Mustang

This is a one-of-kind 2006 Mustang GT which has been professionally designed and prepared by Rennwerks owner Dave Standridge. Rennwerks is a high-performance tuning and race shop located in San Jose, California. Rennwerks is a true race shop having competed in the American Le Mans Series (ALMS) and the Rolex Grand Am Series where it beat some of the best factory-backed race teams in the world. Some of Rennwerks racing highlights include a 3rd overall finish at the prestigious Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona, a 1st place finish at the historic Six Hours of the Glen at Watkins Glen, a 2nd place finish at the Daytona Finale, and a 2nd place finish at Mont-Tremblant -- just to name a few.

This is the ultimate Mustang for the street and the track! It is truly a modern-day muscle car. It was designed to beat any Mustang Shelby GT500, Saleen, or Roush. And it proved it by winning its class in the 2007 Cannonball One Lap of America! For those of you unfamiliar with the Cannonball One Lap of America, it is a grueling one week long event which takes its competitors across 15 states, competing in a different race event each day. For more information about this car's win in the 2007 Cannonball, please click here.

Compared to the Shelby GT500, this car has 75 more horsepower and is 500 lbs lighter. It also has wider and lighter wheels, which enables it to achieve a 0.97g on the TireRack dry skid pad. Compare that to the Shelby GT500 which can only achieve 0.89g on the skid pad.

This car has 14,500 miles on the odometer and is still under the factory warranty. The factory warranty is bumper to bumper for 3 years or 36,000 miles. The warranty will expire in July 2009 or when the odometer reaches 36,000 miles, whichever occurs first. Please note that the Whipple high-output supercharger installed on this car does NOT void the factory warranty. This particular Whipple supercharger system is a Ford Racing approved part (Ford p/n M-6066-M11B). It is also a California Air Resoures Board (CARB) approved.

The car has been professionally designed, assembled, and track tested and tuned. The car is fast on the race track, as demonstrated by its win in the 2007 Cannonball, but is also dependable enough to be a daily driver. It is nice to know that you can drive this car across the country and not worry about it overheating or breaking down. I know, because I have done it, four times this year!

The car is the gloss black with two gunmetal silver stripes down the middle of the car, which are painted, not decals. Did you know that the stripes on a Shelby GT500 are decals? Also, the stripes on the Cervinis C-500 body kit are decals. But this car has real painted stripes that go all the way down the bumpers. Can you believe paying $68,000 or more a Shelby GT500 with vinyl decal stripes! This car also has a silver stripes on the rocker panels, reminiscent of the original GT350s and GT500s. The black is the '06 Ford gloss black, and the silver is the '06 Ford anthracite silver.

This car is not only fast, but it also one of the best looking Mustangs in the country. The car is basically the Cervinis C-500 with additional testing and tuning by Rennwerks. For more information on the Cervinis C-500, go to www.cervinis.com. In case you were wondering, Cervinis can build you a C-500 for $26,155, plus the cost of a new Mustang GT which is $27,000, plus the cost of roundtrip car transport to Cervinis in New Jersey. So the total cost would be about $56,000. But the Cervinis car would not be as fast as this car, it would not have the killer sound system, it would not have the integrated radar detection system, and it would not have real painted stripes! If you added these additional items, the cost to recreate this car would be about $68,000.

The car is in excellent condition. There are no nicks scratches or dents. The car has never been in an accident and it has never been smoked in. The interior is like new and looks as good as a new car. The tires have approximately 70% tread remaining. The two spare tires (one front and one rear) are brand new. You won't be disappointed in the condition of this car.

The motor is a 575hp 4.6L engine with a Whipple twin-screw high-output (HO) supercharger. We decided to use the 4.6L motor because it is an aluminum motor which is about 75 lbs lighter than the iron block 5.4L found in the Shelby GT500. When I spoke to the Ford engineers last year who were running a 2007 Shelby GT500 in the 2006 Cannonball, they told me the biggest drawback of the Shelby GT500 was the fact that it was too nose heavy which caused the car to plow during hard cornering. So, we decided to use the all aluminum 4.6L motor to reduce the nose weight of the car.

