66 JANUARY 2020 ~ CARAND DRIVER

The Chevrolet Corvette team may have

moved on, but the engineers at Ford Perform-

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aUR S_\[aR[TV[R _RN_dUeel-drive layout.

The Blue Oval’s last mother of all Mustangs,

the 662 -hp 2013 Shelby GT500, couldn’t out-

run its live rear axle on a demanding road

course or the best back roads, and the pur-

suit of a 200 -mph top speed made that car a

one-straight-line-trick pony.

The latest GT500 is redemption and then

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feet of torque, a seven- speed dual-clutch

automatic transmission, magnetorheolog-

ical dampers, and optional Michelin Pilot

Sport Cup 2 racetrack rubber, this GT500 is

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The GT500’s supercharged 5.2-liter

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GT350’s naturally aspirated mill, albeit fea-

turing a cross-plane crankshaft [see “Crank

Yankers”]. Despite the changes, the GT500

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intensity that rivals the 8250 -rpm GT350.

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mer’s four-mode exhaust shouts a deeper,

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small-blocks. The GT500’s Predator engine

sounds less exotic than the GT350’s Voodoo

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The GT500 skates across the same trac-

tion limits that pushed Chevy to reimagine

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3.5-second run to 60 mph and an 11.0-second quarter-

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The sole transmission, a Tremec seven-speed dual-

clutch, is as central to the GT500’s character as its

760 horses. The shift paddles call for gearchanges before

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directly to the transmission controller, bypassing the

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The immediacy of these driver-initiated shifts makes

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Launch control includes a brief but palpable pause after

you release the brake pedal and before the transmission

catapults the GT500 into the horizon. And at rolling

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though. Whether it’s hustled up a mountain road in Nor-

mal mode or driven on the edge in its Track setting, the

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over the BMW M2 Competition, Porsche 718 Cayman,

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heav y. The brake-pedal stroke is on the long and soft

side of perfect, but that’s by design rather than due to

thermal fatigue. With iron discs bigger than large pizzas

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