Life with GT500 - 2013 Shelby GT500

You can put a genuine 662hp, 200-MPH supercar (with a warranty and a payment plan) in your driveway. But would you want to?

Life with GT500 - 2013 Shelby GT500
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Feature Article from Hemmings Muscle Machines

June, 2013 - Jeff Koch

Used to be, owning a performance car was a hassle. Serious speed presented some real around-town driveability issues, and you'd spend as much time under the hood wrenching as you would behind the wheel. Think about it. A fat camshaft with a loping idle that made it impossible to drive smoothly. Regular valve adjustments. Loading up at street speeds. An exhaust note that you couldn't hold a conversation over. Overheating. Puking coolant. The cost of those perpetual 20-gallon tanks full of 100-octane. And good luck getting air conditioning with that. Stoplight-induced blasts of fun were one thing, but a simple trip to the grocery store often seemed beyond a serious muscle car's competence.

Things have surely improved in the intervening decades. Haven't they? This year's Mustang-based, SVT-fettled-and-built Shelby GT500 has the highest-powered V-8 engine ever put in a production vehicle anywhere on Earth: 662 horsepower and 631-lbs ft of torque (numbers that were unimaginable even in the days of aluminum-engined ZL1-powered Chevys, semi-Hemi Boss 429 Mustangs and Hemi-powered anythings)--and a warranty book to go with it. The GT500 is advertised as a genuine 200-MPH supercar, although this borders on the academic, considering the most generous speed limit in our nation is less than 43 percent of this machine's ultimate capabilities. Yet even with a porcine 3,850-pound curb weight, it has a balloon-knot-puckering 5.82 pounds per horsepower.

Is the Shelby GT500 a supercar you can live with? Rather than conducting another boring ol' 200-MPH top-end test, we decided to simply live with our press sample for a couple of weeks. We took it on school pickup-and-drop-off detail. We took it out to meals and went grocery shopping in it. We picked up family at the airport and put a two-year-old in the back seat. We loaded it with photo equipment and took it on a shoot. We brought home an Ikea bookshelf in the trunk. And yes, we took it on the occasional startling joyride and off-ramp blast. In other words, we drove it--we used it--like we would any other car.

Despite SVT sorting out the particulars, there isn't a Ford oval, a Mustang nameplate or a prancing-pony badge anywhere to be seen on the car inside or out; only the screen between the mercifully analog gauges will flash the Mustang name and chrome-pony logo. It's a Shelby GT500, with Cobra badging attached to the front quarters, the faux gas cap between the taillamps, and on the edge of the grille.

The GT500 starts at $54,200; this includes the deep-breathing, hand-built, supercharged 5.8-liter V-8 with open-element cold-air induction and hood; a Tremec TR6060 six-speed stick; a carbon-fiber driveshaft; Brembo calipers clamping down on serving-tray-sized rotors; stripes; spoilers; and a whole host of modern conveniences no one can live without anymore, like air conditioning, ABS, power locks and mirrors, a 42,000-watt stereo, 83 airbags and, perhaps most crucially, a warranty: three years bumper-to-bumper, five years for powertrain and roadside assist. Coverage like that is a long cry from stickers under the hood informing you that your brand-new high-end '60s performance barge is bereft of guarantees. Yet at the same time, we had more headroom than in the gold-standard grocery-getter, a new Honda Accord coupe.

However, the car you see on these pages is bumped up to $65,420, thanks to: the $3,495 SVT Performance Package, which includes a 3.55:1 Torsen differential (up from the standard 3.31), 19- and 20-inch wheels, stiffer rear springs, and cockpit-adjustable Bilstein shocks, which we like most of; the $2,995 Track Package, which includes coolers for the engine oil, transmission fluid and rear diff, plus electronics to clock your capabilities, which is only available with the Performance Package; the $2,340 electronics package with navigation, six months of free satellite radio, and dual-zone climate control, most of which we could live without; manually adjusted Recaro seats for $1,595, which we cannot; and a $795 destination charge, which seems unavoidable. One thing it doesn't have: a grille. There's just a trapezoidal hole now, big enough to suck up a stray possum. For years, the GT500 had grille textures and badges shifting to minimize airflow issues, but for 2013, Ford just gave up and left a hole.

