Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Coming in 2019 with 700-Plus HP

From Car and Driver

UPDATE 10/18/18: A photo has surfaced on Instagram that purports to show the 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500. The photo, shared by user sinister_lifestyle, is apparently from a Ford event where the company showed the new car to dealers; it still won't officially be revealed until the Detroit auto show in January 2019. (The image at the top of this post is a speculative illustration.)

Ford has fired new warning shots in the ever escalating muscle-car power wars by confirming that the Mustang’s upcoming Shelby GT500 variant will be the most powerful Ford production car ever, boasting upward of 700 horsepower. We won’t see this hi-po Stang until 2019, but this confirmation is accompanied by a brief teaser video that shows some glimpses of the supercharged GT500 that certainly whet our appetite for what’s to come. (The image above is an illustrator’s guess at what it’ll look like.)

Rumors about the latest GT500 have swirled ever since the S550 sixth-generation Mustang’s debut way back in 2013, and most of them have started to converge on speculation that a 5.2-liter supercharged V-8 will be under the hood. This potent powerplant may be code-named Predator and seems to share its block with the 5.2-liter flat-plane-crank V-8 installed in the current Shelby GT350. It isn’t likely to be the same rev-happy monster we love in that car because of its more conventional crankshaft design, but a Roots-type supercharger should make up for that deficiency.

As a foil to the track-ready GT350, expect the GT500 to focus more on straight-ahead drag-strip performance, bonkers acceleration, and an impressive top speed. It’ll certainly have its work cut out for it competing against the 650-hp Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 and Dodge’s hottest Challenger variants, including the 707-hp SRT Hellcat and the totally insane 840-hp Demon. We can’t wait for these battles to fully heat up once the GT500 is finally let loose, probably a year from now at the 2019 Detroit auto show next January.

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