The Ford Mustang Shelby 500 is the poster child for modern-day muscle car performance, but Ford Performance could have pushed it easily into supercar territory. What’s my basis for that statement? Well, I’m about to show you a video of a 1,250-horsepower Shelby GT500 that will absolutely decimate just about anything on the track.
Does It Get Any Better Than a 1,250-Horsepower Shelby GT500?
The Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 is no slouch by any means. By Ford’s books, the GT500 is good for 760 horsepower and 625 pound-feet of torque, all of which is derived from a supercharger 5.2-liter V-8 that sounds as mean as it looks. With a 2.65-liter supercharged cramming as much air into the engine’s intake manifold as physically possible, one would think that the 5.2 was maxed out, but that’s definitely not the case. Hennessey, for example, has managed to push the Shelby GT500 up to 1,000 ponies and 850 pound-feet via an updated fuel system, new supercharger drive pully, hub, and belt, and a high-flow air induction upgrade, among other things. This, however, apparently wasn’t enough, because someone else has managed to squeeze out as much as 1,250 horsepower from the very same car, and you have to see it to believe it.
Proclaimed by the owner to be the “most powerful 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 on the planet,” this specific Shelby has been fitted with a Hellion, twin-turbo that was installed by an Ohio-based tuning shop known as RaceMod. We’re not sure if there are any other internal mods to speak of, but one would assume that at some point stronger pistons and connecting rods, at the very least, would be desirable with this kind of power output. Regardless, this beast managed impressively well when put to the test on the dyno.
In the first of four dyno runs, the new twin-turbo setup was tuned to produce just 5 PSI of boost, which resulted in a total output of 711 horsepower and 540 pound-feet of torque, some 49 ponies and 85 pound-feet shy of the factory tune. Following this result, boost pressure was turned up to 12 PSI, which resulted in a nice gain of 204 horsepower and 66 pound-feet for a total output of 944 ponies and 691 pound-feet. 12 PSI is far from the limit of what the Hellion twin-turbo kit can pump out, though.
Following the second dyno run, the boost pressure was turned up to 17 PSI, yielding an impressive result of 1,145 horsepower and 817 pound-feet of torque, an improvement of 385 horses and 192 pound-feet over stock.
Unfortunately, the video doesn’t include an on-road or on-track testing, so we can’t say how fast this custom GT500 is to 60 mph, 124 mph, or through the quarter-mile, but the standard GT500 does the 60-mph sprint in 3.3 seconds while Car & Driver was able to nail the quarter-mile in 11.4-seconds at 132 mph. So, in terms of hitting 60 mph, it’s hard to not believe this custom GT500 can make the sprint in less than three seconds. As for the quarter-mile, well we’re willing to bet it’ll be in the low nines. After all, if this 940-horsepower Shelby GT500 can run nine-second quarter-miles, then just how fast can this 1,250-horsepower make the run? Maybe someday we’ll find out.