Camaro vs Mustang: 5 Reasons Why a Camaro Guy Appreciates the 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500
Everyone who loves cars knows of the hit movie Ford v Ferrari — nominated for 4 Oscars, btw! — but the real rivalry has always been Ford vs. Chevrolet. Yep, it’s been going on forever, but it really kicked into high gear in the mid- to late-1960s. And nothing epitomized this more than the sometimes-friendly-but-often-bitter rivalry between Mustangs and Camaros.
Now, in the interest of complete disclosure, my first car was a 1964.5 Mustang coupe, but after that (aside from a brief relationship with a 5.0 Mustang in the early 1990s) I’ve been a Camaro guy. Like most Camaro guys, I did the whole “Mudstain” and “Found On Road Dead” comedy routine, and although Ford gave the Mustang a great sound, I just always saw them as slower and cars that pretended to be track-ready. Hell, how many fake scoops and air ducts did Ford festoon earlier Mustangs with? To me, it was a bit embarrassing. We joked about the Mustang’s propensity to swerve into pedestrians, and the Ford guys made jokes about Slowmaros and mullets.
But as time has marched on, Ford has started to take the Mustang (partnering with Shelby) more seriously, and to be honest, I’ve been warming up to them more and more. I’m more of a road-course and handling guy, so I was always happy that Chevy’s ZL1/1LE (and, before that, the Z/28) was beating the Mustang on road courses even if it was edged out on the dragstrip. But the gap was narrowing, and I was seeing the Mustangs as more than a nice exhaust note, fake aero, and a sticker package.
With the release of the new 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500, I could actually see myself once again staring at a little horse on my steering wheel (well, a snake, but you get the idea). It’s finally evolved to the point where even a diehard Camaro guy like myself has to give in and admit it’s a damn nice car that should be a blast on the track, both the straight and the curvy type, as well as around town. You see, this is the best benefit of these rivalries. It pushes the manufacturers to build cars to one-up each other. Who’s the winner? We are, because we now have access to insanely fast cars like the Camaro ZL1/1LE and now the Mustang GT500.
So here are 5 things that won me over …
