--- title: "An 800-Horsepower Shelby GT500 Mustang Might Be in the Cards" description: "A pony car made to send Hellcats mewling back to momma." date: "2016-04-27" modified: "2016-04-27" authors: - name: "Will Sabel Courtney" job_title: "Contributor" link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/will-sabel-courtney" url: "https://www.thedrive.com/news/3216/an-800-horsepower-shelby-gt500-mustang-might-be-in-the-cards" categories: - "Ford News" - "News" - "News by Brand" tags: - "Coupe" - "Ford" - "Mustang" - "Mustang Shelby GT500" - "Shelby" - "sports car" --- # An 800-Horsepower Shelby GT500 Mustang Might Be in the Cards ![]() *\www.thedrive.com\* The latest bit of Ford Mustang gossip isn’t quite as rock-solid as we like our news to be, but since we’re suckers for rumors and muscle cars alike, we couldn’t help ourselves. According to a couple new reports bouncing around the web, Ford is working on a version of the Shelby GT500 that would make enough power to make Mopar’s Hellcats and Chevy’s Camaro ZL1 look downright wimpy by comparison. [The most recent report comes via *Torque News*](), which claims to know a guy who knows a guy who works at Ford and has inside information that the automaker aims to stir up trouble in the muscle car world with a brand-new GT500. Hardly the most concrete of sources, sure, [but it squares nicely with a report from *Horsepower Kings* back in February]() that also claimed Ford was working on a new super-Shelby for the 2018 model year. Both reports suggest the new car will be making well north of 700 horsepower. *Horsepower Kings* claims the new Shelby GT500 will make roughly 740 horsepower, while *Torque News* suggests Ford is bandying about power outputs in the range of 750 to 800 horsepower. Ludicrous, sure; then again, 707 horsepower sounded pretty crazy back in the pre-Hellcat era. *Horsepower Kings* says the source of that manic power will be Ford’s first production EcoBoost V8, a twin-turbo version of the 5.0-liter Coyote engine in the Mustang GT. ([The car maker plugged a turbocharged Coyote into the Cobra Jet concept dragster back in 2012](), but never disclosed how much power it made.) A twin-turbo V8 would be a shift for Ford’s maximum Mustang; previous versions of the GT500 used eight-cylinder engines outfitted with superchargers to stir up extra power. But turbocharging is in vogue at Ford these days: Just witness the EcoBoost engines in both the new F-150 Raptor and GT. So it wouldn't be surprising to see the car maker give the GT500 a pair of snails instead of a blower. A horsepower-heavy GT500 would fix a somewhat glaring gap in the Mustang lineup. [The Shelby GT350]() may be a sports car-slaughtering marvel of engineering, but its 526 hp, naturally aspirated V8 means it ranks a distant third in the all-American horsepower wars. A GT500 could—and likely would—bring the title of most-powerful muscle car back to the Blue Oval. And considering the Mustang is a bit lighter than the Charger or Challenger, a GT500 would stand a good chance of smoking the satanic kitties in the quarter-mile. *Horsepower Kings* claims one of the purported GT500 test mules in the video below cooked off the quarter mile in 10.96 seconds at 126 mph, [which would put it pretty much neck and neck with Dodge's official time for the Challenger Hellcat](). https://youtube.com/embed/zg2Mz9Mmhz8 ## Author Will is the former managing editor of *RIDES Magazine* and the former online editor for *0-60 Magazine*. He has worked for *Time Out New York* and *Rolling Stone*, and was the creator of *College Cars Online*, the first automotive blog specifically targeted at college students and young professionals. ### Author social links [Instagram]() [Twitter]()