These Are Your Favorite Ford Mustangs
Photo: FotoSleuth, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
This is a good question. Having sold Mustangs for over 23 years (from ‘97-’20) and driven so many as they got better and better in terms of handling and ergonomics. I’m in the camp that a Mustang will always be a Muscle Car to me (not raking anything away from the S550, as it’s an amazing car but that is a sports car now and a damn good one) and as such I would vote for ones that still have a SRA. That said my choices are 2-fold. One being N/A and one Supercharged.
One, if I wanted a naturally aspirated car, my pick would easily be the 2012-2013 S197 Boss 302. Such a fantastic car. Fantastic post from the upgraded “Road Runner” 302 with forged parts & a raised redline (to 7,500 which was something back then). Amazing handling from a SRA (Ford engineers did wonders with this) and a soundtrack that begs to keep the radio off. And best thing, they are still fairly reasonable price wise on the used market.
If one wants a supercharged car, my pick will always be the 2013-2014 Shelby GT500. 662hp from the bespoke “Trinity” 5.8 V8 paired to a Tremec. Now THIS is a muscle car! The last manual GT500s and they will be sought after in the coming years. Get one now because they are still semi reasonable. Give it a few more years and they will be priced a lot higher. Such an amazing story about how & what they all did to these to get all that power (moving the snake logo to get air in on one side specifically). I loved the 4 cars I sold in the two years they were out (2 were the totally allocations my dealer got each year. All 4 at MSRP). Those were the days.
These likely will be future classics, but they’re also a bit… brusque. Unrefined, aggressive. For some, that’s likely the appeal.
Submitted by: 05FordGT
