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Ford Mustang GT
By
David Bellm
A lot of us will always have a
humongous soft spot for burly, V8-propelled American
stuff. With gobs of power, brash style, and unapologetically
low-tech mechanicals, these machines have blasted an
imprint on our collective psyche that only seems to
be getting brighter and more prominent with time. Indeed,
some of the most memorable cars ever built fall squarely
into the muscle-car genre.
But then again, a Model T is pretty
memorable too. But no one is nuts enough to seriously
clamor for a major manufacturer to revive such a relic.
So is it just irrational nostalgia
that makes us want a car that continues the bare-knuckles,
subtle-as-a-sledgehammer notion of the classic musclecar
formula? We are, after all, a long way from the psychedelic
era that spawned the ‘Cuda, Camaro, and Cobra
Jet. Today’s technology allows smaller, lighter
cars to have similarly impressive straight-line performance,
but with superior fuel economy, more interior room,
and better handling than those old V8 leviathans could
offer.
Perhaps that’s why the old
breed almost went extinct. When the current Mustang
was introduced, its only real competition was the Pontiac
GTO. And that car's slow start sales-wise wasn't exactly
a big vote of confidence for the future of this storied
automotive genre.
To get a better feel for the present
state of the beloved musclecar formula, we got our hands
on a Mustang GT coupe. We then ran it through a week
of exhaustive testing in our Road Test Laboratory.
Not surprisingly, all the nice,
juicy musclecar kicks were served up in abundance. But
what shocked us was all the other good stuff that came
along with it.
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