And just for Bob, the intangibles:
Ouch. But that’s the feeling both Jethro and I got out on the road. The SS 1LE—which by the way placed fourth in our 2016 Best Driver’s Car competition—is an ideal back road warrior. Everything it does is sweet, from turn-in to midcorner to post-apex to whatever—the Chevy never puts a foot wrong, never misbehaves, and most certainly never understeers. But the grip is so high that even though the chassis is keen to, the car never oversteers—even with everything turned off.
Of course he already knew it was good.
Now here's how the Mustang stacks up:
The Ford? Look, ever since the Mustang went with an independent rearend, the GTs haven’t been set up properly. The lighter EcoBoost cars are better, and the Shelby GT350R handles about as well as anything on the road. But the normal V-8s? Not great. I had high hopes the combination of the 2018 refresh, the new Performance Pack goodies, and MagneRide would fix things. Nope. The car rolls over on itself and seems to not only understeer but also to try and oversteer at the same time. Like the front and back aren’t actually connected. Jethro kept pointing out that although the Ford felt bad going into a corner, once you were actually in a turn it was pretty much OK. “There’s a good car somewhere under there,” he said. I concur.
So is Ford sandbagging to keep the GT350 on a pedestal? Can they just not do any better at the price point? Who knows.
This does nothing for sales though. In practice if the Mustang is "about as fast" and people like its looks and can see out of it, well there's your sales right there.
That dirt drag race was bullshit though. I have no idea what the point of that was.
This is a bunch of nonsensical rambling:
Why did the Ford win? Well, for one thing, the Mustang’s V-8 just loves to rev out. The faster it spins, the more power it spits out. For another, and we’ll explore this more in a second, we have the distinct feeling that the new Coyote is putting out more than 460 ponies. For its part, the Camaro sits on wider, slicker rear tires, and on compacted dirt, that just doesn’t have the same traction as the Mustang.
Then came time to leave cowboy science behind and get to actual science, as provided by our testing team. First of all, the Ford outporks the Chevy, 3,863 pounds versus 3,746. The two cars have identical 54/46 weight distribution. The 1LE wins the 0–60 sprint, doing so in 4.1 seconds versus the Mustang GT’s 4.4 seconds. By the end of the quarter mile, the Camaro is still in the lead but not by much: 12.5 seconds at 115.2 mph for the Chevy versus the Mustang’s 12.6 seconds at 115.1 mph. Road test editor Chris Walton, our straight-line guru, told me that were we to lengthen the race, the Ford would win because at that point the Chevy’s torque and traction advantage is gone, and high-reving DOHC horsepower takes over.
Higher revving DOHC horsepower? Is that a special kind of horsepower? It comes down to average horsepower (across gear changes). You can have a high revver with a very peaky, narrow output (which will be of less advantage as you have to shift), or you can have a high revver that pulls hard across a wide range of RPM. Perhaps the Ford actually has more power to weight than the Camaro (even though on paper not really), or perhaps a wider power band. But then the trap speed does not indicate that. So they raced on some dirt....it means nothing.