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2012 ROUSH RS3 Mustang 50-State Legal after CARB Certification

Picture: Roush Performance

Depending on where you live, your state may (or may not) adhere to stricter emissions and air quality standards set by the California Air Resource Board. While major OEMs have managed to work their way around CARB-certification status, aftermarket car makers like ROUSH Performance have to jump through extra hoops to get their highly-modified muscle cars through CARB certification. Until they have that little slip of paper, 13 of the 50 United States can’t buy and drive that vehicle.

So it is exciting to hear that the 2012 ROUSH RS3 Mustang is officially 50-state street legal.

The California Air Resource Board sets its own stricter emissions standards than those enforced by the Federal government. While there has been some wrangling over which standards will be enforced in the coming years, 13 states have subscribed to the CARB standards, including (obviously) California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, and others. While Ford has no trouble meeting these standards, they have billions of dollars in cash to expend towards it. Not so for a comparably small company like ROUSH.

Still, ROUSH’s engineers were able to take the supercharged 5.0 liter Mustang and make it 50-state street legal, while also delivering 540 horsepower and 465 ft-lbs of torque to buyers. It’s small, but important to be able to do if ROUSH hopes to sell these cars in some of the most popular states for high performance cars. We’re impressed they can deliver such clean performance from these modern muscle cars, how about you?