Along with the 5.0-liter V-8, Ford is resurrecting the legendary Boss 302 with a new track-ready Mustang that will be sold at dealerships. The Ford Mustang Boss 302R will feature a roll cage, race seats, safety harness, data acquisition, race suspension, Brembo brakes, and special tires, ready for racing in Grand-Am, SCCA, and NASA series. The Boss 302R will not be street legal. Power will come from the 5.0-liter V-8 paired with a six-speed manual. The return of the Boss recognizes the fortieth anniversary of Parnelli Jones' 1970 Trans-Am championship in a Boss 302.
0:00 / 0:00
To purchase a 302R, customers will technically have to place their order through their dealer's parts department, as the vehicle is considered a racing part. Ford will only sell 50 Boss 302Rs, with MSRP starting at $79,000. Deliveries are expected in the fall of 2010.
A special package, known as the 302R1, preps the Boss for competition in the Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge series. Ford currently plans to deliver five of the Grand-Am cars at a price of $129,900 for the season's start on January 29, 2010 in Daytona, Florida. The 302R1 features a sealed, high-output race engine, upgraded cooling system, close-ration transmission with integral shifter, a seam-welded body, Koni dampers, ABS brake tuning, race exhaust, and one-piece driveshaft.
I fell in love with car magazines during sixth-grade silent reading time and soon realized that the editors were being paid to drive a never-ending parade of new cars and write stories about their experiences. Could any job be better? The answer was obvious to 11-year-old me. By the time I reached high school, becoming an automotive journalist wasn’t just a distant dream, it was a goal. I joined the school newspaper and weaseled my way into media days at the Detroit auto show. With a new driver’s license in my wallet, I cold-called MotorTrend’s Detroit editor, who graciously agreed to an informational interview and then gave me the advice that set me on the path to where I am today. Get an engineering degree and learn to write, he said, and everything else would fall into place. I left nothing to chance and majored in both mechanical engineering and journalism at Michigan State, where a J-school prof warned I’d become a “one-note writer” if I kept turning in stories about cars for every assignment. That sounded just fine by me, so I talked my way into GM’s Lansing Grand River Assembly plant for my next story. My child-like obsession with cars started to pay off soon after. In 2007, I won an essay contest to fly to the Frankfurt auto show and drive the Saturn Astra with some of the same writers I had been reading since sixth grade. Winning that contest launched my career. I wrote for Jalopnik and Edmunds, interned at Automobile, finished school, and turned down an engineering job with Honda for full-time employment with Automobile. In the years since, I’ve written for Car and Driver, The New York Times, and now, coming full circle, MotorTrend. It has been a dream. A big chunk of this job is exactly what it looks like: playing with cars. I’m happiest when the work involves affordable sporty hatchbacks, expensive sports cars, manual transmissions, or any technology that requires I learn something to understand how it works, but I’m not picky. If it moves under its own power, I’ll drive it.
Read More
