Test drives of the Ford Shelby GT350 Mustang were unobtainium in the year following its launch, as the Ford dealers treated the car as if it was made of gold. (To be fair, many dealers did turn the car into gold.) But now, a wave of used GT350 Mustangs is starting to appear on used car lots. This gives me the opportunity to schedule a test drive of the media darling. I don’t have the guilt about whipping a car that is in its break-in period, and I can avoid the pressure of penny-pinching Ford salesmen breathing down my neck by going to an off-brand dealership. A black 2016 GT350 Mustang with 1,000 miles on the odometer I found on Autotrader looks prime for exercise, so I head out the door with intentions of sampling this automotive star-of-the-year.
The GT350 is parked in a place of honor at Bob Smith BMW, at the mouth of the store parking lot and unavoidably visible to everyone entering the dealership. It looks sinister in its black paint and gray wheels, as a brute of this ilk should. My pulse quickens at the sight of it.
I’m welcomed warmly by one of the sales managers, and the car is brought out front for my inspection. Justin—a Ford Performance Vehicle owner himself—takes me around and shows me the details. The standard Recaro seats feel good—they happen to be cooled too!—and have more relaxed bolstering than found in the Focus RS. (Are GT350 owners expected to be fatter?) The seats sit objectively low, yet I find myself reaching for the power adjustment switches to push them lower. Alas, they don’t descend further. The sports buckets in the Ford Performance School Mustangs must have sat closer to the ground. Another difference between the GT350 and the school Mustang GT is the visibility: The GT350’s lack of a roll cage improves the sightlines all around.
I inspect the other details of the cabin. The steering wheel looks good to my eyes and feels good to my hands, though I’d be concerned about how the Alcantara wrapping will wear with time. The shifter knob is nicer to hold than my Focus RS’s plastic grip. Peering in the back, I am relieved to see that the rear seats are recessed deeply aft. Maybe there is hope for a child seat installation?
Justin encourages me to fire up the engine. I find the bright red start button and give it a firm press. The Voodoo V8 turns over, wakes up, and clears its throat. This beast makes all the right noises, and, as Justin points out, it’s still in quiet mode. I toggle the switch to loud: The volume increases 25%, and a whole new range of cracks and burbles are unleashed when I gently prod the throttle. It is pure American theater, and I am all for it! I’ll be leaving the exhaust in loud mode for a while.
We start rolling. The clutch pedal has a two-stage, compound-bow feeling: It is lighter near the floor and then stiffens around the engagement point. The engagement zone is higher off the floor than I expect, but that’s because the Focus RS has a peculiarly low grab-point. One expects a +500 hp car to have a heavy clutch, but the GT350 doesn’t require much leg effort. I change up to second gear and find shift-action heavy and supremely notchy. Whereas the Focus RS’s shifter comes across as a bit remote from its transmission, the GT350’s feels solidly connected to the beefy gearbox it stirs. The GT350’s box is also markedly better than the standard Mustang GT’s. Of all the shifters to jump to mind, it is the 2016 Subaru STI’s that fleets through my thoughts. The Subi’s six-speed had similar notchiness and mechanicality but lacked the reassuring heft.
The Mustang makes it out of the steep dealership driveway without scraping. (Honey, I swear it is a practical vehicle!) In a minute, we are driving Mureau Rd, which makes gentle twists and turns as it descends a wooded ravine. There is slower traffic ahead of me, so I am limited to short sprints to 4k rpm before I have to whoa my steed, hang back and build another gap for play. In this 2k rpm to 4k rpm range, the GT350 sounds amazing. There is so much burble, crackle and character to the engine note; I don’t think I’ve been in another car (Mustang GT and Porsche 911 GT3 included) that sounded this glorious! Even 35 MPH traffic in the GT350 is a grin-inducing event. This bodes quite well for fun runs to the grocery store.
I play with the three steering modes. Normal mode—the default—is lighter than what I am used to from the Focus RS and avoids that rubber-bandy feeling that I associate with most electrically assisted power steering systems. Next in the menu is track mode, which slightly stiffens the steering weight. I cannot say the extra weight greatly changes the steering’s character. The final option is comfort mode, the lightest of them all. It feels overboosted, and I don’t see much use for it. As is sadly common with modern cars, even while the accuracy of the steering is quite good, the wheel is largely mute when it comes to communicating road contour and texture. (The Focus RS does a little better here and also has a quicker ratio for faster tuck-in.) I guess I’ll have to swap my steering fetish for engine note lust.
Mureau Rd isn’t the smoothest road, but the Mustang’s suspension is supplely soaking up all the bumps. I’m currently driving in the softer comfort mode, and there is even a slight suggestion of float in the ride. I toggle into the firmer track mode and find the float banished, the body control improved, and the ride still far from harsh. Most importantly to me, both modes are significantly more comfortable than the Focus RS at its best. It seems like the GT350’s long-wheelbase may be helping out, but this car is also fitted with the $7,500 Technology Package that includes the MagneRide dampers (and other things like Sync 3 navigation). These wonder-shocks are purported to do amazing things.
