Driving the Shelby Terlingua

Named after a sleepy town just 17 miles north of the Mexican border, where Carroll Shelby, Bill Neale, and crew would spend their downtime drinking, shooting guns, and blasting Shelby cars on the vast expanses of open highway, the Shelby Terlingua Mustang represents a slap in the face to what society expects a muscle car to be. So says Shelby President Amy Boylan, who spent some time with me yesterday talking about the history of this wonderful town and the inspiration for their latest creation. I wouldn’t want to mis-quote her, so I will simply paraphrase:

Amy said that Carroll Shelby and crew spent long hours for weeks on end building race cars for Ford, designing new components, testing, and racing, and Terlingua was a place where he could get away from everything and everyone. He bought 120,000 acres, built a small ranch on it, and when he wasn’t racing, would head down to Terlingua and break all the rules. Continue reading…

That said, Terlingua was the perfect setting for me to drive Shelby’s dragon-slaying warrior by the same name. Hundreds of miles of un-patrolled highway with ten mile straightaways, banked corners, elevation changes, and smooth, pothole free pavement allowed me to explore all the limits of the Terlingua without worrying about terrorizing unsuspecting highway travelers.

I was handed the keys to a shiny, black, beast of a Mustang and unlocked it to find a set of Carbon Fiber racing seats, indicating the performance potential under the aggressively styled, yellow hood, adorned with the "Fighting Rabbit," Shelby’s logo that has represented the spirit of Terlingua since the Sixties. The 20" wheels, look perfectly matched to the car, making clearly visible the large, drilled and slotted Baer brakes. The functional front air dam has enlarged openings to allow plenty of air into the aftercooler for the Supercharged V6 inside…. wait, what? A V6? Why would Shelby build a tuned V6?

That was exactly how my first thoughts went. I’ve rented V6 Mustangs from Hertz before while on vacation, and they are among the most boring, lifeless cars ever built. Not so the Shelby Terlingua. Here’s the formula:

Take a standard Mustang V6, available on any dealer lot for about $16,000, give or take. Add a phenomenal road-race suspension, big brakes, functional aerodynamic kit, Hurst short throw shifter, Ford Racing side exhaust, Terlingua Racing Team Graphics, and a new interior gauge and dash pack. Ooohhhhh, and a Vortech Supercharger forcing an extra 6psi of boost into the engine. The result is an absolute monster, cranking out between 350 and 400 horsepower, depending on the customer’s desire, and weighing in at almost 300 pounds less than a stock Mustang GT. My test car was a 375 horsepower version. The total package? About $35,000, including the donor car. A roll bar, rear seat delete, and the Carbon Fiber race buckets are also available.

As you can imagine, and as I experienced, the performance is astonishing. It pulls like a freight train, corners as well as any front-engined sports car I’ve ever driven, and sticks to the road unlike anything I previously thought possible for less than $100,000.

Because most of the weight savings in the Terlingua is in the nose, the car has a perfect 50/50 weight distribution, making balanced drifts a breeze with traction control off. I’d need to take out a second mortgage for tires alone! My test car had an early software program that limited the car to 120mph, but Gary Patterson, VP of Operations for Shelby, assured me that the new production software will allow the car to rev to redline in 5th gear, good for 155 mph.At 120, I could steer the car with one finger, corner without lifting, and, in the event I needed the brakes for something, I could wait until the last possible minute. The six-piston Baer units scrub speed faster than a NASA-sourced parachute. The functional front air dam kept the wheels firmly planted on the ground, without any hint of lifting at top speed, unlike the floaty Shelby GT.

The Terlingua is no traditional muscle car. In fact, it’s not a muscle car at all. This is the car that finally turns the Mustang into a well-rounded sports car that just does everything amazingly well.

Is it perfection on wheels? No, I haven’t found that yet, and certainly not for $35 grand. If I were to buy one, which I actually would consider, I’d demand a six-speed transmission. Since the car makes virtually no boost below 3500 RPM, you have to wind out fourth gear practically to redline in order to make fifth anything more than an eco-overdrive. Overtaking almost certainly requires a downshift, which is fine, except I’d really prefer a 6-5 downshift to a 5-4. Gary told me that a six-box was in the works and should be available sometime next year. I also hate the steering wheel, which is left stock from the base car. A car that handles this well deserves the well-padded wheel from the GT500 with the thumb notches. Excepting the "Terlingua Racing Team" dash plaque, gauges, and aluminum trim package, the dashboard and doors are still standard-fare base Mustang as well, which means they are plastic and not that great to touch. The good news is that none of these things are deal breakers for me, and I absolutely love the way the car drives, which is far more important to me than a cushy interior.

I find it fantastic that a company like Shelby that, with rare exception, has relied on the V8 engine for so long, is leading the way for a new generation of American sports cars that emphasize agility, power, braking, style, and most importantly, fun. And they are doing it without the use of a V8 engine. Of all the Mustang variants out there, most of which I’ve driven, the Terlingua is far and away the most fun, the best value, and the most efficient use of resources.  If I were in the market for a new car right now, this is the car I’d like in my garage.