@wheelsaustralia 61
THE ATMO TICKFORD DOESN’T GET ITS SNOUT IN FRONT OF THE SS-V REDLINE
UNTIL 160KM/H, AND THERE’S A MERE TENTH BETWEEN THEM TO 400M
way aft, the whole front of the car bobbing its head.
Get the Mustang onto a more consistent surface
and it feels special. The body control is sharper than
the Commodore’s, turn-in is more incisive and throttle
mapping far more aggressive. It feels like a supersized
Toyota 86 until you try to drift it like a Hachi-roku,
whereupon you find that the neurotic throttle response
requires equally rapid hands.
The 3.0-inch mandrel-bent exhaust and engine work
gives the Coyote 5.0-litre the voice it so signally lacks in
standard form. There’s that characteristic Bullitt wub-
wub at idle and, unlike many tuner cars, there’s clearly
been a lot of work put into linearity of engine response
rather than merely achieving a big number. About the
biggest compliment you’d pay to the power uptick is
that it feels factory-grade.
This car also wears a Tickford wheel and tyre set,
featuring 10-spoke satin black alloys and staggered
width 20-inch Dunlop SP Sport Maxx GT tyres. With
tyre pressure sensors, locking wheel nuts, fitting and
balancing, that’s going to leave you a McDonald’s
meal’s worth of change from $4500. Then there’s the
Tickford sports suspension that lowers ride height by
25mm for that great hunkered-on-its-rubber look, but
which could use a little more gradation in compressiondamping. The tyres tramline more on city streets than
the Holden’s slimmer 19-inch hoops, sniffing out and
nibbling at any minuscule contour in the surface.
The engine requires a few more revs on the board
than the Redline, getting into its stride at 4500rpm, so
you need to be a bit more diligent with gear selection
when attacking a tight corner. The pedal box isn’t as
well set up as the Holden either but the steering feels
far meatier, the front end even more tenacious and the
brakes feistier, although it requires a more measured
pedal application.
The Mustang also sounds much more aggressive
on the way out. What it doesn’t feel is a lot faster,
something that our performance data attests to. The
Tickford doesn’t get its snout in front until 160km/h,
and there’s a mere tenth of a second between the two
cars to 400m. For a car with a 56kW power advantage
and which is hefting 80-odd kilos less timber up the
strip, we’d have expected a wider gap. Time to see if
some forced induction can open up a wider advantage.
The HSV Clubsport R8 LSA is a formidable package
we know well, and the 30th Anniversary version’s
massaged outputs are unlikely to make us like it any
less. The bi-modal exhaust has been tweaked on this
version to go louder sooner but the biggest news for