DRIVER’S
FIRST DRIVE I FORD PERFORMANCE SHELBY GT 350
52 OCTOBER 2019 WWW.MUSTANG-360.COM
TEXT STEVE TURNER PHOTOS AUTHOR
A
ccelerating
onto the M 1
Concourse
track, the
sound of the
flat-plane-crank 5.2L V-8’s
percussive burble at low
speed swells into a banshee
serenade of glorious revving
power. From the midrangeto nearly 8,000 rpm, the
power ripples and bulges as
it pushes your scribe into the
supportive Recaro bucket.
Wearing a helmet and a
HANS device while behind
the wheel makes me feel
like I’m driving a racecar,
and thanks to a host of
changes the car itself feelslike I’m driving a racecar as
well. However, this is a fully
functional street machine
benefiting from a mature
platform, a dedicated cadre
of engineers, and the niche
focus that a variant of Ford’s
only remaining car in North
America can receive.
“As that platformevolved, we don’t normally
do those vehicles over that
period of time. We did a two-
year run on the 2013-2014
GT500. We did a two-year
run on the Boss 302,” says
Ford Performance Market-
ing Manager Jim Owens.
“On the GT350, the men and
women from Ford Perfor-Offered the opportunity to
test-drive the revamped
2019 Shelby GT350 on the
track at the M1 Concourse
in Pontiac, Michigan, we
jumped at the chance to
see how it performed.
The latest GT350 did not
disappoint!