Pit Bosses: Is the Modern Ford Mustang Boss 302 a Worthy Successor to the Famed Original?
It has been a shocking eight years since the Boss name has been attached to a new Ford Mustang, the righteous Boss 302 of 2012–2013. As Hollywood will agree, time is a fickle master, especially as it relates to the latest and greatest of anything. A lot can happen in eight years, one thing being the undeniably excellent Mustang GT350 that hit the streets in 2015. Did anybody miss the Boss when the dealerships were soon peddling a track-ready Mustang with an 8250-rpm flat-plane-crank V-8? Which is why, during one of our frequent bench-racing/car-buying sessions here at Hagerty, some of us wondered if Boss 302s still matter in the ever-shifting Mustang universe. It was that crazy talk that led me to Road America this past June with Bosses new and old, not only to celebrate their existence, but to see if they remain relevant.
Would cutting them loose on Road America’s 4.048-mile, 14-turn road course prove we have let some of the best pony cars of all time slip through the cracks? Or would it show that some things — and our glowing memories of them — are best left in the past? Nobody was as curious as I. I’ve owned a number of 1969–70 Boss 302s as well as a 2012 Laguna Seca edition, and I have loved them all. But if I were in the market today, which version would I buy, given that new and old Bosses are still easy to find?
(photo credit: Colin Comer - Hagerty)
