Getting harder for us to keep up. I love my car but looking at that is depressing and discouraging knowing how expensive it is to mod these cars
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An SC will never be a new car, but it will never be hard to beat your average GT, even a 400hp one. It was just wayyyyy too easy for us for so many years.
Back when a 1992 GT was running 14.20's I was running the same with just a 10% pulley and upgraded exhaust.
Back when a 1995 GT was running 14.90's I was still running 14.20's and hadn't spent a dime. (my 1990 XR7 was paid off by this time too)
Then in 1999 when the GT's finally got the PI stuff, they were running 13.80's while I was running 13.20's.
Then 05's came out with 300hp I was running 12.40's all day long.
At 400hp, the new GT will probably run mid-low 12's pretty easily, but then again, I haven't spent any money on my car since 04. Looks like the time is now to finally get back with the program.
My point is that while it may be considered expensive to take a stock SC in 2010 and make it run 12.20's tomorrow, if you've had an SC for 10+ years like many of us have, it doesn't require a huge investment to keep up with the new cars. If you figure that it takes about $20K in upgrades to keep up with a new car, that still works out to no more than about $2000/year. When you consider that a new Mustang is going to cost around $5000/yr in depreciation alone, never mind the interest or principle on it, the SC works out to a huge bargain. I'll trade the odd $350 part/repair for that guaranteed $600/mo car payment any day.
But more to the point of this post, the first thing I noticed in one of the new GT photos that I saw is that you can literally SEE the frame rails up both sides of the motor! From the top! I really like this new Ford motor. In fact I'm pretty happy with the overall direction from Ford lately. I think the Duratec V6 is an awesome motor and this new V8 looks like it might be a winner also, especially if they use it in the GT 500. I've always lamented the fact that Ford used a different motor in their premium performance cars. This is something Ford has done throughout history and it baffles me. Make the basic motor good enough that it can handle the upgrades of a performance application!! Chevy figured this out about 45 years ago. If the GT 500 carries a supercharged version of the GT engine, I will start to think that Ford really has figured out the "way forward."