Mustang Shelby GT500

Make
Ford
Segment
Coupe

A new era of greener, lower-emissions motoring might be just around the corner, but today, at least, the horsepower wars are still alive and well in the US. If you're prepared to drop some $70k, you can run out today and buy the most powerful passenger vehicle Ford has ever made: the 760-horsepower Shelby GT500 Mustang. Dig around underneath the couch cushions until you come up with another $50k or so and you might be able to lock down one of Chevrolet's 755-hp 2019 Corvette ZR1s - assuming any are left, and are being sold at MSRP, no less.

Demonstrating just how fierce the competition is today between Detroit's finest, the folks at Hennessey Performance Engineering recently pitted the new 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 against the 2019 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 in a series of roll races. Both are American icons, within just 5 hp of one another in terms of peak output - a negligible amount. Which car proves itself the quicker of the two instead comes down to myriad other factors: curb weight, launch traction, gearing, etc.

The results are... not that surprising, if you're familiar with the two cars' respective weights. The GT500 is regrettably portly at around 4,200 pounds - a metric duck ton for a two-door sports coupe - which puts it around 500 pounds heavier than the ZR1.

It's still never a bad use of your time to listen to two highly tuned, supercharged V8 muscle cars as they put the hammer down in a contest of straight-line speed. The era of the internal combustion engine might be drawing to a close, but clearly the petrol engine plans on going out with a bang.

Both of the cars seen here made their way to Hennessey to be fitted with 1,000-horsepower tuning packages, so who knows which will leave the shop as the quicker car in the end. Our money is still on the Corvette.