Pages

Friday, December 25, 2009

ford's new 5.0 is a whopper

as a long time ford fan, i have to have some admiration for the new 5 liter engine that's going to debut in the 2011 mustang. five liters of fun, along with 32 valves and 412 horsepower. it wasn't long ago that the old "302" was putting out 225 horses, and the pumped up cobra version was good for 240. recently, 32v 4.6 cobra and mach I engines were topping 300 and supercharged 32v 4.6 cobra's were at 390 hp.

there is certainly a horsepower race going on out there, too. the new camaro's 6.2 liter is doing the 426hp dance, while the 6.1 in the dodge srt products is good for 425. but both the camaro and the challenger are well on their way to 4000 pounds, and the mustang is hanging in there around 3600.

while i'm a fan of all of the pony cars now (and would own all three if i won the lottery), i must say that ford has met the typical competitive challenges of this class head on.

3 comments:

Chris said...

I've always been more of a fan of the forced induction 4 cylinders (too bad we can't get the stuff they have in Europe), even I can admit that it's pretty impressive to get those performance numbers and still have an average of 25ish mpg.

The intake runners aren't ugly to look at either.

Pedal Brake Pedal by TK said...

i'd love to see a turbo 4 in a mustang. i'm one of those weird fans of the 80's SVO. think of the tuning possibilities? especially if it came along with weight reduction.

Chris said...

Back in high school it was cool to park my 68 Camaro with the other knuckleheads at the Clarkson theater and pop the hoods. There was a guy that I think went to Lafayette that had a gorgeous black SVO that had mostly fiberglass panels with the entire front clip that flipped up.

Tough to beat the sound of an out of the box Mustang for sure.