Ford Shelby GT350 Mustang brought back with more than 500 hp

The original Shelby GT350s from 1965 were Ford Mustangs tuned by then-newcomer Carroll Shelby from everyday pony cars into track-ready rides, ones that proved their capabilities by beating Corvettes and Ferraris on circuits across America. Today, after a 43-year hiatus, Ford resurrected the name with the 2016 Shelby GT350 Mustang — and by its reckoning, the mission hasn’t changed much.

Based on the new Mustang chassis, Ford says the GT350 will boast not just ample power  — more than 500 hp — but better handling than any Mustang the company has produced in the past 50 years, with technology far beyond what Shelby could have envisioned in 1965.

The biggest news lies in the engine bay, where the GT350 brings the term “flat-plane crankshaft” into the limelight for the first time in decades. If you imagine a see-through version of a typical V-8 engine, the pistons move in a stair-step fashion — alternating power strokes in a way that maximizes the engine’s smoothness. It’s the reason a Corvette, Mustang or Challenger sounds the way it does; the traditional V-8 burble comes from exhaust pulses created by so-called cross-plane crankshafts.

Cross-plane crankshafts have been the standard for V-8s since the 1920s. If that see-through V-8 had a flat-plane crankshaft, a pair of pistons would always raise and lower in concert, like two four-cylinder engine banks bolted together. It’s called a flat plane because the connecting rods of the pistons lie 180 degrees from each other, rather than being offset 90 degrees as in a cross-plane.