Whether someone considers a GT500 good value--smartly optioned, you can get one for around $60,000--will depend on whether their glass is half empty or half full. The half-empty crowd wonders who would pay 60 large for a Mustang--a 50-percent spiff over and above a GT, which is, itself, finally, no slouch. With between 4,000 and 5,000 built per year (see sidebar), it's not even that limited. And it's still got a solid rear axle. The half-full crowd sees a car that has 40 more horsepower than a ZR1 Corvette at half the price. It has a back seat that fits kids fine and real adults in a pinch. (Also, just try and get a stepladder in the back of your 'Vette.) Clean retail on a 2011 GT500 hovers around $40,000, so its inevitable depreciation won't bankrupt you. (We don't play glass-half-empty-glass-half-full here at HMN; we only demand that free refills are available.)

Initially, we weren't sold on the silver-with-blue-stripes look, particularly with the black wheels--a bit busy, we thought--but I hadn't yet had it for an hour when two ladies in a Target parking lot slid up beside me and told me how much they liked my car. (A day later, another one wanted to go for a ride, then refused when she learned I was married.) So clearly it's working for someone. Guys were a little more skeptical: They think they know cars, so they looked at it and said "meh" to just another Mustang... until we took them for a quick jaunt to 100 and back down again. To a man, the GT500's sheer force volunteered passengers to utter an awe-tinged string of epithets that can only be conveyed here using numbers and the shift key (i.e., @#$%&!) And when they realized that I hadn't killed them, they laughed. Oh, how they laughed. They laughed as if they had dodged the Grim Reaper's own sickle and lived to tell the tale.

Their first hint was the exhaust. On initial firing, a spitting crackle shoots out the pipes before the low simmer of Mustang returns to its 800 RPM idle. (The engine is rev-limited to 6,000 RPM until the engine and oil have sufficiently heated up, at which point the redline jumps to seven grand.)

In first, dropping the clutch at 2,000 RPM results in bite and thrust, with the supercharger starting to work its magic, and by 4,000 RPM, the engine is in full boost and spinning so hard that the rear tires break loose, tweaking things to the right slightly. The Tremec's shift action feels more metallic and less cartilage-y than in the Mustang GT's Getrag, but we're also less likely to choose the wrong gear; the stick has a more positive sense of placement, and the clutch has a commensurate heft.

Into second, you remain in the meat of the torque band and you can feel the nose stand up and punch through the air; at the top of second, you're already so far beyond most posted American speed limits that you'd better have your license at the ready for when the nice trooper comes to tear it up in front of your face.

The optional Track Pack lets you calculate your performance times--0-30, 0-60, 0-100, and 1&#8260;8- and 1&#8260;4-mile times, along with lateral and braking g's. (You don't even need to shift to hit 60; just wind it out to redline.) Initially, the "For Track Use Only" deferral in red letters seems like a joke, until you realize that hooking up on anything but a VHT-soaked starting line is going to result in as much sideways as forward motion. Traction control? It's there--unless you disable it via a console button, at your peril--but it's more of a suggestion, as you can get awfully out of shape before the electronic nanny reins you in.

You'd think that this power, this eagerness to burst forth and impress, would make the GT500 a cantankerous old thing--constantly on edge and grumbling about its more domestic duties. But... it doesn't. It's as docile as you want it to be, or as ferocious as you can handle. Go get a trunk full of groceries (we did, and while the trunk lift-over height is a bit high, one does not buy a Shelby GT500 for its trunk lift-over height.) Go get lunch at the Jack In The Box drive-thru: The exhaust noise won't make your order difficult to hear over the loudspeaker, and the line of SUVs in front of you whose orders are inevitably incorrect won't cause any ill effects to your driveline, which idles smooth as you please. Shift it at 3,000 RPM, maximum. Drive it and use it like a minivan. It'll be perfectly happy to do so. The rear seat backs do fold down, although the rear window and parcel shelf mean that height is restricted; still, there's plenty of extra room for groceries, for an infant's Pack-and-Play and all of the assorted toys and accoutrements that infant needs on a long road trip, or even for a six-foot stepladder.

