2011 Ford Mustang GT 5.0: Full Details!

Soon, you will once again be able to non-ironically blast Vanilla Ice from a Mustang. OK, perhaps not - but come 2011, the faux-rapper's words (in case you're confused, they're "'Rollin' in my 5.0, with my ragtop down so my hair can blow..."  now do you remember?) will once again ring true.

That's right, as you've probably heard, the Five-Point-Oh will once again reside under the hood of the Mustang.  Only this time around, if you do the math properly, it actually is a 5.0!  The initial details of the new motor leaked out last week; the basic goods were a 5.0L V8 with 412bhp and 390lb-ft of torque.  Today, Ford released the full monty press release on the 5.0, and at least on paper it sounds like it's absolutely going to rock.  Now, I'm not going to immediately jump on the band wagon like I did with the new SHO, because that sort of proved to be a mistake, but maybe hearing a bit more will help you to share my initial enthusiasm.

First, a bit of history.  The "5.0" name was the implied part of Mustang ownership for almost two decades, before disappearing for a good long while.  The 302ci (that's 4,942cc of displacement, which rounds to 4.9L if you've ever taken a middle-school math class) Windsor V8 became an option in the Fox-body Mustang (which debuted in 1979) in 1982, and for the time the two-barrel carb'd V8 made an exciting (remember, 1982) 157bhp.  This was a sigh of torquey relief from the previous 4.2L de-stroked Windsor, which only came with a 3-speed slushbox and a really tall final drive ratio.  Still, in the light Fox-body platform it made for a rather quick car in the day, and it got more and more powerful over the years.  A four-barrell carb saw power jump to 175 in '83, the final carb'd '85 models were making 210bhp with a hotter camshaft and some other goodies.

EFI-302's made a very-strong 225bhp before the Fox body died out in '93, leaving behind a wake of when the by-then ancient V8 was dropped in favor of a new "modular" 4.6L OHC V8.  Which, to be honest, did pretty well.   But the modular came out in the early 90's, and frankly it's once again time for a new engine.

Development of the new V8 started about 3 years ago, which isn't all that long in new-engine terms.  It's all-new from top to bottom, and it's really quite clever.  It's all-aluminum, with a deep-ribbed block for stability and a stout four-bolt main crank (that's counterbalanced) spinning a set of forged rods.  A redesigned oil sump (with 8 quarts capacity!) is baffled for reliable oil supply to the pickup, and there are also oil squirters under each piston to keep internal temperatures down - which is unusual on a naturally aspirated car!

The impression is of a gloriously overbuilt engine, which is no bad thing in my book.  Other neat details include the switch to a single humongous 80mm throttle body mounted in the vee of the block (the alternator's now on the side), equal-length intake manifold runners rendered in composite, and some of the absolute sexiest exhaust manifolds I've ever seen on a production car:

They look funky, but apparently the conjoined design evens out exhaust flow in a compact header.  And finally, one of the neatest things about the new 5.0 are the heads: all aluminum, with four valves per cylinder operated by four overhead camshafts, it's perhaps the improvements to the valvetrain that will make the biggest difference.  For one thing, the cam timing on exhaust and intake are independently variable (thus the Ti-VCT designation - it stands for "twin independent variable cam timing") and use a rather clever hydraulic system to adjust timing which adds almost no physical drag to the motor.  The valves themselves are angled out further, which gives a much straighter shot of air into the combustion chamber for improved flow.

All this clever engineering adds up to some impressive results.  For one thing, the new 5.0 runs an 11.0:1 compression ratio but only requires 87 octane gas for full performance - hello chip tuners!  There's also the aforementioned 412bhp and 390lb-ft of torque, but there's also a full 7,000 rpm to play with before redline, and the power curve is such that there's now a point to using all of them thanks to the Ti-VCT system.  And finally, despite a nearly 100bhp gain (315bhp for the outgoing 4.6 3v Modular to 412 for the new 5.0 Ti-VCT), Ford claims the new engine is around 5% more fuel-efficient than the old one, meaning this beast of a V8 will still get somewhere near 25mpg on the highway.  And who said the muscle car was dead?

Other benefits of this newer, tighter, more modern engine include 10,000 mile oil-change intervals (and you can use the cheap 5w20 non-synthetic stuff, too!) and lower maintenance costs.  It all really sounds like a win-win situation to me.  If you can't wait to get your hands on the new 5.0 either, you're going to have to wait till spring 2010 - which isn't too far off!  Thankfully Ford released some video, so you don't have to wait until this coming spring to hear one.  It's not the greatest video ever, but it's better than nothing.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlR8hbpkHkw

This new engine combined with last year's updated Mustang body is sure to be a winner. You can also find aftermarket Mustang body kits from a variety of automotive retailers. As if the new 3.7L 24v V6 base engine wasn't enough, with nearly as much power as top-of-the-line Camaros (422bhp SS) and Challengers (425bhp SRT-8) but way less mass to haul around, it looks like the 5.0 Mustang will once again be doing what it was 20 years ago - smoking the crap out of anything else remotely comparable.  Finally!  No more slow Mustang GT's!

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