[Ackattack]

I was talking to a guy at work the other day, and the topic of cars came up, and he recently got an '04 Mustang GT. So during our discussion he was dogging on the F-body, and he admitted that I'd spank him in a drag race, but he bought the car for the handling not for drag racing.

So my question is do the GTs really handle any better than an F-body? I was under the impression that they both handled fairly equally, both are addequate and both can be improved on. I don't hear much talk about the rustangs handling, so I don't know much about them.

What is your feeling, knowledge, and/or experience with them handling wise in comparison to an F-body?

[Sam Strano]

Regarding the new Mustang's suspension. It now has a PHB, but not a torque arm. The "3rd link" isn't a torque arm really, but more like an upper control arm.

Regarding the old cars: SN95's are way better handlers than Fox-bodied cars. SN95's can handle very well, it's all in how you look at it. Having races against and driven a number of SN95 cars in both F-stock and ESP/SM trims, as well a more than *few* F-bodies I think I can elaborate. Here's what I mean....

Bone stock a later Mustang GT, Bullitt or Cobra could very well be faster than a bone stock Camaro (not a 1LE). Why? Simply because Ford did a MUCH better job on shocks than GM did. And the Mustang acutally goes where pointed.

Add good shocks, maybe a swaybar, and the Camaro starts holding a little advantage IMHO. But it's SMALL, and really comes down more to how comfortable you are driving the car.

The F-body is a better base to start with than the Mustang, but GM screwed up the shocks so much you can't tell. Where you start to see it is like in an ESP car. I have to do much less to the suspension on an f-body than a Mustang owner must to his. Good for us, bad for them. (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

In the end, both cars will handle about the same if you want to make that happen. The advantages to the Mustang are a few. Lighter, narrower, easier to see out of. The Camaro's are more powerful, but wider and not as user friendly on an everyday basis. Parts are cheaper for Fords, for the most part (some are more like the T2R), but you also might need a lot more of them to do the job.

Winning @ Nationals by so little doesn't really say my car is the fastest. 90 thousanths of 1 second isn't much. Mark's Mustang is fast, and he can drive. Everything was just a little quicker for me over those 2 days. I can tell you that if my car were to break in KS, at least 1 Mustang would have been in the top two I'd have jumped into.