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Ever wonder what happens to a pre-production test car after its life’s work is done? Me either, but the Dearborn Fire Department in the outskirts of Detroit put a 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 to good use this week during emergency extrication training. It turns out having Ford world headquarters in your town has its perks, eh?
Photos of the metal-cutting exercise were uploaded to the department’s Facebook page Friday morning, triggering many reactions from Mustang lovers and car enthusiasts alike. Not everyone knows that these test mules are just that: prototypes that manufacturers build for evaluation purposes and that they’re all destined for the crusher anyway. As a result, the comments section had the pro-firefighters defending their work and the car guys talking smack about the whole ordeal.
My personal favorite is some commenter who went as far as wishing diarrhea on everyone who didn’t want to see this car destroyed. The thread is pure 2020 goodness.
Listen, it doesn’t kill me to see a perfectly good car get destroyed, even if it’s a $73,000 sports car. It’s part of
perfecting the research and development of new cars and their advanced technology: trial and
error. Plus, in this case, what better way to say goodbye to a car than to allow firefighters—you know, the folks who come to our rescue in the case of a crash—to practice their craft on new, cutting-edge models.
Sure, this GT500 was probably one of the most glamorous (and expensive) cars the Dearborn Fire Department has ever trained
on, but that’s ok!
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