It's true: Moving the passenger-side Recaro forward (though not so far forward a limber teenager couldn't squirm in for a ride) and a six-foot stepladder--essential equipment for photo shoots such as the ones I conduct on a regular basis for the Hemmings family of automotive titles--fits just fine. (Ikea's tallest Billy bookshelf was three inches too tall to fit completely--or else my passenger was just too girthy to scoot the seat any further forward, one or the other.) At dusk, fully laden with passenger and ladder and photo gear, I was able to come from behind in an impromptu drag race in the desert, reeling in my competition (a genuine 289 Cobra, as it happened) as if they had dropped anchor. There's more roar and suspension noise with the rear seatbacks folded, of course, but it's still quieter than riding around in the back of an open pickup truck.

When driving at around-town speeds out of boost, and the rest of the GT500's capabilities are quietly tucked away, the suspension becomes the hard-edged tell of a serious performance machine. It makes more sense at freeway speeds, though it helps if those freeways are decently maintained, as they are in Phoenix. (In a place where the roads are awful, like vast quantities of Los Angeles, heaven help you.) The tradeoff is lean-free, vice-free cornering--no corner you can throw at it will shake it. You can select stiffer shock valving via a button on the dash, but really, that's a track-only proposition: It makes even clean, straight, fresh pavement feel like the tractor-trailer-rutted 710 freeway out of Long Beach. The ride home from the airport managed to lull a cantankerous two-year-old, notorious for not enjoying her car rides, into a deep sleep that ended only when we arrived home and parked.

But here is the eye-opener. Around town it, and you, become very comfortable doing about 20 MPH more than your surroundings might otherwise dictate prudent. Even moderate acceleration, shifting before you're in the meat of the power band, skipping gears while upshifting... you soon realize that the rest of the traffic with you at the light is a quarter-mile back and you're enough over the limit that the points hit on your insurance would be painful if you got caught. At 80 MPH, you wonder why traffic isn't getting a move-on. There's so much in reserve that using what's there around town is a dawdle; its blood pressure has not been raised, yet it's terribly casual about stepping out in front of everyone else.

The gearing helps. At 80 MPH, you're at 1,600 RPM in sixth--barely off idle; no wonder you can hardly hear anything beyond exhaust hum and a skosh of wind noise. On our way to that Cobra photo shoot across town, we were just pacing traffic and topped 22 MPG on the trip. (On the way back from breakfast one morning, we tried 40 MPH in sixth, a cool 1,000 RPM ...and an indicated 37 MPG.) Yet it'll still pull hard, even in fifth, once it's in boost.

And it's not that it's particularly brutal, suspension aside... it just makes most other machines around it seem soft. Body roll that'll make you seasick, clutches that have all of the give and pressure of cooked fusilli and acceleration that suddenly feels glacial; outside of the GT500 bubble, most other workaday vehicles offer a lot of pedal for not a lot of movement. Time and speed work differently inside a GT500; as good as it is when you drive it, you feel its absence even more when driving something else. Today, the only real hassle involved in driving the most powerful factory V-8 performance car ever produced is convincing your spouse that you need one.

The future, maybe
So, is Ford's Shelby GT500 a lot of dosh for a Mustang, or is it the performance bargain of the century? If your opinion falls on the performance-bargain end of the ledger, you may want to step up, sell the wife, mortgage the kids, and get your mitts on one ASAP.

