S197 Ford Mustang GT Shootout - Thundering Three Valves

5th Place
Will Carroll
Fairview Park, Ohio
'05 Mustang GT
10.32/133
Of all the cars that came to the shootout, Will Carroll's Redfire Metallic Mustang GT is the one we would've been stupid enough to mess with at the stoplight. That's because the car looks like a normal, stock Mustang GT, even down to the stock wheels.

Once the loud pedal is planted, though, looks are deceiving, as this nimble Pony will walk away from just about anything it lines up against-after hiking those heavy front wheels off the ground upon launch to boot. Will went so far as to take the stock rear wheels and widen them for the bigger meats he needs for traction. Now that's wild! He stayed in the mid- to low-10-second zone but ripped off a few 10.30s as well. A stock-appearing Mustang with a turbo that goes 10.30s? Where are the money races?

6th Place
Chad Miller
Springfield, Illinois
'06 Mustang GT
10.43/131
To say that, when compared to everyone else who came to our shootout, Chad Miller bucked the trend, would be a wise statement. The Mustang GT in which he rolled into Raceway Park sported a recently completed manual-to-automatic tranny swap. More importantly, and incredulously, is that Chad's Three-Valve powerplant still showcased the factory bore-and-stroke dimensions.

This little small-block wasn't poked or stroked; it just ingests 18.5 pounds of boosted ProCharger atmosphere. In fact, Chad's powerplant is all stock, so when looking at how much boost this mod motor saw, it's pretty astounding that the thing lived at all, much less lighting up the scoreboards with mid-10-second laps. Chad started the shootout off relatively conservative before turning up the wick on his last two passes of the day. The result was a pair of 10.4-second laps with trap speeds approaching nearly 132 mph. To think all of this was accomplished with a stock motor and a blower. Go figure!