F, AS THE rest of car-
loving Australia has
been, you’ve been
following the Mustang
phenomenon, you’ll
know that MOTOR
devoted this year’s
annual Hot Tuner
hoot-nanny to this
very vehicle. You will
also, therefore, be
aware that this car, the
Mustang Motorsport
R727 took home the silverware when the sums were
added up, the tanks refilled for the drive home and
the busted bits and pieces from some of the other
contenders were shovelled up and binned.
The R727 was not only right at the top of the Hot
Tuner results for acceleration and lap times, it was
crushingly effective in the way it got there. A low
12-second quarter speaks volumes, but so did the
racetrack-friendly tyres and the competition-spec
pads on board at the time. And, of course, that’s how
Hot Tuner is traditionally won: you fit track-smart
gear and hand out a big can of ass-whoop to anybody
else who shows up.
Thethingis,however,thatthosetrack-savvybitsand
pieces don’t always add up to a car that you’d actually
want to drive any distance in the real world. Much less
pay for to make it your own. So the question becomes
one of whether modern advances in the art of tuning
have managed to blur the lines a little between what is
track-righteous and what is real-world friendly. Or are
the two disciplines still mutually exclusive? Or, to put
it another way, is the racy Mustang Motorsport R727 a
viable proposition in the world of speed humps, speed
limits and snoozers in SUVs? Or is it a real-world
turkey that wants to divide its time between killing
you and annoying others?
In the interests of such pure scientific endeavour,
we managed to borrow the very same R727 that ran
at Hot Tuner and took it for an extended drive, both
through the ’burbs and into the bits of Australia where
cows outnumber Mustangs. So, the first thing to check
is what bits of the R727 that made it such a Winton
weapon have been changed. Turns out, very little.
The front hoops have been changed to a more road-
friendly compound, but still have ‘Michelin’ moulded
into the sidewall, and still measure a monster 275/35
20 (305/30s out back) so they continue to utterly fill
the guards. Also, you no longer need heat in the front
tyres to get the car to bite and, had it been raining,
we probably would have been even happier (certainly
more relieved) with this particular change. The only
I
While $56K might sound like
a shed-load of cash to fork
out over the $59,990 auto
GT, the benefits as a road-
and-track proposition make
it feel worthy of the outlay94 january 2018 motormag.com.au