 I got a BMW M3 (3.2L 321 hp. The same model in the US at time, I think it had 240 hp). Compared to the GT500 it had: less power, a better suspension, probably equal tires (smaller but top of the line high performance Michelin's), much better weight distribution and no trac control or dsc or any other electronic system to give you a helping hand.
Well, that car was a gorgeous vehicle...but if it started to rain (forget snow...) or in dry conditions you had your tires not straight (like for example exiting from a roundabout) and you stepped on it hard at the right rpms (say 3300-3700), you were in for a world of pain.
I imagine what it would have done with 500 hp...like the GT500...
People out there need to be cautious, VERY cautious...