joeyr
Got this from edmunds.com. Not a challenger story but I thought it was interesting
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do...hotopanel..2.*
The admiral of the aftermarket meets the Prince of Pony Cars
By Josh Jacquot , Senior Road Test Editor
Date posted: 01-25-2007
Ford's 2007 Shelby GT500 is the king of all Mustangs. Its supercharged 5.4-liter V8 makes 500 horsepower and 480 pound-feet of torque, making the Shelby GT500 the most powerful Mustang that Ford has ever produced, not to mention one of the quickest. Add the six-speed manual transmission, Brembo brakes and huge tires, and the Shelby GT500 reigns as Prince of Pony Cars, Master of Muscle and Duke of the Drag Strip.
Or does it?
With a list price of $41,675, the 2007 Shelby GT500 is far from cheap. In fact, it costs almost $20,000 more than we paid for our long-term 2005 Mustang GT. When you figure in the price surcharge the limited-production Shelby commands from any car dealer, bringing home a GT500 today will set you back more like $75,000. Which got us thinking...
Why not build one of our own? So we did. And we did it on a budget.
We began with our long-term 2005 Mustang project car, long since retired from our test fleet. Then we put together a list of parts and suppliers. Our mission: Build a Mustang that could top the GT500's performance for about $5,000 less than the Shelby's retail price.
In this story we will detail the bits and pieces we bolted to our silver 'Stang, and next week we'll test it against the prince of the pony cars, the 2007 Shelby GT500.
Power mods
We knew that beating the 2007 Shelby GT500 would be a tall order. We began with more engine power, which turned out to be the easy part. Vortech has a centrifugal supercharger for the 2005 (and newer) Mustang GT that claims to bump engine output to 462 hp from 300 hp. The price also fit our budget.
The kit combines a Vortech SQ-Series ("Super Quiet") supercharger, an air-to-water intercooler and an integrated engine control module. Installation is a bolt-on operation that can be performed by a mechanically inclined enthusiast, although we chose to have a shop with skilled personnel install it for us at a cost of about $1,000. The Vortech SQ-Series kit is actually socially responsible, as it comes with a CARB executive order number that makes it emissions-legal in California. It even has a three-year warranty.
At $5,300, the Vortech kit consumed more than half our budget, but it was the only alternative we discovered that could meet our mandate for substantial power at a reasonable price.
A $600 Magnaflow Magnapack cat-back exhaust system with 2.5-inch pipes and round, straight-through mufflers gave our project Mustang a nice growl. Magnaflow also offers a gorgeous crossover pipe and high-flow catalytic converters that would have further reduced back pressure and improved exhaust flow; unfortunately, they didn't fit our budget.
Wheels and tires
The task of improving our Mustang GT's chassis proved to be a much more involved project, since we were after both more tire grip and better handling balance in the corners.
New tires were first on our list. A tire with a racing-type R-compound would be the obvious choice for ultimate grip, but we knew it simply wouldn't cut it in the wear department. We settled on 275/40ZR18 BFGoodrich g-Force T/A KDs as an effective compromise. We knew from past experience that these tires can help a competent car push beyond the magic 1.0 g barrier in skid-pad testing and yet would also prove durable enough for street driving. They aren't cheap, however, and the bottom line came to almost $1,000 for the set.
We chose to wrap the BFGs around 18-by-8.5-inch, Axis Reverb hollow-spoke wheels with a 40mm offset. This offset is marginally greater than the 45mm offset of the S197's stock wheels, so it pushes the whe