2016 10Best Cars: Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 / GT350R

10BEST CARS

It starts with the crankshaft. In most cars, the crank is just a chunk of cast iron spinning away in the block. In the Shelby GT350, though, the crank is the soul of the machine. It’s steel that’s forged and gun-drilled down its centerline to shave mass and relieve crankcase pressure. To that esti­mable piece of metal are attached eight connecting rods, the four crank throws spaced at 180-degree intervals instead of the traditional 90. This is more profoundly important than it might sound.Upstairs in the block, a plasma-transferred wire-arc process finishes the aluminum bores with a rugged iron skin, 100 microns at a time. The largest possible 94.0-mm bore helps bump displacement from the Mustang GT’s 5.0 liters to 5.2 in the Shelby, allowing bigger valves (hollow-stem intake, sodium-filled exhaust) atop this aluminum lung.All of this—the flat-plane crank, the ruthlessly excised rotating mass, the deep-breathing heads—speaks to wide-band, high-rpm horsepower. This so-called Voodoo engine is built for a track, and not the kind with a Christmas tree and a burnout box. This is the heart of a road-course stormer, hand-built by a two-person team on a moving line. If the whistle blows and an engine’s not done, the team punches out and finishes it the next day. This is not the type of attention typically lavished on a $50,000 car. Or, let’s just say it: a Mustang.

“Makes sweet, vigorous love to the road.” –E. Alterman

The GT350 is more than an amped-up GT. Designers lowered the hood for better aerodynamics, and they threw in a carbon-composite radiator-core support that’s so pretty it doesn’t need a beauty cover, thus saving 1.9 pounds. New front fenders swell over a track that’s an inch wider than a Mustang GT’s, accommodating front rubber that ranges from fat (295/35-19 on the GT350) to morbidly obese (305/30-19 for the R). Throw in optional MagneRide dampers, six-piston front Brembos, and Recaro cloth seats and you’re not nearly done with the Shelby upgrades. If you tried to build a GT into a GT350, your list of part numbers would look like the NSA’s phone records.

All those performance components, honed and tuned and machined, take the Shelby nameplate in an entirely surprising direction. Shelby’s eponymous cars, right up through the most recent GT500, were manifestations of his personality—over-the-top, belligerent, and entertaining, if not enlightening. These Shelbys, though, are holistic performers in the European idiom, emphasizing specific output, low unsprung weight, shift feel, and other muscle-car heresies.

What would Shelby have thought of a flat-plane crank? The latest cars to bear his name sound not like a Ferrari or a Mustang but like a Mustang racing a Ferrari. It’s a glorious noise, an 8250-rpm declaration of new fundamentals. In an era of engineering homogeneity, of subtle variations on familiar themes, the GT350 and GT350R are radical departures. These are not just unlike any other Mustang. They’re not like any other car, period.

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How We’d Build It

Start with the GT350R and add the Electronics package. Yes, that’s expensive ($66,495) but still a bargain. With the Electronics package, Ford installs air conditioning and a stereo, but the car still weighs 86 pounds less than a GT350 Track Pack, partly because the R has carbon-fiber wheels and no back seats.