Listen to the sage words of the late Carroll Shelby: “650 horsepower? Nobody else has it.” We’re guessing this footage was recorded a little while back, before the final certified rating of the 5.8-liter supercharged engine in the 2013 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 came in at 662 horsepower and 631 pound-feet of torque.
Indeed, there isn’t a single car anywhere near the sticker price of the 2013 GT500 – not even the stupid-fast Chevy Corvette ZR1 – that offers as many horses under the hood as the most powerful production Mustang in history. Suffice it to say, reeling in 662 galloping ponies and sending them to the rear tires isn’t an easy conundrum to solve.
And that’s where launch control comes into play. It’s a cool system, allowing the driver to alter the RPM held by the engine with the clutch depressed. Drop the clutch and, instead of watching your Goodyear F1 Supercar tires go the way of the Dodo, you hook up and take off down the drag strip.
Or, ya know, you could turn the system off and smoke bomb your neighborhood.
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