Yahoo Autos 2012 Ford Mustang Boss 302 is a modern classic made to take on the M3
When Ford developed the original Boss 302 for the 1969 and 1970 model years, it needed to homologate a production car for the Mustang race car contesting the Trans-Am series, and it wanted to beat the Chevrolet Camaro Z/28. When Ford revived the Boss 302 name for 2012, there was no homologation component, and the benchmark was an international, not American, standard: The 2010 BMW M3. The result was a Mustang GT with an overhauled Coyote 5.0-liter V8, more horsepower, an adjustable suspension, side pipes, and acceleration times that put it within a whisper of the Shelby GT 500.
There were purely American aims as well. Back when Jim Farley was VP of global marketing and could say such things, he told an outlet, "From a business standpoint, the Boss 302 shouldn’t have happened. But it happened. My dream for the car was that it would make a lot of money for a guy street racing. It should be a car that winds up on YouTube doing something illegal. I’ve been waiting 20-plus years to launch a car like this."
The Boss 302 reboot has sidestepped absurd valuations, and can be — relatively, for the times we're in — purchased at what might be called a deal. Proving speculators among the mass market are nothing new, it's not hard to find Boss 302s on the market with less than 5,000 miles, like this one. Living in Colorado while it looks for a new home, this barely-broken-in Competition Orange coupe has been run 4,704 miles. That's barely enough to entirely use up the Pirelli P Zero tires the car sold with; this one still wears a set of P Zeroes, which the new owner will want to replace if they're the originals based on age alone. Ford built just 4,000 examples over two model years, 750 of those being Laguna Seca Editions, so the conventional wisdom is that none of these will get cheaper.
