Hennessey’s 800-HP Shelby GT350 Mustang Sounds Like Heaven, Goes Like Hell

Supercharging that 5.2-liter V8 doesn’t seem quite so heretical after all. 

byWill Sabel Courtney|
Hennessey’s 800-HP Shelby GT350 Mustang Sounds Like Heaven, Goes Like Hell
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To some Mustang fanatics, strapping a supercharger to the high-revving 5.2-liter V8 in the Shelby GT350 sounds like heresy. But we at The Drive like to keep an open mind about these sorts of things, so we’re willing to give Hennessey Performance’s forced-induction Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 a chance.

After all, while adding a 2.9-liter blower to the Shelby’s specially-made flat-plane crank eight-pot may change the characteristics of the high-revving engine, it’s hard to argue with numbers like 808 horsepower and 657 lb.-ft of torque. In case you forgot where you left your calculator, those are increases of 282 ponies and 228 torques over the stock model.  That engine output translates to about 733 hp and 515 lb.-ft. at the wheels, according to Hennessey’s own dynamometer test.

Put the HPE800 Shelby GT350, as Hennessey calls its modified muscle car, out on the streets, and those added ponies and extra pound-feet help the Hennessey GT350 rip off a 3.3-second 0-60 run, according to the company’s website. The quarter-mile dash, in turn, reportedly takes 10.8 seconds, with a trap speed of 133 mph. Based on the two videos below that show the blown beast’s gauges during acceleration, it seems as though getting all that power to the ground takes a careful touch...which isn’t surprising, considering, y’know, it’s 800 horsepower.

Pulling this sort of power out of the engine without losing the engine’s track-worthy tractability wasn’t as simple as strapping on a 2.9-liter supercharged. In the dyno video below, senior calibration engineer Jason Haines delves into some of the magic the tuning shop performed on the Voodoo V8; it’s worth taking a listen, if you’re interested in finding out more about what it takes to pull an extra couple hundred horsepower out of an already-potent engine without sacrificing too much drivability.

Or, y’know, you could just listen to this monster scream in the dyno room.

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