Tail of a Trio of Horses

[dropcap]A[/dropcap] racetrack, a pair of modified Ford Mustang V8s (plus a standard one), a blonde and a brunette. And an American flag – which as it turns out was made in China.

That then was the backdrop to a combined project by RGMotorsport’s engineering and marketing teams to validate their aftermarket offerings on Ford’s sporty coupe, a car which remains “Most Wanted”.  And it isn’t hard to see why: it looks the part, sounds the part and goes pretty ‘good’ (as the Americans like to say) too.

But homo sapiens are a funny lot. We want more. More individuality, more power, more ‘uniqueness’, more feel-good factor. We want more stuff that is a statement of who and what we are and how successful we are. And why not?

One of RGMotorsport’s goals is to meet a customer’s bespoke needs and in the case of the Mustang – which personifies personalisation – the Randburg tuning experts provides more than one road to motoring nirvana. As it turns out, two of our customers were willing to share their cars with us, and agreed to join the RGMotorsport team (a team currently celebrating a quarter-century of tuning and modifying) at a blustery Midvaal Raceway to put their cars up against the stopwatch. Or, to be more specific, Stigworx’s sophisticated Video VBOX datalogging equipment.

One car was a Supercharged conversion carried out by us at the end of last year: in other words, 550kW and 895Nm of tarmac- and tyre-shredding ability thanks to the Whipple blower and other enhancements. The second car was a First Stage conversion: full Techniflow 76mm exhaust and an engine management remap to maximise the breathing benefits of the new outlet system.

With an altitude of just over 1 500 metres, Midvaal is a roughly 100 metres higher than our traditional Gerotek test venue, so that may have had a small (negative) difference. The grip from the surface is another unknown and while the Stage One didn’t wheelspin off the line, the Supercharged version certainly does and careful throttle modulation is required to launch perfectly. With more practise, our tame racing driver – Jacques “The Stiglet” Joubert, reckons he could’ve shaved another 10th or two off the quarter-mile time…

Nevertheless, here are the numbers achieved down Midvaal’s long back straight – which also does duty as a popular dragstrip for locals.

FORD MUSTANG V8 (Automatic) performance data, Midvaal Raceway March 10

• STD Mustang tested on a separate occasion under similar conditions
• All performance figures obtained using a VBOX datalogger
• All performance figures obtained on standard tyres