In addition to utilizing the all aluminum 4.6L motor, we decided to use the twin screw Whipple supercharger because the Whipple supercharger technology develops more horsepower and torque across a wider rpm range than either the Roots or Centrifugal type superchargers. Don't be fooled by the huge horsepower numbers that are advertised by some of the manufacturers of the centrifugal superchargers! Centrifugal superchargers do indeed develop big hp numbers, but look at the "shape" of the horsepower curves. The Whipple hp curve rises much faster and stays flatter across the entire rpm range. Whereas, the Centrifugal superchargers have a big delay then go up like a hockey stick. After you see the horsepower graphs, you will see why the Whipple technology is the choice of Ford Racing and Mercedes AMG vehicles.

TO CONVERT RWHP TO ENGINE HORSEPOWER
(RWHP/.85) = Engine Horsepower
EXAMPLE: (489/.85) = 575HP

1/4 MILE COMPARISON
	TIME	MPH
STOCK Mustang GT	13.58	102.20
WHIPPLE HO SC	11.81	118.35
DIFFERENCE	1.77	16.15

NOTES: Testing done with street drag radials. 05' 4.6 Mustang, manual trans.


0-60MPH COMPARISON
VEHICLE	TIME
STOCK GT	5.2
WHIPPLE HO SC	4.4
DIFFERENCE	.8

NOTES: Testing done with street drag radials. 05' 4.6 Mustang, manual trans.

It would cost approximately $9,500 to have this Whipple HO Supercharger system installed on a stock Mustang GT.

As mentioned earlier, this car has the Cerviniss C-500 kit installed. This Cervinis body kit is basically a modern day interpretation of the 1968 Eleanor that was made famous in the movie "Gone in 60 Seconds".

The car is the gloss black with two dark silver stripes down the middle of the car, which are painted, not decals. Whereas, the stripes on a Shelby GT500 are decals. The car also has silver stripes on the rocker panels, reminiscent of the original GT350s and GT500s. The black is the '06 Ford gloss black, and the silver is the '06 Ford dark metallic silver.

We originally installed the full Cervinis C-500 body kit. But after driving the car on the street for a couple of months and testing the car on the race track, we decided to remove the Cervinis exhaust system, the side rocker panels and the Cervinis rear bumper fascia. The Cervinis side rocker panels look great, but they need to be used in conjunction with the Cervinis side exhaust. We found the Cervinis side exhaust was too low on the car, which caused the car to hit speed bumps in parking lots. But even more important, the Cervinis side exhaust system would scrape on the race track when the car was pushed hard. For more information, please see the Exhaust section below.

In addition, the Cervinis rocker panels made it impossible to jack up the car from the side, which is an absolute necessity at the race track (for changing tires, brake pads, etc.) So we removed the Cervinis side exhaust and the Cervinis rocker panels. We also decided to remove the Cervinis rear bumper fascia because it created aerodynamic drag and added unnecessary weight to the car.

The cost to install and paint this body kit is $15,500. Cervinis will install and paint just the body kit (which they call the C-300 kit) without the engine and suspension modifications for $12,900, but their price is for vinyl stripes not painted stripes. In addition, you have to pay for round trip car transport to Cervinis which is located in New Jersey.

The exhaust system on this car utilizes stock exhaust manifolds and stock catalytic converters with a custom designed cat-back exhaust system which exits in the stock locations at the rear of the car. We tried three different exhaust systems on this car before finally designing our own cat-back exhaust system.

On the Shelby GT500, the mufflers each weigh 31 lbs and they are both located on the very back of the car. The location of the stock mufflers places 62 lbs on the very back of the car behind the rear axle and as a result, increases the of moment of inertia of the car. This moment of inertia makes the GT500 harder to control at the limit and places greater side load on the rear tires at the limit. By moving the mufflers to the center of the car, we eliminated this moment of inertia. In addition, the mufflers on the Rennwerks Mustang GT weigh only 15 lbs each or 30 lbs total, saving 32 lbs.

