2001 Ford Mustang - Super Cobras - American Muscle Car

What does the future look like for Ford Motor Company's performance icon, the Mustang Cobra? Within the next five years, it's probably safe to say, it'll have more power, bigger brakes, and a more responsive and highly refined rear-drive chassis. But we wanted a more definitive answer.

Even insiders on the Mustang team said they aren't exactly sure which direction America's original ponycar will take. Some of that depends on market conditions and certainly fuel prices. But that still didn't answer it for us. So we asked engineers from the Mustang development team, the director of Ford's Racing Technology group, and the experts with SVT (Special Vehicle Team) to get a little closer to sheetmetal reality. They shocked us by giving us far more than that: the exclusive first test of a straightline rocket and an all-out corner carver.

We were led into a nondescript garage at Ford's top-secret proving grounds in Dearborn, Michigan, and invited to lift the covers off two cars. The first was an experimental Mustang powertrain mule with a blower motor called Cobra Jet S/C and the second proved to be a racetrack project dubbed the Cobra Competition. Both cars should put Camaro, Firebird, and Vette pilots on red alert. Keep in mind that both cars are a long, long way from EPA certification and showrooms, but even Vipers should approach these Cobras with more caution.

Paralysis Of AnalysisFrankly, we're surprised these Blue Oval missiles even exist. Performance cars tend to suffer badly from a corporate plague known as "paralysis of analysis." In this age of evangelistic safety nazis, auto brand managers swiped from diaper sellers, Cray C-90 supercomputer simulations, and boardroom-analyzed clinic data, we were certain a lot of high-volume makers didn't even bother to actually build prototype performance cars before they killed them off. Thank heavens, GM, Ford, Chrysler, and even American Motors weren't worshiping market-prediction software in the '60s when the Pontiac GTO, Mustang Mach I 428 Cobra Jet Ram-Air V-8, Chevelle SS 396, Plymouth's Hemi Cuda, and the AMX were born.

Amazingly, the Corvette and the Viper are recent triumphs of passion over paralysis. The C5 Corvette almost got cancelled entirely in the early '90s because market studies done by GM whiz kids indicated there was no longer any profitable volume of interested sports car buyers. Ironically, today's assembly line at the Vette's Bowling Green plant groans as it cranks out enough two-seaters to meet demand. Likewise, there was no business-school model for Viper production.

Luckily, it's not all marketing voodoo at Ford. The performance gurus at the company know you've got to smell the burning rubber. Squeeze the Brembos. Feel your neck muscles strain to keep your helmet off the headrest. Listen to a gutsy V-8 wind up to its 7000-rpm redline. Neatly clip a track apex at 125 mph. In other words: It's about the cars, stupid.

Our sleuthing just paid off. We were given all-out access to these two hot experimental Mustangs, including high-speed testing. (That's a big deal, and we knew it.) Our tire-burning playground was in the wooded hills of Ford's Romeo, Michigan, proving ground. Located about 50 miles north of Detroit, this facility is surrounded by dense forest, privacy berms, tall barbed-wire fences, and a serious security force. So don't even think about showing up at the gate without a formal invite. There are no tours. Try to imagine a bucolic prison complex where there are stacks of safety waivers to sign, camo-covered future models, burn-resistant garages, salt-bath trenches, wildly bad roads, and vast fields of blacktop for evaluating powerful cars. Thankfully, our names were on the visitor list the day we came to test the Cobra Jet and the Competition model.