2019 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Previewed: Yep, We're Excited

Ford has shown off what could well be its most eagerly-anticipated car, the 2019 Mustang Shelby GT500, and while the angle might be unusual it's still enough to get us excited. Likely to be officially unveiled within the next twelve months, this teaser of the latest Shelby performance Mustang takes a top-down angle for this newest preview.

That might not be the direction fans were hoping for, but there's still plenty we can tell. For a start there's the serious cooling that the 2019 Mustang Shelby GT500 brings to the party. A huge chunk of the front is taken up by a vent, nestled broadly in a well-sculpted hood.

Then again, it'll probably be needed. We're expecting big things from the supercharged V8 that Shelby is using, with the promise of more than 700 horsepower. At the back, meanwhile, there's a sizable carbon-fiber wing, which will be tasked with hopefully keeping all that horsepower down on the road.

Certainly, it's happy days if you're made enthusiastic by ridiculously large levels of engine power. The Dodge Challenger Demon will keep its grip on the top spot, with its drag race-friendly 840 horsepower, but other than that the new 2019 GT500 is going to upend the apple cart in the muscle car segment. The Camaro ZL1, for example, makes 650 horsepower, which means this new Mustang is going to easily best it on the dyno.

Indeed, it might even give performance cars from the segment above something to worry about. Chevrolet's Corvette ZR1 has been sitting pretty of late, with its 755 horsepower, but the GT500 might get perilously close to that for GM's liking.

It's fair to say that the next few years are going to be seriously interesting for Mustang fans. On the one hand there are cars like this, the 2019 Mustang Shelby GT500, delivering masses of performance from sizable gas engines. At the same time, however, Ford is working on something very different.

That's the Mustang Hybrid, which is expected to arrive in 2020. Ford is playing details of that close to its chest, saying only that it expects the car to have more torque than you'd expect from a V8 engine, only with something more like a V6 under the hood. There's also chatter of an all-wheel drive Mustang, which would entirely upend the pony car's legacy, though arguably not in a bad way.