In addition to improving the balance of the car, the Rennwerks exhaust system is quiet enough to be driven daily, yet the car has an awesome sound when it is pushed. When we ran the 2007 Cannonball, many people said that we had the best sounding Mustang they had ever heard.

One of the exhaust systems that we tried on this car was the Cervinis exhaust system which comes with the Cervinis C300 Eleanor body kit. The Cervinis exhaust system utilizes really nice stainless steel Magnaflow straight-thru mufflers with the exhaust tips exiting from the side of the car in front of the rear tires. However, we found the Cervinis exhaust system to be too loud for normal street use, especially at freeway speeds. More importantly, the Cervinis exhaust system scraped the ground on the race track! When we tested the Cervinis exhaust system at Laguna Seca, we literally ripped off both side pipes on the race track. So, we concluded the Cervinis exhaust system was not suitable for the race track. Back to the drawing board.

We tried a couple of other exhaust systems before designing our own system. The current exhaust system on the car is quiet enough to be driven cross country at a constant 85 mph, yet sounds killer on the race track, and it won't drag on parking lot speed bumps or on the bumps and berms of a race track. Remember, this car was designed to look good and run good. We are talking "all show and all go".

The flywheel, clutch, driveline and rear differential are OEM Mustang GT parts. Ford engineers decided to use these same parts for the Shelby GT500 which has 500hp, so we concluded it was sufficient for our car.

The rear end has 3.55 gears. A lot of aftermarket tuners are installing lower gears such as 3.73 or 4.10 gears. But the 3.55 gears with the stock Mustang GT transmission is a good combination -- which is why Ford engineers chose the 3.55 gears. I can tell you from my experience driving this car on the freeway and on various different race tracks around the country, the 3.55 gears is a good choice for this car. If anything, I would want a slightly taller rear end for the freeway to lower the RPM in 5th gear. The last thing that I would want is a shorter rear end. The engine already seems to be buzzing just a tad at 80 mph with the 3.55 rear end. So shorter rear end gears would make the car much less drivable on the freeway.

The wheels are custom made super lightweight Jongbloed (www.jongbloed.com) racing wheels, anodized gloss black to match the car with polished alloy rims. These Jongbloed wheels weigh only 20 lbs each. Compare that to the weight of the Shelby GT500 wheels which weigh 45 lbs each! That's a savings of 25 lbs of unsprung weight per corner! Do your own research or talk to any race engineer about what a difference that much unsprung weight makes on the handling of a car. It makes a HUGE difference! The aftermarket Saleen and Roush wheels are also very heavy. I picked up an Roush wheel in the parts department of my local Ford dealer and I just about threw out my back. It was so incredibly heavy, I couldn't believe it! It goes to show you who they are targeting, that is the "street poser", not the true high-performance oriented driver.

The Jongbloed wheels on this car were custom made right here in California to our exact specifications (custom backspacing & offset) and are not available off the shelf. The front wheels are 18x10" and the rear wheels are 18x11". Try to find these size wheels for your Mustang on the TireRack. You won't, because no one makes them.

We know that everyone is going to 19" and 20" diameter wheels these days. The larger diameter wheels certainly increase the "bling" factor. But go to any race track around the country and you won't find any true racer running 20" diameter wheels. The reason is simple. The big diameter wheels are too heavy! They increase unsprung weight which hurts handling, and they increase the rotating inertia which hurts acceleration. Also, it is difficult to find truly high-performance tires in the 19" and 20" diameter sizes. When we raced professionally in the American Le Mans Series (ALMS) and the Rolex Grand Am Series, we raced with 18" diameter wheels and so did all of our competitors.

The front tires are 275/35x18 Michelin Pilot Sport 2 tires. The rear tires are super massive 315/30x18 Michelin Pilot Sport 2 tires. Compare that to the Shelby GT500 which has heavy 45 lb 18x9' wheels on all four corners with 255/40x18 tires in the front and 275/35x18 tires in the rear. That is a huge difference in contact patch! Because these wheels were custom made, we had one extra front wheel and one extra rear wheel made, just in case. So there is a spare front wheel and a spare rear wheel included with this car. Both the spare wheels come with brand new Michelin Pilot Sport 2 tires already mounted and balanced. For those of you unfamiliar with the Michelin PS2 tires, they are one of the best if not the best ultra high-performance street tire that you can buy. No comprises.

