The traditional SVT white...
The traditional SVT white gauges with black letters are now charcoal with silver letters and are harder to read than the Mustang GT gauges.
Inside/Outside
Inside, the GT500 sees a host of improve-ments over the GT. The steering wheel, for one, has indentations for your thumbs. There is a dark-satin aluminum finish on the instrument trim, rings, and door handles to reduce glare. The tachometer and speedometer switch places, with the tach now on the right. It comes with a programmable shift light--at a predetermined rpm, the letters "SVT" flash. Which is helpful because the traditional SVT white gauges with black letters are now charcoal with silver letters and are even harder to read than the standard Mustang GT gauges. Leather seats are all that's offered and the side bolstering is altered for better support, but there still isn't enough bolstering in the seat bottom to hold you in place during hard driving.
There is also a Premium Interior Trim Package option, which nets you a leather-wrapped and stitched instrument panel brow and center console with upgraded door armrests, electrochomic rearview mirror and aluminum pedal covers. Naturally, the Shaker 1000 stereo is optional (500 is standard), as is Sirius satellite radio.
One thing is for certain, and that is no matter where we went in the GT500, people freaked out over the mere sight of it. This car has a presence--the big, bold front end sans lights in the grille, the giant tires, the Le Mans stripes on the coupe. Even the front fascia has pro-visions for brake-cooling ducts. Only two things are wrong with it. First, the production hood is pretty uninteresting. While functional for ducting air out from the engine compartment, which aids aerodynamics, the hood grilles just sit there like an afterthought. If you're going to call something "GT500," use a '68-style Shelby hood with forward-facing scoops at the leading edge of the nose and make them functional to boost horsepower. Then add air extractors somewhere else on the hood, again `a la the '68 Shelby.
Our other gripe is having the name "Shelby" scrunched together on the left side of the decklid, rather than spread across it like the show vehicle. Of course, the show car had the center high-mounted stop light in the rear spoiler and the production version has it in the stock trunk location. This must've made the bean counters happy, since they didn't have to tool up for a new decklid.
To improve aerodynamics, Ford uses a front splitter, a rear diffuser, and the aforementioned decklid spoiler. O'Connell said the spoiler provided 200 pounds of downforce at 150 mph, and the combination of it and the front splitter has cut the total lift to zero. The final drag coefficient for the GT500 is .38, which is slightly higher than the GT, but that is attributable to the wider tires.
For those ordering the convertible, know that the Le Mans stripes are not available (they can be deleted on the coupe as well).