Cars Gallery
Popular Cars

Friday, January 2, 2009

2008 Cobra Jet Mustang Drag Racer at SEMA

Despite the problems Ford is experiencing right now, such as the utter and complete meltdown of its domestic market, it's still making the Ford Mustang just a fun car.

Ford Racing has released a slate of race-ready Mustangs and this latest is what Ford calls the FR500CJ, and what we, who prefer names rather than soul-less numbers to describe things, will know as the Cobra Jet.

This latest Cobra Jet harkens back to a better time for Ford -- a time when it held a considerable lock on its share of the US market. More specifically 1968, when Ford won the NHRA Winternationals with its then Cobra Jet and helped solidify the Mustang as a legendary American sports car. Only 50 of those original Cobra Jets were built and if you happen to have one in your garage right now, then you won't have to worry about the current global recession hitting your local economy.

Also, you can order one of these at your local Ford dealer. Which, at least, means that Ford is serious about putting these cars out there and not just up for show at SEMA.

Oddly, Ford Racing doesn't yet provide any (real) numbers on performance. But you can guess it comes with some tweaked variation on the 4.6L V8 found in the Mustang GT, which produces about 325 hp.

Novitec Rosso 599 GTB Fiorano Bi-Kompressor

There are cars, sports cars, supercars and then comes...what? Well, then comes this 599 GTB Fiorano by tuner Novitec Rosso who make this Ferrari's numbers look a lot like the Italian carmaker's F1 car.

We have 808 ph, 823 Nm of cranking capacity and a top speed of more than 340 km/h. Track times are 0-100km/h in 3.5 seconds, 0-200km/h in 9.7 and 0-300km/h in 25.5 seconds. If you're giving out numbers on your 0-300km/h time, you have confidence in what you're putting out there on the street.

The Novitec Rosso's Bi-Kompressor V12 adds 188 hp and 215 Nm of torque from the 'factory' 599 GTB (factory must come in quotes since Ferrari builds its cars by hand, not by assembly line). The price for this newly tuned engine is 46,900 euros, which comes to about 250 euros for each additional horse.

Novitec Rosso is a tuner with top engineering capabilities. This tuning work includes aerodynamic improvements and the largest street-legal brake parts with steel discs and six-piston brake calipers. The press release provides all the nitty details.

Further pricing quotes were not released but you can expect them to be astronomical for this is as exotic as tuning gets.