The 2021 Ford Shelby GT500 is an ultra-high-performance variant of the standard Ford Mustang. The all-new Shelby GT500 – the pinnacle of any pony car ever engineered by Ford Performance – delivers on its heritage with more than 700 horsepower for the quickest street-legal acceleration and most high-performance technology to date ever offered in a Ford Mustang. With a reputation for transforming Ford Mustang into dominant road racing machines, Carroll Shelby, American racer and entrepreneur, took his legendary Mustang GT350 model further in 1967 to craft the first-generation Shelby GT500 with a modified 428-cubic-inch V8 inspired by his team’s 1-2-3 finish at Le Mans. Carroll Shelby called the original Shelby GT500 “the first real car I’m really proud of.” Now, that legacy continues with the third-generation 2020 Mustang Shelby GT500 – the most powerful and most advanced Mustang ever. At the track, performance improves even more thanks to its race-bred chassis, custom Michelin tires and the largest front brake rotors ever available on an American sports coupe. On the street, its menacing aerodynamic design and Ford Performance driver control technologies make every moment behind the wheel even more exhilarating.
The 2021 Ford Shelby GT500’s purpose-built cockpit boasts race-inspired premium materials and unique finishes worthy of its world-class power. Premium touchpoints include an available exposed carbon fiber instrument panel appliqué and new door panel inserts in Dark Slate Miko® suede with accent stitching. Available Recaro racing seats with firm side bolstering and pass-throughs for safety harnesses offer the highest level of performance. For those looking for even greater comfort, power-adjustable seating with Miko suede inserts is offered. The all-new Shelby GT500 picks up a 12-inch full-color LCD instrument cluster, while a high-performance custom-tuned 12-speaker B&O® Play premium audio system is available. All of this is controlled via an 8-inch SYNC® 3 touch screen featuring SiriusXM and FordPass Connect™.
To harness the power and torque of the most powerful Mustang ever made for the street requires cutting-edge active chassis technology, track-bred Michelin tires and Brembo® brakes – all dialed in by Ford Performance. Putting all this chassis hardware to the pavement, custom Ford Performance-spec Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires and more aggressive Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires feature unique compounds and tread. To provide track-ready stopping power, massive 16-5-inch (420-millimeter) two-piece rotors are added – the largest of any domestic sports coupe – plus larger, stiffer Brembo six-piston calipers. With 20 percent more swept area than the Shelby GT350’s, these brakes have more than 30 percent additional thermal mass in the front corners. Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 takes advantage of revised suspension geometry, a new electronic power steering unit and lighter-weight coil springs front and rear. Next-generation active MagneRide™ suspension is baked-in, along with the latest in advanced drive mode technologies from Ford Performance.
Two handling packages with increasing levels capability are offered for the all-new Shelby GT500. An available Handling Package includes adjustable strut top mounts and spoiler with Gurney flap. For the truly hardcore, an available Carbon Fiber Track Package features exposed 20-inch carbon fiber wheels with 0.5-inch-wider rear wheels (11.5-inch), custom Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires, adjustable exposed carbon fiber GT4 track wing and splitter wickers with integrated dive plane. The rear seat is deleted to reduce weight. Those large angular grille openings and muscular hood combine for a menacing, aerodynamic-led design inspired by modern fighter jet aircraft. The car’s wider front fenders and stance housing Shelby GT500-specific 20×11-inch wheels proportionally align to its rear fenders that hug up to 20×11.5-inch wheels. A standard new rear spoiler and updated composite materials in the rear diffuser result in added thermal management. The team leveraged Ford’s motorsports technical center in North Carolina and its windshear rolling wind tunnel – where top-tier racing teams test – to perfect the design of the Shelby GT500.
In the process of making the all-new Shelby GT500 the quickest street-legal Mustang ever, Ford Performance created an exclusive powertrain to deliver new levels of power and torque. Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 starts with a supercharged 5.2-liter aluminum alloy engine built by hand. To keep the intake air cooler and deliver a lower center of gravity, the team inverted a 2.65-liter roots-type supercharger with air-to-liquid intercooler tucked neatly in the V8 engine valley. The aluminum alloy block features weight-saving wire-arc cylinder liners and high-flow aluminum cylinder heads, plus larger forged connecting rods, improved lubrication and cooling passages. To channel power and torque to the unique carbon fiber driveshaft, Ford Performance leveraged learnings from the tuning of its Ford GT supercar’s dual-clutch transmission. The team selected a TREMEC® 7-speed dual-clutch transmission, which is capable of shifts in under 100 milliseconds – markedly faster than any manual gearbox.
