Quote:
Originally Posted by lemming
I watch BAT every day. Religiously. As a welcome escape from too many hours working. It’s 5minutes of bliss. But As much as I lust after all manner of car there, I am happiest when I’m driving the Camaro. It’s too civilized in a lot of ways. And heavy. But it’s so much fun.
I would still love to know how a comparable Mustang works for daily driving or auto crossing, of course, but the OHV V8 makes up for a lot of deficits.
I would worry that it’s redline is too low for auto crossing? Requiring many shifts for you during a run. Maybe I’m showing my complete ignorance of the sport then.
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The first part to figure out is "what is the comparable Mustang?" to an SS 1LE? For a street-to-street and $-$ perspective it's the GT with PP2. From a performance perspective, it's probably the GT350 right now. By this fall, the most even all around competitor will probably be the Mustang Mach 1, but you'll need to option up the Camaro 2SS with a bunch of junk to get the $s to be close.
That said, the Mustang may be the easier car to live with. There is more cabin space, there's more glass, it's more airy. Real world performance is comparable. They both make the right noises, feel the right amount of sporty, are super tight, but almost everyone that's spent a bit of time in both current gen cars finds the Mustang a little more comfortable.
From a performance perspective, the Camaro wins. The platform is hands down better and more capable. Manual to manual, the Camaro's gearing was much better suited to autocross, but the Mustang has seen some gearing changes that have made it much less of an issue...but no one's really sure where it stands today.
The too-short second gear made the GTs a non-starter for nearly everyone that otherwise would have tried it. Ford has made some changes along the way, but other things going on in the class where the GTs compete in stock form have kept people from considering them (the car to have in that class right now is an E9x/M3...or so the conventional wisdom goes).
The GT350 is a bit too pricey without a clear chance of winning. A top driver campaigned one last year and circumstances left us with inconclusive results (a lot of rain events, lack of quality competition at others, some setup issues, etc).
I think the Mach 1 could compete. Maybe not, though.