Car Trends Magazine

Yes, you’ve seen this movie before. And yes, even with 540 horsepower, to some a Mustang is not, strictly speaking, a sports car. A sports car, by the classic British definition, is one that can, in a pinch, be raced. But times change, and even our resident hotspur Brit, Mr. Gillies, thinks this is talk that predates his birth.

In its most recent encounter with a Corvette—July 2006—the super pony didn’t fare well against Chevy’s shark. Road-course lap times favored the Vette, and even on something as uncomplicated as a drag strip, the big-horsepower Mustang didn’t cover itself with low-ET glory.

So at a glance, this may look like another mismatch. On the other hand, Chevy’s new Camaro inventory has nothing that measures up to this latest Carroll Shelby–anointed Mustang, in either price ($50,895 as tested) or power. (Note: Anointed is not the same as developed. The development was handled by SVT, Ford’s Special Vehicle Team.)

Composed of young engineers dedicated to adding a little glamour and/or haste to various Fords, SVT has teetered on the verge of expendability for years. Nevertheless, even in this age of green priorities and tight money, SVT persists, while GM’s performance group has been disbanded.

SVT has made a number of positive upgrades to the GT500, giving it essentially the same chops, including those 540 horses, as the GT500KR (King of the Road) that ruled the 2009 Mustang family, for far less money. Meanwhile, even though the perform­ance group has been scattered throughout GM’s mainstream gulag, development hasn’t ground to a halt at Corvettestan, where the disciples of Zora Arkus-Duntov have made some revisions for 2010. These include the revival of the Grand Sport name (base price $55,720, $64,815 as tested), a name once confined to racing editions originally created by Saint Zora himself.

So, two perennial rivals—updated for 2010, with a combined engine output of almost 1000 horsepower—meet on bad-boy territory, our favorite automotive turf. Having provided ourselves with an excuse to indulge in kidney-displacing g-loads, we corralled a GT500 and a Grand Sport Vette and headed west for some hasty driving, including an afternoon at Grattan Raceway Park near Grand Rapids, Michigan.