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The newest Ford Mustang has just dropped, and it’s an excellent proposition for the near future of the pony car. It keeps the V8 alive, keeps the manual gearbox alive, and it looks quite good in person. But the initial models won’t be the only cars built on that platform because some spyshots have emerged on several blogs that suggest Ford is looking into building a Shelby GT500 convertible.
The previous generation S550 GT500 was a radical departure from the GT500s of the past few decades. It used to be that GT500s had huge power, but not much handling and even less brakes. With the S550, that all changed. The GT500 became a supercar-killer handling benchmark despite being powered by a 760-horsepower supercharged 5.2-liter V8. Then there was the GT350 that handled beautifully and revved to the sky with a flat-plane V8 specifically engineered for that car.
Those cars were extremely focused cars that were meant for a more serious sports car experience. More importantly, they were never offered as convertibles, shutting out a part of the market that doesn’t want ultimate laptime but does want a lot of horsepower to go with their vitamin D. For those Mustang fans, spyshots have been circulating the web showing a suspiciously serious looking S650 Mustang convertible with the wide carbon fiber wheels from the S550 GT500 and some well-hidden aero elements.
Sports car fans will weep some tears over a fast Mustang convertible but the truth is that not all folks want to perfectly clip an apex. Cruising the coast with a 700-plus horsepower V8 is a joy of its own. While development mules are rarely a sign that a car will go into production (I’m still fuming that the Lexus LC F prototype never came to be), it shows that Ford is at least thinking about it.
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