The Ford Mustang that you are about to see in the video, in a so-called ‘test drive’ that’s not quite what it claims to be, was significantly upgraded by Hennessey.
Filmed at the Pennzoil Proving Grounds, with the Lone Star State company’s director of R&D Jason Haynes behind the wheel, the muscle car is not your run-of-the-mill GT. It is actually in the range-topping flavor that the Blue Oval calls the Mustang Shelby GT500, a havoc-wreaking model with 760 hp and 625 lb-ft (847 Nm) of torque on tap. The supercharged 5.2-liter V8 rockets it to 60 mph (97 kph) in 3 seconds, and on a good day, it is a 10-second car.
With Hennessey’s upgrades, however, which retain the factory supercharger, albeit with some aftermarket trickery, joined by various other tuned and new internals, as well as all sorts of calibrations that include the transmission too, it sits in a superior league. That’s because the grey example, with black stripes, which features the automaker’s Carbon Package, has no less than 1,000 hp at 7,000 rpm and 850 lb-ft (1,152 Nm) at 4,800 rpm when running on E85. With 93-octane pump gas in the tank, the output drops to 900 hp.
That is definitely more thrust than anyone would ever need in what is still a Mustang, sprinkled with the supercharger whining, and the usual pops and bangs. You may want to turn the volume up for this one, as Hennessey put it, and we totally agree, as the car sounds demonic (pun intended).
