(Ford)
There's a new Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 coming next year, and according to Ford it will pack over 700 horsepower.
We've heard that the final figure might be closer to 800 horses and now a clue may have come our way in the form of potential Easter egg tucked away in an online brochure for the 2018 Mustang.
Thanks to an eagle-eyed Reddit user, we've learned that page eight of the 24-page brochure shows the 2018 Mustang's digital gauge cluster, which just so happens to show a car in 7th gear and traveling at 72 mph. Put 7 and 72 together and you're looking at 772. Yes, we could be looking at a 772-hp GT500.
Ford has only released teaser images of the new Shelby GT500 and said that it will have more than 700 hp. (Ford)
That's not all. We also see that the gauge shows a 74.3-mile reading on the odometer; does this translate to 743 pound-feet of torque? We can't know for sure until Ford says so.
There is a precedent for all of this, however. In the lead up to the reveal of the 2018 Mustang, Ford provided a clue about the power rating of the Mustang GT in a similar fashion. In the previous case, an image of the Mustang's digital gauge cluster showed a car in 4th gear and traveling at 55 mph. As Mustang fans will recall, 455 hp was the targeted output for the Mustang GT but the final result was an even better 460 hp.
Few actually realized there was a hidden clue until Ford spokesperson Mike Levine mentioned it in a Twitter post last January.
What we do know about the new GT500 is that it will come with a supercharged 5.2-liter V-8 related to the naturally aspirated mill in the Shelby GT350 and Shelby GT350R. We're not expecting the GT500 to get the flat-plane crank of the GT350 duo, however.
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The GT500 should also come with available carbon-ceramic brakes, a carbon fiber rear wing, a unique front fascia with extended lip spoiler, and possibly even a version of the 7-speed dual-clutch transmission fitted to the Ford GT supercar.
Stay tuned.
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