Car Throttle

Let me pose two questions to you all, dear readers. First of all: how much power is too much? And second of all, what is it that makes a car a sleeper? Well, I'd venture that a Shelby GT500 has too much power.  550 horsepower from a huge supercharged V8 is excessive.  It's enough power to light the tires up clear through third gear.  It's enough power that if you buy one, you should automatically have a pending felony conviction for gross display of horsepower.  Or wreckless driving.  Or attempted manslaughter. Now, what's a sleeper?  Well, a sleeper is a car that looks stock, but is a lot faster than stock.  So is it possible for a car like a Shelby GT500, which has 550 horsepower, to

Muscle trucks are one of life's gloriously pointless indulgences. They make absolutely no sense in any traditional regard.  If you wanted functionality and utility, you'd get a pickup truck.  If you wanted to drag race off stop lights and burn rubber like it was going out of style, you'd get a muscle car.  Why would you want both in the same vehicle if it would seemingly do neither task very well? Well, because it's a ton of fun, that's why.  It's a distinctly American product, a huge engine stuffed somewhere it really doesn't belong, the only benefit being the smile it puts on your face when you stomp the gas pedal.  Sure, some of these trucks would manage single-digit fuel consumption if you enjoyed the loud pedal

Ford's Shelby GT500 Mustang derivative has always been sort of polar. As in, people either love it or hate it.  There's a lot to love about the GT500, mainly under the hood: a huge 5.4L 32v V8 that's topped with a big old supercharger, cranking out loads of weapons-grade horsepower: 540bhp and enough torque to unseat an entire trailer park.  It'll burn the tires down to cords faster than you can say "clutch dump," it sounds like a NASCAR on crack, and it's as American as... well, as a Ford Mustang. On the other hand, the GT500 was a big step back technically from it's predecessor in a lot of ways.  The '03-'04 SVT Cobra was  not long on posh refinement, but it was capable in

Hey, do you remember that one special edition Mustang? You know, the one with the vinyl stripes and stickers and the loud exhaust that was really rare? ...yeah, that doesn't narrow it down.  I know, I know, they all look the same.  But ol' Carroll himself picked this year's Barrett-Jackson auction as the place to debut his latest tape-and-stickers-and-go-faster-goodies Mustang special, and it actually seems like it's gonna rock.  Called the GT350 (original!), it's a faster and harder version of the 2011 Mustang GT, retuned for a little more face-punching power and grip. Starting with the brand new 5.0L Ti-VCT 32v V8, Shelby decided that 412bhp wasn't enough, and the GT350 is fitted with a Ford Racing supercharger setup, with a claimed output of 500+bhp.  This is

Ah, the Shelby Daytona Coupe. Impressive car, no matter how you slice it. Fast, attractive, and, until recently very, very expensive to acquire. They don't come onto the market very often, and when they do, the price is somewhere between "your right hand" and "your first born". Reproductions? Yeah, you could, but there seems to be a better option. It looks like Carroll Shelby himself is set to start a production run of "continuation" cars (as they're called in the business), and they spec out rather nice. There are already a few repro versions of the coupe out there, and some of them are quite well done (the Brock Coupe, most notably), but this is the only version that will have Shelby's imprature on it. Coming from

Caroll Shelby may be a stuffy old codger born in the Great Depression era, but you can't deny the man still has one of the keenest understandings of what a muscle car is.  Shelby's name has been on everything from little crappy British sports cars stuffed full of hi-compression Ford V8, to crappy little Chrysler K-car derivatives with turbochargers the size of your face - but lately, ol' Shel's name has been all over a whole bunch of Ford Mustangs.  If you're going to plaster your name on anything, an icon of American muscle isn't half bad. And what do you know - Caroll's got a whole slew of new Mustangs with his name slapped on them, and chances are like most Shelby products, they're all capable

With each and every passing generation of the automobile, one thing (pretty much) remains constant: "More is more." It seems to be what we all want, and so that's what we get.  More size, more weight, more features, more safety equipment, and more power.  More more more, each and every time.  Today's Civic looks gigantic compared to the original Accord - and the Accord these days is about as big as an Impala, which is disgusting. Cars these days are huge, and for the most part have way too much power.  They're losing the plot and losing the point, losing focus and losing touch.  Sure, there's more, and sometimes more's better.  Like when there's not enough to begin with.  But the American mentality of "more is

If you want a taste of the classic American car-as-art experience, all you have to do is head down to your local Advance Auto Parts on a sunny summer Saturday. I literally stumbled upon this carshow while driving around with a friend in Cary, North Carolina.  The quality and execution of some of the classic musclecars there was impressive enough to warrant coverage; I think you'll agree. The first thing that caught my eye was this clean-as-clean-can-be 2nd-generation Chevrolet Camaro.  I'm normally the furthest thing from a fan of the second-generation Camaros; they had the taught proportions of the gorgeous first-gens, but the lines were a mishmash of "what were they thinking?"  This one proves to be an exception to the rule; that is what I call

While Ford Fans In Europe are celebrating the recent release of the 300bhp Focus RS hot-hatch, Ford fans in America have an entirely different release to celebrate - the debut of the new 2010 Shelby (Mustang) GT500, in both coupe and convertible form. A car seemingly designed entirely for American tastes, the GT500 is rolling proof that America still knows how to do what they do best - overmuscled, steroid injected sports cars.  For 2010, the basic Mustang chassis was revamped with more modern, sleek styling and vastly improved suspension tuning - a criticism of pretty much every Mustang since the demise of the Fox-platform in 1993. Ford released details of the new Shelby GT500 at the stroke of midnight, bringing in the new year with a