Snrub said:
Very few old dudes buy these cars. Look at sports bikes. Young guys have been buying utterly psychotic bikes and hurting themselves for a long time....
Are you sure? My impression is that the GT500s and such were largely snapped up my middle-aged and older guys who mainly take them to C and Cs and occasionally a Shelby club parade lapping session.
I think that the success of the Dodge platform is due in no small part to hip hop icons adoption of them. That's my son's world, and he claims that it's dominated by Dodge.
Very true. Not many young guys buying 75k muscle cars unless they're in entertainment or sports, and that's not usually a strong Ford market. The owner of the GT350 I drove is around 70 and has been the street rod or Corvette demographic until this purchase.
Rodan
Dork
8/15/19 12:56 a.m.
Bumping, since the GT500 curb weight hit the internets today... 4225lbs! 
CFTP should be a little lighter, but wow... now I know why Ford was pushing the "feels light" driving impressions lately!
4225 pounds is pretty ridiculous. They need to do something to get that under control, maybe shrink the car a little bit or something. It's still a gorgeous car though. But I thought my 2012 was heavy and it's like 3400 pounds. If this new one is anything like mine, you'll be able to drop 100 pounds by removing both front seats and installing lightweight racing seats (power front seats are 78 pounds each). It would be neat to see someone gut one down to 3500 (lol, gut it and only get down to 3500) and flog it on a track.
https://www.motor1.com/news/365225/mustang-shelby-gt500-weight/
Rodan said:
Bumping, since the GT500 curb weight hit the internets today... 4225lbs!
CFTP should be a little lighter, but wow... now I know why Ford was pushing the "feels light" driving impressions lately!
Dang, didn't see your bump and just started a new thread.
Gas/tires/brakes are going to be measured in laps with that HP and weight.
That's what I was thinking. I'm remembering when Terry Fair of Vorshlag built his 2011 Mustang GT race car, kept it at stock weight full of leather and options and started bolting on wider and wider wheels. It kept getting faster and getting more power, and he didn't want to go up a class where he was racing so he had to increase weight. He wound up with about 500 HP and a track weight of 3950 pounds and he was crazy fast, setting new lap records left and right, but he was also burning through tires, brakes, gas, and front hubs. Definitely not economical, although it looked pretty sweet with the huge flares and 335F/345R tires. This Mustang will be similar, probably something like 305F/315R or similar tires, huge expensive brakes that hopefully will keep up with the weight, and maybe 3-4mpg on a track. Hopefully it doesn't overheat. It's damn gorgeous though, and this one will probably be a collector's item.
GT350 picks up some of the new GT500 parts. It's an awfully nice looking car as well.
https://www.motor1.com/news/364648/2020-ford-mustang-shelby-gt350r/
infinitenexus said:
That's what I was thinking. I'm remembering when Terry Fair of Vorshlag built his 2011 Mustang GT race car, kept it at stock weight full of leather and options and started bolting on wider and wider wheels. It kept getting faster and getting more power, and he didn't want to go up a class where he was racing so he had to increase weight. He wound up with about 500 HP and a track weight of 3950 pounds and he was crazy fast, setting new lap records left and right, but he was also burning through tires, brakes, gas, and front hubs. Definitely not economical, although it looked pretty sweet with the huge flares and 335F/345R tires. This Mustang will be similar, probably something like 305F/315R or similar tires, huge expensive brakes that hopefully will keep up with the weight, and maybe 3-4mpg on a track. Hopefully it doesn't overheat. It's damn gorgeous though, and this one will probably be a collector's item.
The Miata's guys know this as well when it comes to TT/ST classing, take the weight and the HP vs less weight and less HP when it comes to classing.
So I've been reading through this sourcebook and you can definitely tell that Ford stuffed every single option they could into this car. I don't think it's possible to order a bare bones version but if it were, I'm sure it would save a lot.
The base weight is 4225 pounds, and when reading about the track pack option, I'm guessing it'll be around 100 pounds less. Hopefully a bit more. It mentions the carbon fiber wheels save more than 60 pounds of unsprung mass, and it also includes those sweet recaro seats which should be a good savings as well, and comes with a rear seat delete (which on my car is worth roughly 10 pounds). So I think a 100 pound total weight savings is a safe estimate. It also comes with adjustable strut top mounts, which is nice.
Also I noticed it says it comes with a 2.75" exhaust. My 2012 with considerably less horsepower has an aftermarket 3" that boosted power and saved like 40lbs over stock, so I feel a good maybe 3.25" exhaust on this car with light mufflers would be an excellent mod. More power and less weight.
