green flag Pictures from Hum3d
*Copied & pasted from Car & Driver It has been 50 years since Steve McQueen punted a Dodge Charger full of baddies into a gas-station explosion after chasing them through San Francisco in a Mustang, and nearly two decades since the now traditional Bullitt edition first graced the Mustang line. Since then, the recipe has remained largely the same: better handing, available Dark Highland Green paint, restrained but aggressive aesthetics—and, of course, badges that ensure McQueen obsessives will walk into showrooms hurling fistfuls of sawbucks at anyone remotely resembling a salesman. But enough about the dollars. Ford has been hacking at the Mustang's performance pie lately. And while the Shelby GT350 remains the least expensive car you can buy with at least 500 horsepower, the recently refreshed Mustang GT makes a real case for itself as a budget Shelby in Performance Pack Level 2 guise. The Bullitt, based on a well-equipped GT with the Level 1 Performance Pack, slides into what some of us think is the sweetest spot in the Mustang lineup. The Steve-replica Stang sticks with 255-section-width Michelin PS4s up front and 275s in the rear, while the PP2 wears a set of Pilot Sport Cups measuring 305/30R-19 all the way around. Barely street legal, those tires are stickier than Boston's Great Molasses Flood when they're hot, but like the GT350, the PP2 has a track-oriented nature that can sometimes feel a bit wearying in the day-to-day grind. The Bullitt, then, might just be the Mustang with which to rule the street (at least until the ultraviolent GT500 arrives). To help with that, Ford has upped the 5.0-liter Coyote V-8's ante to 480 horsepower, 20 more than in the GT and down only 46 from the GT350.
