Drive Test
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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