mustang_sallad

Tonight's episode of Top Gear (should be on the torrent sites by Sunday evening, check finalgear.com) will finally feature the Shelby GT500! I've been waiting for this for a while, and started to worry they simply wouldn't test it.

I'm a little nervous... as we all know, these guys love to get laughs out of bashing American cars. You gotta not take everything they say very seriously, but I'm kinda hoping they'll just show a little hint of admission that this is a pretty sweet car. The big problem is that they never really seem to care much about bang for the buck, and to me, that's a huge part of what this car is about... 500hp for about $40K US... But to get one over on that side of the pond, you gotta pay a lot more than that, so you definitely lose that appeal.

Anyway, they definitely do have an appreciation for American muscle... and Clarkson, the fat loud one, got his hands on one of the few Ford GT's in Brittain.... and loved it, aside from the shoddy alarm system that got installed.

Definitely anticipate some ox-cart remarks about the suspension. Here's what they say on the site:

mrdci

I think this video has already been on You Tube (I think the BBC had it pulled). Clarkson drives a Vert and also a Roush Mustang. I hope he gets the engine specs right before it goes on TV cause he said the 500 had a 4.6 but a bigger blower. But overall he chose the Roush cause it handled better. I hope its a differrent test but we shall see.

mustang_sallad

That was actually a video from a film Clarkson did called The Good The Bad and the Ugly, where he went to the states to try to find a good american car.... ends with him driving the GTX1 and really loving it. And yeah, he made tons of mistakes that were pretty frustrating. Especially when he claimed the V6 mustang he was driving was the GT with 300hp. Whatever, the guys and idiot, but he's bloody hilarious.

Tonight, the GT500 will actually be featured on the Top Gear show, presumably the car will be in Britain and hopefully they'll take it around their test track and really see how it compares on a track to all the other cars they've tested.

Jbahoffman

Is the show Top Gear shown in the US?????

If so,,what station???
I'd really like to see the show with the GT500.

thank you!

mustang_sallad

unless you get BBC somehow, Top Gear is not shown in the US. They aired a slightly americanized version on the Discovery channel for a while, and there were plans of an all out american version with american hosts (that totally wouldn't count as Top Gear...)
If you want to watch entire episodes, you have to download torrents. FinalGear.com posts links to the torrent files. Tonight's episode should be up maybe by the end of the night. The torrent file is a small file that is basically an address that is read by a BitTorrent client, which then uses that address to download the video. You need to first download and install a bit torrent client, like the official one for example: http://www.bittorrent.com/download

and then download the torrent file that finalgear.com links to on their main page.

mrdci

I download the show from newsgroups. Basically if you watched the one where they tested the GT its simular. They bash Ford for putting the live axel and not having independent rear in the car. They said its got good straight line perfromance but forget the curves. The car did a 1 min 30sec even on their track. The Stig then took out a Roush and did 1.28 so two full seconds due to better suspension and lest weight. Heres a list of the Stigs lap times to compare the Shelby against.

http://www.topgear.com/content/tgonb...times/thestig/

The next car on the list with 1.30.1 is the Monaro (Same as the GTO)
The Vette does it in 1:26.8 and the Z06 is 1.22.4

unnoticedtrails

I'm downloading it as we speak

mustang_sallad

they wheeled out a rolling road dyno onto the track and got 450 or so hp, i forget the number but it was around there. I haven't heard an uproar about underrated 5.4L V8's, so i'm guessing these guys are just playing stupid again for the sake of a story and not saying anything about RWHP vs HP at the crank? You guys know some typical RWHP numbers that people have gotten with stock GT500's?
Other than that, it was pretty cool... Obviously they ragged on it for its handling, but overall i'd say they were pretty impressed with the car as a gorgeous monster with a little trouble in the bends. Even more impressed with the Roush, which they recognize as a serious sports car.

THRUST_

They weren't kind too it, not that I expected they would be. Jeremey always says that they didn't change the brakes from the GT to GT500 which isnt true. Hammond said it has the same engine as the ford GT, it does have the same displacement, but we all know it's not the same. I really don't know the reason they would do the dyno testing, on the show they're always talking about brake horsepower not horsepower at the wheels. They get 447 horsepower at the wheels which is only about a 10% loss. That seems pretty reasonable to me. You could definitly see the car bouncing around a lot on the track so I can understand where they are coming from about the handling.

I'd say Hammond enjoyed all the smoke he was making and the car overall.

05fordgt

Same here. I use Bit Comet, and I'm at around 25% so far.

GhostTX

Anybody got a direct link for download?

Lord Chabelo

Link to youtube clip of the show http://youtube.com/watch?v=mGbhKQlUhLo

burningman

You could clearly see the suspension letting the car down..it was as fast a manaro on the track and the manaro has less horsepower but a WAYYYY better suspension set up.
They may have botched some facts but Jerem,y nailed it when he said that you can't put that much power under a car and not do much with the suspension.

Some of the details may be wrong but the over all sentiment is spot on....and yes I've driven one and I liked it..well except for the shelby stickers but that's another story LOL

mustang_sallad

torrent for the whole episode:
http://www.mininova.org/tor/607357

Hollywood_North GT

As always, I love these guys, but it's forever a mixed bag when it come to anything 'merican.

Everyone knows that an IRS is superior to a solid axle around the track. What they failed to account for - after all that bashing - is just how the Roush seems to do so well with that primitive live axle. The point here being that it can certainly be made to perform well, if other aspects of the suspension are properly engineered and implemented.

Don't get me started on Hamster's ridiculous HP botch up for the GT500.

And after trashing the regular S197 GT, he goes on about how wonderful his GT390 is (with its 250HP), but doesn't bother to own up to the fact that the current GT - with all its alleged shortcomings - would easily spank his precious GT390.

It's entertainment, folks. The "boys" play fast and loose with the facts, cherry picking information to suit their prejudgement.

Every_Mn

I- and he- would still rather have the GT390 than the Roush, GT500, or any Mustang made after 1971. That 250rwhp figure is at the wheels, which is probably somewhere around 300 at the crank.

Not bad, IMHO. Well, I know a guy who's bone stock 400-powered '70 Firebird dyno'd 305hp at the wheels but still.

Hollywood_North GT

Each to their own, of course. No denything the GT390 is a beautiful piece of automotive sculpture and history.

That said, a current, stock S197 GT would wipe the track with that thing. There's simply no getting around 40 years of engineering advances - and that's what Hammond conveniently left out.

For my collection, I'd take the GT390. For a daily driver, I'd take the current GT.

Zastava_101

Newest episode of Top Gear is usually available on youtube on Tuesday or Wednesday of each week.

Zastava_101

Did Jeremy said at the end that Top Gear won't be back soon?

shatter

Yes. The season is over until the summer but they are putting out a special episode in a couple of weeks.