We enter prosperous Calabasas and traverse freshly paved Las Virgenes Rd. I remark to Justin that the ride is quite serene, but new tarmac like this shouldn’t challenge the car anyway. The Focus RS will later make mountains out of molehills on this same pavement.
We begin our return on broad parkways that service the beautifully leafy neighborhoods. A well-placed stop sign gives me an excuse to unleash the GT350. I rev-out the engine, finally driving it as it was designed. The Voodoo rips to its stratospheric redline with a crescendoing urge that reminds me of Europe’s best sports motors. (I include the M3’s S65 here.) My pulse and excitement quicken in lockstep with the surging thrust of the GT350. Here is a fast car, but more importantly to me, here is an exciting car! The GT350 doesn’t reset my personal benchmarks for 0-60 sprints, but the pace is more than sufficient, and the sound absolutely thrilling.
The Ford Performance group appears to be a bit snooty about driving, demanding its buyers work for their automotive performance. I say this because Ford GT and Raptor aside, the Ford Performance models are manual only and don’t offer automatic rev-matching, either. I can’t say I mind the philosophy, but in the GT350, I’m having a little trouble with my heel-toe downshifts. My biggest obstacle is the brake pedal; it is so admirably firm and engages so admirably high that it restricts my ability to deeply blip the throttle. Now, if Bob Smith BMW would lend me the GT350 for a couple of hours, I am sure I could hone my technique and adjust…
Speaking of the brakes, they are one of the most exemplary systems in the GT350. I mean it as the greatest compliment when I say they feel like the indefatigable brakes from the Ford Performance School Mustangs. Those cars would take hours of track abuse without softening at all. Is the GT350 up to the same rigors? I don’t know. I will say the Focus RS brakes felt firm off the showroom floor and then softened considerably after the first track day.
Given the choice of returning via the highway or retracing our route up the wooded ravine, I choose the latter. I make a greater effort to honor the fine automotive engineers behind this engine and drive the higher registers of the tachometer. The energetic high-end is perfect for the racecourse. Curiously though, on the way to the top, the engine note goes flat, losing its richness and complexity at about 6k rpm. (It may have triggered some reverberation from HVAC controls, too; if it did, that was the only rattle I heard.) Push higher, and the sound sweetens again, though it never tops that siren song found between 2k and 4k rpm. One way to look at it is that for city use, this engine sounds perfect, and for track use, this engine drives perfect. The best of both worlds? Yes!
I am pulling back into the dealership when I realize this GT350 is just beyond its 1,000 mile break-in period. Am I the first person to drive it hard? For his sake, I hope the original owner flogged the GT350 from time to time. For my sake, I hope he babied every mile…
I’ve driven at most ten miles, and I am completely smitten with the Shelby GT350. Am I feeling automotive love? The GT350’s strengths are antidotes to the infuriating weaknesses of the Focus RS. The RS’s bobbly ride is fixed by the supple MagneRide suspension. The RS’s insipid, synthetic engine note is replaced with heavenly V8 war trumpets. And its just-fine shifter is replaced by the mechanically immersive Tremec. The only place the RS marks a win is for quicker and slightly more feelsome steering.
Back at the dealership, I try to fit a car seat (Cosco Scenera NEXT in a front-facing placement) in the GT350. I find sufficient room for the child seat, but the depth of the rear buckets is a bit of an issue. I’d need to use a mommy-blog-approved pool noodle to fill the gap under the car seat. Yes, my daughter will be close enough to kick the living daylights out the seatback in front of her—roundhouse kick to the shoulders, hi-ya!—but she’ll fit. And the passenger ahead of her will have enough legroom to be comfortable, too; there is a little more front legroom than what a rear-facing Chicco Nextfit leaves in my Focus RS today. The open question is how my back would feel after lugging my 30lb toddler in and out of the coupe…
After departing Bob Smith BMW, I retrace the test route in the Focus RS. My god, the Focus drives like the proverbial ox cart! Even the smooth, freshly paved roads in Calabasas cause the RS to pogo up and down. The GT350 did not even suggest ripples here.
Journalists have likened the Ford Shelby GT350R to the Porsche 911 GT3 for its track-ready feel. The GT3 comes across as a machine built to run endurance races; every interface has heft, precision and sharpness befitting a Samurai sword. The Mustang GT350’s engine, gearbox and brakes all feel like they are ready to challenge Le Mans. Its steering is up to the task but doesn’t give as much feedback as I’d like. And my inadequate test only revealed the suspension to be comfortable, if slightly floaty, but I’ve done no hard cornering, so I can’t really say if it is up to the standard.
Regardless, the GT350 is considerably more entertaining and more livable than the Porsche GT3 in the day-to-day driving that fills 90% of my time. The GT3 tired me out with its constant, if lovely, racket. The Ford’s cabin is more easily quieted, its ride is more supple, and the fiscal responsibility of driving a $50k car rather than a $150k car lightens the furrows in my brow too.
I’ve poopooed dealership test drives because they are short, traffic-filled, and never include lateral G’s; they just aren’t good tests of sporting cars. Yet the Shelby GT350 is one of the few cars that has completely smitten me within the span of a dealership test drive. I’ll take it as a testament to how fun the GT350 can be to drive in normal, boring life.
Mike's Steering Column 