There have been a lot of stories recently about production cars making more power than advertised. The C8 Corvette, Toyota Supra, and BMW M5 all spring to mind. Sure, one of dyno tests may have been botched, but it’s safe to say some performance cars do actually come underrated from the factory. Add the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 to that list.
A new video from Speed Phenom on YouTube, which claims to be the first dyno test of a stock GT500, shows the supercharged Mustang producing 705 hp at the wheels. Since the GT500 is rated for 760 hp at the crank, we’d expect—assuming 15 percent drivetrain loss—646 horsepower at the wheels.
So there’s a 59-hp delta between what we’d expect to see and what this video shows. There are three possibilities for why the numbers don’t line up. The first is that manufacturers sometimes rate horsepower in the worst-case scenario, guaranteeing strong performance in all situations and leading to more power than claimed in ideal scenarios. This likely explains at least part of the high power figure.
The second possibility is that the GT500 has lower drivetrain losses than the 15 percent we’re assuming. With a new dual-clutch gearbox, there could be some improvements, but it’s unlikely that this explains all of the power difference we’re seeing here.
Finally, there could be errors in the process. Dynos are great at measuring relative power between two cars, but you’ll often run into issues trying to get exact power figures to line up between two different dynos. Plus, as we’ve seen recently, sometimes operator error skews the result. The point is, it’s hard to definitively say that the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 is making more power than advertised.
But we definitely wouldn’t be surprised if it did.
Via Motor1.
Source: Read Full Article