Shelby GT500 2020 smashes supercars with a 10.66 quarter-mile time

Iain Kelly
Contributing Journalist
4 Dec 2019
1 min read

The most powerful production car Ford has ever released, the 2020 Shelby GT500, has proved what an insane piece of engineering it is by laying down a 10.66-second quarter-mile (400m) ET with a similarly bonkers 132.9mph (214km/h) trap speed.

This wasn’t some sketchy manufacturer-released time, but a private owner at a drag strip.

The 567kW supercharged 5.2-litre V8-powered super-coupe is claimed to hit 0-100km/h in just 3.3-seconds but this 0-400m time and speed tells us far more about the gigantic performance hiding inside Ford’s most mental Mustang.

With the rear tyre pressures lowered to 24psi to provide maximum grip, the line-lock function turned on and the launch control set to 3200rpm YouTuber Speed Phenom knocked down the mid-10.0-second pass despite being an admitted novice at drag strip driving.

What this means is there is a stack more quarter-mile potential in the GT500 once you fit proper drag-spec radial tyres, brim the tank with E85 or E100 fuel, and maybe throw a few more pounds of boost into that giant 2.65-litre supercharger! Will we see a 9.0-second factory muscle car?

Iain Kelly
Contributing Journalist
A love of classic American and European cars drove Iain Kelly to motoring journalism straight out of high school, via the ownership of a tired 1975 HJ Holden Monaro.  For nearly 20 years he has worked on magazines and websites catering to modified late model high-performance Japanese and European tuner cars, as well as traditional hot rods, muscle cars and street machines. Some of these titles include Auto Salon, LSX Tuner, MOTOR, Forged, Freestyle Rides, Roadkill, SPEED, and Street Machine. He counts his trip to the USA to help build Mighty Car Mods’ “Subarute” along with co-authoring their recent book, The Cars of Mighty Car Mods, among his career highlights.  Iain lends his expertise to CarsGuide for a variety of advice projects, along with legitimising his automotive obsession with regular OverSteer contributions. Although his practical skills working on cars is nearly all self-taught, he still loves nothing more than spending quality time in the shed working on his project car, a 1964 Pontiac. He also admits to also having an addiction to E30 BMWs and Subaru Liberty RS Turbos, both of which he has had multiple examples of. With car choices like that, at least his mum thinks he is cool.
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