When it comes to bang for your buck, the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 hits it spot-on. With a 662-horsepower supercharged V-8, Recaro seats, adjustable shocks and a tweaked exterior, the 2013 Shelby GT500 stands out in the crowd of muscle cars.
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(upbeat music) <v Narrator>Cars.com Auto Review. Hi, I'm Mike Hanley with Cars.com, and this is the Ford Shelby GT500. Even among high priced exotic sports cars, it's numbers stand out.
662 horsepower, 631 pounds feet of torque, and a top speed of more than 200 miles per hour. But what sets this car apart from the others is that it can be brash and unruly one minute, and tame the next. The Shelby GT500 gets a number of unique design cues, and they're concentrated at the front and rear of the car. There's a new splitter for more downforce for high speed stability, and in addition to this bulging hood, you can see this gaping opening where a grill would normally be, that's the funnel air to the radiator, but I kinda worry about catching a big rock right into your radiator when cruising down the road with no grill to slow it down. Around back, you get a trunk lid spoiler, quad exhaust tips, and a nice looking treatment of gloss black trim and LED tail lights. The source of the GT500's impressive power and torque figures is a 5.8 liter supercharged V8 engine, and what makes this car so fun to drive is also what potentially limits its performance. (GT500's engine revving) When you step on the gas in this car, it's really easy to make the rear end step out, and while it's fun to do that all day long, it limits how much of that power you can put down to the rear wheels. So some wider tires might be in order, even though this already has 285/35ZR20 tires. Now, you might expect to be visiting the gas station a lot with a car like this, and that's very true, because we've been getting about 14 miles per gallon, that's less than the EPA estimates of 15 city, 24 highway, but it's even more exaggerated, because the gas tank is pretty small, it's only 16 gallons. One aspect of the GT500 that drew a lot of praise is it's 6-speed manual transmission. The shifter is really direct and precise, offers great short throw shifts, but there's one thing about it, it's takes a lot of effort to move it from gear to gear. It's really heavier than a lot of transmissions that you're gonna find. Choosing the optional performance package brings you adjustable shocks, and there's two settings, there's a normal and a sport mode. In a normal, it's actually pretty livable for highway driving, it's firm, but it's not too punishing, change it to sport though, and it gets noticeably firmer, definitely a more rocky ride. I like the simplicity of the Mustang's dashboard layout with it's easy to use knob controls, and the RECARO sport seats in this car drew praise from their viewers. Now, they're optional, but they offer a lot of comfort and support for performance driving. What could be improved is the gauge layout in the Mustang, because they're kind of hard to read when driving at night. Like it's less powerful Mustang siblings, the Shelby GT500 stands out for its nimbleness and driving fun among muscle cars, and the massive power under the hood means you can connect with your inner hooligan whenever you want. Among sports cars today, that's a rare treat at any price. (GT500's engine revving) <v Narrator>For more car related news, go to cars.com, or our blog, KickingTires.net.