The price of the custom made Jongbloed wheels is $1,200 each. So, the six wheels which are included with this car cost $7,200. The Michelin PS2 tires cost approximately $375 each, so the cost of the six tires was $2,100. With mounting and balancing the total cost of these wheels and tires is over $9,400. No compromise.

This car has a full race car suspension including Tokiko D-spec adjustable shocks. All four shocks are adjustable (i.e., adjusts compression and rebound simultaneously). We considered using the Ford Racing shocks that come with the Ford Handling Pack, but we decided to go with the Tokiko D-spec shocks because of their a wide spectrum of adjustability. On the softest setting, the car rides almost like a stock Mustang GT. However, on the stiffest shock settings, the car handles like a race car. On the street, you will notice that the car turns in very quickly and rides just a little harder than stock.

We chose to go with all Steeda suspension parts because like Rennwerks, Steeda is focused on the true performance driver, not the street posers. Steeda has the most experience of anyone when it comes to aftermarket suspensions for late model Mustangs and we wanted to leverage their R&D and engineering experience. Go to any race track and talk to the racers who are running S197 Mustangs, they will tell you how good the Steeda suspension components are.

The cost of the Steeda suspension parts alone was $5,400, not including installation. With labor, this suspension package would cost about $9,000 installed.

A lot of the aftermarket brake systems for the S197 Mustang GT use bigger (and heavier) calipers and rotors. Unfortunately, heavier calipers and rotors significantly increase the unsprung weight which hurts the handling characteristics of the car. In addition, larger aftermarket calipers tend to confuse the way that the car's anti-lock braking (ABS) system works. In fact, we have seen stopping distances actually increase with larger aftermarket rotors and calipers due to the adverse impact on the stock Mustang ABS system.

We wanted to improve the stopping power of the Mustang GT without adversely affecting the ABS system or adding unnecessary unsprung weight. We found the best solution was to utilize larger diameter cross-drilled and slotted brake rotors with the stock brake calipers. Don't get us wrong, huge calipers look great, especially for a street poser car. However, we wanted performance above all else. We achieved this by using the stock brake calipers and much larger 14" Baer rotors on the front and rear. By using the stock calipers we maintained the same hydraulic pressure and brake fluid volume which enabled the stock ABS system to work properly. We also did not increase the unsprung weight, which would have increased significantly if we went with big 4-piston or 6-piston brake calipers like the ones that Roush use. We increased the diameter of the front and rear rotors by 2". This enabled the stock calipers to gain significant leverage over the rotors.

We used Baer EradiSpeed Plus 2 rotors on the front and back. This car has 14" rotors in the front and back. Compare that to the Shelby GT-500, Roush 427R or 428R which all carry over the stock Mustang GT 11.8 inch rear rotor.

The great thing about these Baer 14" rotors is that they weigh the same as the stock rotors, which are 20 lbs each. So we significantly increased the braking power without loosing any ABS effectiveness or increasing unsprung weight. The Baer rotors are slotted and drilled and are also vented in the center for better heat dissipation. In addition to being extremely functional, they LOOK GREAT! They are simply the most massive rotors you will find on any Mustang. Compare these brake rotors to any Shelby, Roush, or Saleen Mustang -- they will all look anemic by comparison.

On the race track, we recommend using Carbotech race pads, which are the brake pads that we used during the Cannonball. On the street, stock brake pads should be used. Both street pads and race brake pads are included with the car.

We also drained the OEM brake fluid and replaced it with Valvoline high performance brake fluid, which has a much higher boiling point than the stock brake fluid. This car also has race-style front brake ducting which directs cool air from the front bumper directly to the front rotors.

The interior of the car is black leather and is mostly stock, with the exception of the 5-point Simpson racing belts for the driver and passenger seats. We considered installing aftermarket racing seats, however, we wanted to keep the car comfortable. Remember, we wanted the car to be capable as a daily driver or be driven comfortably across the country. Based on our experiences with these aftermarket seats, we didn't feel that any racing seat would be comfortable on a 12 hour drive. Whereas, the stock Mustang seats are quite comfortable, albeit a little heavy. In this case, we decided to trade-off comfort for the extra weight.

