Quote:
Originally Posted by M3_WC
Saying the GT350 is just a Mustang, is like saying the M3 is just a 320i. They are both based on predestrian cars. Ironically after their perspective brand tuners get a hold of either car, the GT350 ends up being the better performing car.
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I would say "kind of".
What is really going on at Ford is hard to understand. It always seems like they are about a "generation behind" what Chevrolet is doing. When the GT350 came out, it appeared to be aimed at the old ZL-1, and of course for a car at the end of it's life-cycle, it wasn't too hard to best that, but right away the new Camaro SS was far beyond the stock Mustang GT and the 1LE that came out shortly thereafter is faster than the GT350 and matches the GT350R in many cases, all this with a backseat and creature comforts. You can't even mention the current ZL-1 or ZL-1 1LE in the same sentence, since those are so far beyond the capability of the GT350, and we haven't even started talking about Corvettes. It's not that the GT350 and R are "bad", it's just that they are more what Ford should have been offering as the "halo" Mustang back in 2011, and now you have SS 1LEs, ZL-1 1LEs, Z06s, Grand Sports, and so on, with massive amounts of performance and drive-ability, all engineered to be the "total car", in terms of suspension, engine, components, etc.
Of course, Ford is doing things like hot-hatches and kind of running the show with the Raptor, and I'm sure there's a lot more money to be made in trucks and SUVs, so Ford is smart to put the money where it will pay off, but on the other hand, they don't really appear to leverage their engineering, know-how and production for performance cars very much. At the most, they seem to lag far behind for all-around performance, somewhere in the "middle-ground" between the straight-line performance of Chrysler/Dodge and what Chevy is doing, but Chevy is doing it all with straight line and handling, so it kind of leaves Ford in a "no-man's land".
I did look fairly hard at the GT350s, but I couldn't justify the price for what you get performance-wise. Again, I think Mustangs overall are where they should have been back in 2010-2011. You can get GTs cheaper than SSs, but they are more stripped out too interior wise and component wise, so you aren't really making out.
It's basically correct that the M3 is just a bolt-on sedan. To some extent, this will limit what the chassis is capable of, but with enough bolt-on and smart engineering you can produce a chassis that is capable of some high performance at high specs (like the Alpha). It won't be as fast as something completely optimized like McLaren to use an extreme example, but the mustang *should* have been designed from the onset to be able to take crazy-wide tires, put the power down, have the chassis stiffness, etc., to take it to those higher levels.
It almost seems more like Chevrolet says "why not?", and they spec things like 305, 325 tires, and generally make aggressive specs/performance that the other major (and even foreign) auto makers are too conservative for.