Yes. Will be nice when a head to head review finally comes out.

 

Numbers. Just looking at the car tells you very little.

 

LOL........ Nürburgring is the world standard where super cars and sports cars come to lay down there best times. Also manufactures do a lot of R & D at the track, which has really paid off for GM and others.

I think the biggest handicap that the GT500 will have at the ring is its live axle. Nürburgring is a pretty rough track with uneven pavement through out. Its going to be hard to keep that kind of power on the pavement.

 

well, by going by the 2010 GT500 drag coefficient, it's .38, which is about the same as a modern day SUV. (usually around .35-.45.) Now if that high number was due to down-force it would be a different story, but it's not. This new generation of muscle cars have been designed style first. Nearly every car in the 200mph+ club has a drag coefficient below .30, and if it is above that it's strictly for high-speed purposes only (i.e extra down-force, increased openings for better cooling at high speeds, ect.)

I guess we have to wait and see, but I'm really skeptical that this new GT500 is a 200mph car. Theoretically is it possible... probably. Is it safe... heck no, as a matter of fact I think it's down right dangerous for Ford to make this claim.

 

In todays lawyer happy society, everyone at Ford would have to be complete morons to claim that the GT500 can run over 200mph................ if it can't do so safely.

They have tweaked just about everything on the car. No, they are not telling us about the mm change in this or that.............. talk about a snooze fest. However, they have done serious work on making the car stable at high speeds.

Just as they would be complete morons if the car is unsafe at speed, the same would apply if they threw that number out there................. and then came back and said "just kidding..................har har har, we didn't really know............. so, you know............ we just ah............ well.............. huh huh huh............ guessed. Our bad."

It becomes quite obvious that some are having a real problem with what this car has, or can do. So far we have from "it won't really make 650hp because all Ford engines are overrated," to "I'm really skeptical that this new GT500 is a 200mph car." Or the worst............. "well, the Camaro is still prettier, and Fords suck!!"

 

They increased the downforce for 2013. They said it has 33% more at 160mph.

 

While its a weight saving feature, they pretty much had to go with carbon fiber for the 1 piece shaft. At that length and diameter an aluminum driveshaft (maybe steel as well) would bend and wobble to the point where either the shaft or some other component would fail due to the high driveshaft speeds.

The company that did my tune had that very problem with a customer's car on the dyno. That GT500 had a 1-piece aluminum shaft and it wobbled/vibtrated bad enough that it broke VMP's dyno.

Pretty cool though, I've been thinking about a CF 1-piece shaft for my car and this would fit the bill pretty good provided Ford just switched out the 2 - piece for the 1 - piece and its priced decently.

 

I disagree with the part where you said GM designed their car to beat Fords. GM uses the ring is used as a baseline to develop cars. Beating Ford is like 20th on list if it is even on the list. GM builds cars for Camaro enthusiasts. They just put the what they think is the best car all around out there and let the customers decide.

-Geoff

 

Hmmm....then what was the purpose of this?

 

Good point.

 

My only question is, does it get a big price jump to go with the power?

 

I bet it is a major increase, I wouldn't be surprised to see it go $10k over what they are now if not more.

 

A car with inferior power/weight ratio can accelerate faster than a car with a superior ratio. It's about the entire package... The GTR is a prime example.

 

GTR is also AWD so not a valid comparison considering both the Mustang and the Camaro are both rwd. I see how it is lining up after reading a lot of posts on here about this, it doesn't really matter what the Mustang does because there will always be some excuse or the bar will be moved to some other argument, if the ZL1 excels at one thing over the GT500 then it will be seized upon and played up while everything else it doesn't do better will be brushed aside as non important. If Ford had released a 4,100lb 580hp GT500 and then Chevy announced the same day they were releasing a car that weighed 300lb's less, made 70 more hp and had an 18mph top speed advantage everyone on here would be giving each other high fives and saying how GM doesn't play around, well instead of GM doing it Ford did but not many of you can accept this fact unfortunately. It's kind of embarrassing seeing the excuses and moving the argument into weird places that have occured talking about this car.

 

I, for one, am going to hold off on all judgement until the cars are tested in every magazine on earth. And two, I think it's awesome you can buy 600 hp cars directly from the factory, and have standard warranties, regardless of the emblem on the front grille. Not that I can afford any new car with 600 hp, though