The Simpson shoulder belts are fastened to a Autopower harness bar located just behind the front seats. The harness bar is bolted to the C-pillars. Please note that the harness bar essentially makes the rear seat unusable for passengers, although you can still use the rear seat for storage. Although the front seats are stock Mustang GT seats, we found them to be quite adequate on the race track when used with the 5-point racing belts. The driver seat is 6-way power adjustable.

The dashboard on this car has the charcoal aluminum panel, not the shinny silver panel which is found in about 90% of all Mustangs. When we were shopping for this car last year, we had to search the entire state of California to find the one black on black Mustang GT with the charcoal aluminum dash panel. We wanted to the charcoal aluminum panel because it gives the interior a darker stealthier look, which is the overall effect we were trying to achieve with this car.

We installed a Hurst Short Throw Shifter which made an amazing difference! Not only does the Hurst shifter reduce the throw by about 25%, it virtually eliminates the rubbery feeling of the stock shifter. We highly recommend this shifter as a upgrade to any manual transmission S197 Mustang. In addition, the white Hurst shift knob gives the car a nice retro-look.

This car has the ultimate in-car entertainment system that will blow away the anemic Shaker sound system found in the Shelby GT500. This sound system is a high-end Alpine with a pop-out 6" touch screen monitor. The screen automatically pops out when you start the car and goes back into the dash when the key is turned off. This Alpine system includes an integrated DVD player to watch movies (not recommended for the driver), a XM Satelite radio tuner, an iPod connector located in the center console, a 6-disc remote Alpine CD changer, and a DVD-based touch screen navigation system. The touch screen will show everything that is on your iPod, which is stored out of the way in the center console. You can operate everything on the iPod from the Alpine touch screen monitor. We replaced the stock speakers with very expensive aftermarket speakers in the front door panels and two 8" subwoofers in the rear deck. The whole sound system is powered by two large PrecisionPower amplifiers mounted in the trunk.

In the first iteration of the sound system, our audio shop friends installed a huge 12" subwoofer in the trunk. It sounded great, however, the subwoofer enclosure took up too much room in the trunk. In fact, it took up about half the trunk. We wanted to keep the trunk useable, especially since we were planning to drive the car across country. So we ditched the big subwoofer and went with two smaller subwoofers mounted directly to the rear deck. Here we traded-off some bass for a more pragmatic trunk.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Navigation systems, there are two basic Nav system technologies, DVD-based (like the one installed in this car) and CD-based Nav systems. A lot of factory installed Nav systems are CD-based. More and more, they are moving to DVD-based Nav systems. There are a number of problems with CD-based Nav systems.

One of the biggest problems with CD-based Nav systems is that they are slow. Take a wrong turn with a CD-based nav system and it can take 10-20 seconds to recalculate a new route. In the meantime, you've made one or two more wrong turns and it starts a endless loop of recalculations. Whereas the DVD-based Nav system will recalculate a new route in about 3-4 seconds.

Another problem with CD-based Nav systems is that you need to carry a different CD for each region of the country. Try driving across country with a CD-based Nav system and you will know what a pain they are. Whereas, a DVD-based Nav system has the entire country on a single DVD.

The system also comes with two Alpine remote controls to operate the sound system and the navigation system.

The car also has an integrated front and rear Escort radar detector installed. The system was professional installed by a local audio shop and it looks great and is completely stealthy. The front radar detector module is located behind the front bumper. The rear radar detector module is built into the rear license plate frame. Both detector modules are wired to a Escort in-dash display unit. The Escort display unit is installed in the overhead map light console, so no one will know that you car is radar detector equipped.

The nice thing about all of these systems is that they are completely stealthy, which is a good thing because it would cost over $8,500 to replace these systems.

For more information, please contact Dave at dave@rennwerks.com or call 408.318.1561. Serious inquires only. Thanks.