The Ford Motor Company has been nudged awake by the arrival of the Chevrolet Camaro (and to a lesser degree the Dodge Challenger). A year after the reincarnation of its old rival and but a year after the redesign of its own pony car, Ford is getting aggressive about its corner of the pony car market with the 2011 Ford Mustang GT, which introduces a 412-horsepower 5.0-liter V8, plus both a six-speed manual transmission and a six-speed automatic. The ingredients needed to make a Mustang: horsepower, horsepower, and more horsepower, plus a chrome pony, a glove box, and a cigarette lighter. Thankfully, Ford has embellished on this old-fashioned recipe with a car that handles, gets decent fuel economy when driven mildly, and doesn’t consume your driveway like the much larger and heavier Chevy Camaro and Dodge Challenger. Since the Mustang went into production 46 years ago, Ford has made steady and incremental improvements almost every year. The car has benefited, rising to the top of the muscle-car heap as others stagnated or went out of production. This year the changes are big, starting with a new four-cam, 32-valve, aluminum-constructed 5.0-liter V-8.
