The 2016 Shelby GT350 Mustang Roars at the Dallas Auto Show
The upcoming Shelby GT350 Mustang is going to be for bad boys and wild women. Just ask Ford.
It brought the next-generation of the performance icon to the DFW Auto Show last week. Fittingly, the mischief machine wore stripes, looking as if it were behind bars. The Blue Oval’s Tony Greco, program manager for the 2017 F-150 Raptor, presented it to dozens of journalists, including my colleagues in the Texas Auto Writers Association and me, on the second floor of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. We were eager to see and learn about a car which some of us had only seen before on the internet. (You’ll be able to spot the GT350 at Ford dealerships late this year.)
Laying eyes upon it in person was not disappointing. The Shelby looked lean, aggressive, hungry, and perfectly exaggerated. Its front splitter, fender vents, steeply raked spoiler, and heavy-duty rear diffuser gave it a boy-racer look in the best way. Ford Performance heightened the car’s visual menace without pushing it over the top.
Of course, with more than 500 horsepower and greater than 400 lb.-ft. of torque from its 5.2-liter V8, the GT350 will no doubt end up being driven by people who will take it over the speed limit. Greco was well aware of that. He said, “It’s a car for the weekend enthusiast, the weekend racer, or just maybe the guy that’s going to get himself in a lot of trouble with the local authorities.” It certainly doesn’t help that Ford’s given the GT350’s engine a flat-plane crankshaft (the kind found in Ferraris), which will help it rev higher.
Little did my fellow writers and I know that we were going to get a chance to hear the GT350 do just that. Normally, when I go to an indoor auto show, I get to see and touch and even sit in the cars, but I can’t recall ever getting to hear one start up. I’m sure it’s because of an insurance-related fear of someone saying, “My sinuses are sensitive to the smell of awesomeness. I’m suing. Wah!”
Fortunately, Ford decided to do the right thing and be cool. The GT350 erupted into life, treating my colleagues and I to the results of what Greco said was two and a half to three years of exhaust tuning. The Shelby sounded as angry as we were happy to hear it firing up. You can do the same by clicking the play button below.
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