Editor Terry McGean has fretted in these pages that if the modern era has a parallel with 1970--with Hemis and Shelby GT500s and ZL1 Camaros stalking America's 'burgs, 'burbs and bridges--then the spectral hangover of 1971, '72 and beyond can't be far behind. Already, the signs are upon us, with CAFE regulations threatening to spike into the 50 MPG range. There are plenty of performance engines out there, but they're getting smaller and more efficient. (Two examples from the guys across town: The next Camaro will be based on Cadillac's compact ATS platform, while the new 420hp twin-turbo Cadillac CTS engine outlined last month in Production Line is only a few horses shy of the outgoing C6 Corvette's base V-8.) Power-to-weight ratios may remain, but what of the power itself? With a new, presumably lighter Mustang coming in less than a year as you read this, will a supercharged, 5.8-liter, 662 horsepower V-8 remain at the top of the range? Considering the base Mustang engine is going to be a two-liter turbo, the power of the basic Coyote V-8, and the 5.8's lack of power-boosting, mileage-friendly tech like direct injection, our Magic 8-Ball says "Signs Point to No."

It seems probable that this, the most gonzo V-8 ever put into a commercially sold passenger vehicle anywhere on Earth, will soon go away. And that's a shame. What comes next might be quicker, or faster, or more gonzo in some other way--but it won't be this effortless, bipolar mass of Jekyll-and-Hyde rendered in steel and aluminum. Whatever comes next, it seems that we may not pass this way again.

Coupes - 8,150
Convertibles - 2,694
Total - 10,844

Coupes - 6,513
Convertibles - 2,070
Total - 8,583

Coupes - 3,004
Convertibles - 555
Total - 3,559

Coupes - 3,545
Convertibles - 913
Total - 4,458

Coupes - 3,461
Convertibles - 838
Total - 4,299

Coupes - 3,929
Convertibles - 905
Total - 4,834

Total Production:
Coupes - 28,602
Convertibles - 7,975
Total - 36,577
2013 production has not ended at this writing.

2013 Shelby GT500

Block type - Cast aluminum Ford "Modular"
Cylinder heads - Ford aluminum DOHC, 37mm intake/32mm exhaust valves
Displacement - 355 cubic inches
Bore x Stroke - 3.681 x 4.165 inches
Compression ratio - 9.01:1
Pistons - Forged aluminum
Connecting rods - Cracked forged-steel I-beam
Horsepower @ RPM - 662 @ 6,500
Torque @ RPM - 631-lbs ft @ 4,000
Fuel system - 60mm dual-bore electronic throttle-body, electronic returnless sequential fuel injection operated by Copperhead PCM, 55-lbs./hr. fuel injectors, twin fuel pumps (300 LPH capacity)
Ignition system - Coil-on-plug

Type - Tremec TR6060 six-speed manual, all synchromesh, with optional fluid cooler; carbon-fiber driveshaft
1st - 2.66:1
2nd - 1.82:1
3rd - 1.30:1
4th - 1.00:1
5th - 0.77:1
6th - 0.50:1
Reverse - 3.31:1

Type - Ford 8.8 with Torsen limited-slip differential
Ratio - 3.31:1

Type - Electric power-assisted rack-and-pinion
Ratio - 15.7:1

Type - Four-wheel power disc with four-channel anti-lock braking system (ABS), electronic brake force distribution (EBD) and traction control
Front - Brembo 15-inch vented rotors, six-piston aluminum calipers
Rear - 13.8-inch vented discs, single-piston calipers

Front - Independent; MacPherson strut with reverse-L lower control arm; Bilstein selectable monotube dampers; 34.6 x 5.5mm tubular stabilizer bar
Rear - Three-link solid axle with coil springs, Panhard rod, Bilstein selectable monotube dampers, 25mm solid stabilizer bar

Wheels & Tires
Wheels - SVT Performance Package 16-spoke forged-aluminum wheels
Front 19 x 9.5 inches
Rear 20 x 9.5 inches
Tires - Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar G
Front 265/40ZR19
Rear 285/35ZR20

This article originally appeared in the June, 2013 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines.

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