2016 Ford Shelby GT350 Mustang Chassis First Look
Hot Hooves: Examining the Chassis Ford Will Pair With That Exotic Flat-Plane-Crank V-8
Get ready to experience the best-handling Mustang of all time. That was essentially the promise Ford Performance honcho Dave Pericak made at a little show-and-tell of the forthcoming Shelby GT350's dirty underbits, some 90 percent of which are unique to this model. Let's get straight down to the steak that goes with that sizzle, working from the chassis down to the tires:
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Subtle chassis bracing and an aluminum shock-tower brace give the GT350 and GT350R a stiffer foundation for the suspension to work from. To enable a slight lowering of the front of the hood for aerodynamic reasons (the entire "front clip" is unique to the GT350), Ford Performance engineered a new grille-opening reinforcement panel with a carbon-fiber composite structure that is 24 percent lighter than that of lesser Mustangs while matching the stiffness of steel. Oh, and it looks so much nicer than the steel one that the 1.9-pound beauty cover ditched.
Nearly every suspension part is altered in some way, but completely new ones include aluminum front knuckles that replace iron ones. This saves weight, but the reason for the new parts was to "fix" geometry that wouldn't have worked with the wider track and much wider front tires (see below). Using two diagonal links instead of a lower control arm provides a virtual steering axis, and spacing the ball joints farther apart decreases the kingpin offset, preserving the natural steering feel of the baseline GT Performance Package car. The hub and bearing assemblies are stiffened and lightened relative to the standard parts to withstand increased lateral forces. Bushings, spring rates, and roll rates are all altered, and though no hard numbers were offered, we're told the car is roughly 20 percent stiffer by most measures than the baseline. In the rear it was discovered that because the lower spring perches rotate with the lower control arm, the left and right side springs were behaving slightly different. So they specified symmetrically wound springs — one coiling up clockwise, the other counterclockwise. Of course this required revising the shape of one control arm, which offered the opportunity for some slight shape optimization for mass-reduction purposes (they're roughly a half-pound lighter per side), which then needed to be echoed on the other side, so those parts are new. Finally, and perhaps most important, this will be the first Mustang to utilize MagneRide magnetorheological shock absorbers, and the vehicle dynamics team leveraged the 7-millisecond damping-alteration capabilities of these wonder shocks to go lighter/less aggressive on the anti-roll bars. It should also be noted that most of the suspension calibrations, bushing durometers, and so forth are slightly stiffer still on GT350R models, which will also likely ride slightly lower than the GT350, which also rides lower than the GT Perf Pack. The MR shocks are also unique, with the internal piston orifices smaller on the R. The ride modes offered include Tour, Sport, Track, Weather, and Drag. That last one loosens everything up a lot to encourage as much rearward weight shift as possible during a hard launch then gets ready to stiffen things up for the first-second shift, so as not to get squirrely. Track is also optimized to behave well on FIA curbing. Some modes allow further individual tailoring of steering feel and stability-control thresholds.
