What Is The Shelby Mustang Code Red, And Is It Even Street Legal?
Ford Mustangs that have been Shelby-ified are already a little wild. Adding a supercharger to a car and giving it more horsepower than is necessary takes a special kind of company, but it's been done before. A GT500 or GT350 Shelby is going to get you noticed. Yet, despite all the grunt, noise, and horsepower, you can still feasibly drive a Shelby Mustang everyday. You'd get single digit miles per gallon and you'd be on the radar of every traffic enforcement police officer in the state, but it's certainly possible to live with a GT500 as an occasional grocery getter.
The same can't be said about the Shelby GT500 "CODE RED" Mustang that Shelby American released back in 2022. You should know immediately by the Mountain Dew-esque name that the Code Red Shelby isn't "just another fast Mustang." A "standard" 2022 GT500 made 760 horsepower from its supercharged 5.2-liter V8. The Code Red makes upwards of a brain melting 1,300 horsepower through ditching the supercharger system altogether and instead utilizing two massive turbochargers. The Bugatti Chiron, one of the fastest cars on the planet that costs more than a city block makes a little under 1,500 horsepower and it has a full eight more cylinders than the Code Red and two more turbos.
Granted, the Code Red only reaches those numbers through the use of E85 race gas. If you wanted to do something as pedestrian as using fuel from the gas station (borderline blasphemy in racing circles), 93 octane will "only" net you 1,000 horsepower. That's a shame.
Hyper exclusive, hyper powerful, hyper rare
The quad-digit horsepower engine in the Code Red is obviously the made selling point of the car. But that doesn't mean Shelby American just threw a high powered engine into any old Mustang and called it a day. The Code Red package is about as comprehensive as you can get. It better be, as the Code Red treatment is an eye-watering $224,995, and that didn't even include the price of the GT500. You had to find one yourself. At the end of production, only 30 Code Red Shelbys will ever exist.
The Code Red included a carbon fiber wide bodykit, a completely redone interior that saw the rear seats removed, bespoke badging everywhere, and a lot of aggressive red stitching. In addition to the entirely new powertrain, the mechanical changes are rather comprehensive. The exhaust is redone, presumably so it doesn't melt with all of the new power, suspension components have been replaced to make it handle more predictably, now that it houses the power of a Saturn V rocket, and the track has been widened to give the tires more surface area to grip. All this to say that it's not street legal. It is for racing only. Shelby didn't state the specific reason why it doesn't meet street legal standards, but it's likely the performance exhaust, wide race tires, and you know, 1,300 horsepower that precludes it from daily driver activities.
It's important to note that the Code Red version of the GT500 essentially "ruins" the car in the best way. It is not sensible even in the loosest sense of the word, plus, Shelby American notes that the package voids all warranties from the original GT500 you started with.