This reminds me of an article I read in "Model Airplane News" years and years ago where someone commented that, "If you put enough horsepower on it, anything will fly"
These things were ALL OVER the Woodward Dream Cruise last week.
This was taken at an event Ford had on Woodward two days before the cruise.
No, they're functional hood pins. Supposed to help with high speed hood stability.
Too many negative and pseudo-negative comments here. At least for my personal taste.
Me? I’m just excited to live in an age where there are so many 500+ horsepower cars being produced from the factory. That was fantasy-land not long ago. Now factory cars are closing in on 800hp! Didn’t any one else live thorough the 90’s when a 240hp Mustang was all the rage?
And I even saw a hint of the anti-daily-driven-pickup being snuck in there too for some unknown reason.
tuna55
MegaDork
8/22/19 8:23 a.m.
I'm not going to join the dump-on party, but I find this conversation strange:
"OK guys, this thing weighs 4225 lb. How can we make it lighter?"
And carbon fiber wheels make the cut.
It makes me think the conversation was more:
"OK guys, what is the fewest part numbers we can change to add some race car cred to this thing?"
Carbon Wheels themselves are fine, and honestly a neat idea I am surprised not see more often in racing, but I'll bet there is more low hanging fruit. I suspect carbon wheels are easier to upsell rather than "we redesigned the sheetmetal supports and bracketry and zzzzzzzzzz" which would likely make a lot more sense otherwise.
Honestly instead of having 50 exhaust modes they could just have a factory 3" exhaust with smaller mufflers and drop 50lbs. Even on my 2012 GT, going from factory multi-sized to a larger 3" with not too-aggressive mufflers dropped nearly 50 pounds off the car. The factory mufflers are like lead. The carbon fiber track pack on this new mustang should drop a good bit. According to the leaked pamphlet, the carbon wheels drop 60 pounds of unsprung weight. The "race" seats should drop a lot as well, considering Mustang power leather seats are close to 80 pounds each. And a rear seat delete, probably 5-10 pounds. So if you're starting with that carbon package I think it would be fairly easy to get the car down to around 4,000 pounds, without really sacraficing much. Still very heavy, but better.
I agree with your sentiment, tuna55.
infinitenexus said:
Hey in case 760 horsepower isn't enough for you, Hennessey has just revealed their version(s).
https://www.esquireme.com/content/38553-hennessey-unveils-its-latest-1200-bhp-ford-mustang-shelby
Yep, just send your payment now. He pinky-swears you'll actually get a car from him! 
In reply to Tom_Spangler :
Has there been issues in the past of Hennessey not delivering cars?
In reply to tuna55 :
ehh...I doubt they ever had a serious "how can we make it lighter" conversation. I mean, when you can make 800 factory-reliable HP, how light do you want it to be? I mean, we get the whole lighter-is-better thing for a track car, but that's not really the point of that car (even though they will frame it that way.) It's meant to be a halo, car show, power cruiser with serious track chops. They could have lightened it a stupid amount and given it 200 less HP and achieved the same track times, but they would have lost the cars and coffee bragging rights war with dodge and chevy. And it wouldn't have sold.
infinitenexus said:
In reply to Tom_Spangler :
Has there been issues in the past of Hennessey not delivering cars?
I'm not saying this guy is telling the truth, but there are a lot of disgruntled people out there.
ultraclyde said:
infinitenexus said:
In reply to Tom_Spangler :
Has there been issues in the past of Hennessey not delivering cars?
I'm not saying this guy is telling the truth, but there are a lot of disgruntled people out there.
Yep. Plenty of unhappy people out there:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/1fecpk/what_exactly_did_hennessey_do_to_make_himself_so/
https://jalopnik.com/ex-employees-say-hennessey-is-a-bigger-mess-than-you-ev-1778134112
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2016/06/john-hennessey-earns-crook-badge/
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums/c7-zr1-discussion/4076009-hennessey-has-it-all-figured-out.html
To be fair, most of this stuff is older, but with all the other options that are out there, even if I had the money to play in this market, it wouldn't be going to him.
In reply to alfadriver :
We're already working on getting a Dodge product there to benchmark the drags against. Word on the street is that a drag racing driver you've heard of once or twice might drive it, too. 
The way that my regular old aluminum track wheels get treated, the last thing in the world I want is expensive carbon wheels.
My buddy has a Panamera Turbo that is surprisingly fast on the track, considering it outweighs my minivan. Unfortunately the cost for those giant tires and brake pads is so painful that he never takes it there. Looks like these Mustangs are headed in the same direction.
