![\"Ford](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/03\/12\/PDTN\/7b457172-fc00-4e37-bdf9-e2893199965d-gt500_3D.JPG?width=540&height=&fit=bounds&auto=webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/div>Ford engineers grafted a 3-D printed mockup of the front of the 2020 Ford GT500 onto a standard Mustang GT for wind tunnel testing.\u00a0(Photo: Ford)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Allen Park\u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/em>You can\u2019t teach an old dog new tricks. But you can teach an old Mustang.<\/p>\n The ferocious\u00a02020 Ford Mustang GT500 is one of the most anticipated products of the year. It was one of the main attractions at January\u2019s Detroit auto show, packing the Ford display with rubberneckers. Only the third evolution of the legendary GT500 badge, the beast boasts the obscene horsepower numbers and muscular stance that owners have come to expect.<\/p>\n But this pony is a 21st-century\u00a0winged cyborg. It’s the product of extensive aerodynamic and thermal development processes alien to its comparatively crude 1967 ancestor.<\/p>\n The latest GT500 was developed using a network of testing facilities: supercomputers, 3-D printers,\u00a0race simulators,\u00a0wind tunnels and race tracks.<\/p>\n When it goes on sale this summer, the GT500 will be a ground-hugging, ear-splitting\u00a0track monster with an electronic, dual-clutch automatic transmission and 440-pound feet of downforce to keep it on the ground.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not your grandpa\u2019s GT500,\u201d says Shelby Mustang marketing chief Jim Owens, who notes that the original \u201967 car came to market without the benefit of wind-tunnel testing \u2013 much less supercomputers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe original Cobra GT500 was a straight-line monster. This new model can do a sub 11-second quarter-mile, but also carve apexes on race tracks. With modern technology like supercomputers, our gifted engineers can develop the car more quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n Engineers like Matt Trantor, vehicle dynamics supervisor for Ford Performance, who oversaw the GT500\u2019s development. Thanks to the latest electronic tools, his team compressed the typical two-year development process to six\u00a0months.<\/p>\n \u201cThat allows us to make the right decisions \u2014 we don\u2019t have to wait until we create a tool and part,\u201d says Trantor. \u201cWe start in computational fluid dynamics programs to figure out all the cooling and aero requirements of the car. They point us to the directions of the best parts. We use the latest technology to print those parts. We put them on the car and take them to a … wind tunnel.\u201d<\/p>\n Early aero mockups\u00a0of the GT500 depended heavily on 3-D printed parts, crafted at Ford’s Advanced Manufacturing Center in Redford, that were fitted to the front end of a standard Mustang GT. It then underwent extensive aerodynamics testing at Ford\u2019s wind tunnel facility in Allen Park, and\u00a0on the country\u2019s most sophisticated wind tunnel: the Windshear facility built by the Haas Formula One racing team in Concord, North Carolina.<\/p>\n So sophisticated have production vehicles like the GT500 become that they need Windshear\u2019s so-called \u201cmoving ground plane\u201d engineering that can simulate ground effects on a moving surface while accelerating the car to 180 mph. The Haas simulator is used by F1, NASCAR and high-end production sports cars.<\/p>\n Aerodynamic engineer Matt Titus races a Spec Mazda Miata when he’s not honing the GT500 in wind tunnels. “We did over 300 simulations in the virtual world, then we 3-D printed car parts and took it in the wind tunnel,” he says.<\/p>\n The technology is light years beyond the ’60s science used on the original Cobra. Aerodynamic terms like \u201cwings\u201d and \u201csplitters\u201d were still in their infancy. On the high bankings of the Daytona International Speedway 50 years ago, Porsche racing prototypes would shift lanes involuntarily as they reached speeds of 190 mph.<\/p>\n Those speeds were alien to a high-performance production car like the 1967 GT500 that was equipped with a 355-horsepower\u00a07-liter engine\u00a0and a top speed of 150 mph. Today\u2019s production GT500, by contrast, will double the original car\u2019s horsepower while topping out at speeds in excess of 180.<\/p>\n Armed with gigabytes of wind tunnel data, the Ford Performance team then fed their results to North Carolina-based car simulators where race drivers tested the digital car on multiple tracks.<\/p>\n The time for building prototypes had come.<\/p>\n Sculpted by designer Mel Betancourt and his team, the GT500 is\u00a0new from the A-pillar forward. The front end is engineered to feed the hungry, supercharged 5.2-liter V-8. Where the original Snake counted on a single, oversized radiator to cool its V-8, the 2020 car uses six strategically located heat exchangers across the front clip, including the main radiator.<\/p>\n The prototype began a national track odyssey to be tested\u00a0on Virginia International Raceway and Charlotte Motor Speedway. It would also visit NOLA, Gingerman Raceway in west Michigan, and Ford’s Dearborn Proving Grounds.<\/p>\n Test-driver and vehicle-dynamics engineer Steve Thompson and racer Billy Johnson flogged the pony mercilessly to push the limits.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we built the first prototypes and took them to the track, I think most of the team was just amazed at how spot-on the car was,\u201d says Trantor. \u201cHow good it handled. How good the aero was. How good the sustainable power was.\u201d<\/p>\n The GT500 track edition uses the same high rear-wing off the Mustang GT4 race car that won the 2018 Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge championship.<\/p>\n But there is still a little old school in the Mustang parts bin.<\/p>\n \u201cA 20-minute track session generates the same heat rejection as F-250 diesel pulling 35,000 pounds up a grade,\u201d says Trantor. \u201cThat\u2019s serious cooling capability in a much smaller front-engine package. To get the flow rates up for the cooling system, they actually share the same dual thermostat.\u201d<\/p>\n Expect the high-tech GT500 to cost north of $70,000 when it goes on sale later this year. The original \u201967 car stickered for $4,195.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ford engineers grafted a 3-D printed mockup of the front of the 2020 Ford GT500 onto a standard Mustang GT for wind tunnel testing.\u00a0(Photo: Ford) Allen Park\u00a0\u2014\u00a0You can\u2019t teach an old dog new tricks. But you can teach an old Mustang. The ferocious\u00a02020 Ford Mustang GT500 is one of the most anticipated products of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}