2011 Mustang: Coming of Age


Photos: Ford Motor Company

For anyone that was seriously following the news and release of the 2011 Mustang, you just knew it in your bones… this was the car. The specs were right and Ford was acting as though the time for compromise was in the past. Since the first reveal of the S197 Mustang, it has been an evolutionary, but resolute process.

It has been one that led Motor Trend to set up a comparison that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Just those few years ago, their result would have been equally unthinkable when they now say, “At the test track, the 5.0 equals or betters the M3 in every performance category we measure.”

The BMW that the magazine spec’d out was equipped with the company’s new Competition package which increases the track slightly, provides 19-inch wheels and sticky tires, as well as firmware upgrades for the car’s electronic damping control (EDC) and dynamic stability control (DSC) systems.

On the Mustang side, they asked for a 2011 GT Premium, equipped with 3.73 rear axle, the Brembo brake package and most of the luxury options to try and balance out the equipment levels. What the Motor Trend staff readily admit to not being able to balance out was the $67,025 M3 and $40,275 Mustang price tags.

When serious comparisons like this are being planned, some serious consideration goes into exactly how things will be done and how best to remove any hint of undue or unintended influence on the results. For the track evaluation. MT called on Randy Pobst, the World Challenge driver and current Championship points leader in that series.

We’re not going to paraphrase the entire article here, but suggest that you grab a copy of the October issue of Motor Trend, or else slide on over to their web site and check out the details for yourself. In Pobst’s hands on California’s Streets of Willow road course, driving all-out, the M3 edged the 5.0-liter Mustang by nine one-hundredths of a second lap time.

I wonder what they have planned for the 2012 Boss 302 Laguna Seca edition. Hmmm?

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