2003 Ford Mustang Cobra

There are times in life when you just know things have changed-graduation, marriage, parenthood, and so on. The world is much the same as it has been, but your feelings and perceptions of it have been altered forever. Well, in case you've been hiding under your Mustang in the garage, you should have felt a change coming over Ford and, in particular, its Special Vehicle Team.

Ford has long produced prototypes that had no hope of production. Often these are drool-worthy performance animals. Back in 1989, Roush developed a prototype Mustang designed to become a 25th anniversary Mustang. Dubbed the Performance Leader Mustang, this car produced 350 hp from a twin-turbocharged 351. At that time, the corporate types thought producing such a vehicle was "irresponsible," and we went without a proper anniversary model. Not that Ford should produce every show car it builds, but some cars just beg for building.

Some years later, in 1992, Ford produced the Mach III prototype to presage the upcoming SN-95 Mustang. This car was wild, and certainly there was no way Ford would produce such a vehicle. Let's face it-it featured a Four-Valve 4.6, an Eaton supercharger, a wild air-to-water intercooler attached to the air-conditioning system, a six-speed transmission, and it produced 450 hp. If all that is starting to sound oddly familiar, it should, but keep in mind this was 1992.

Rumor had it the Mach III might have been the '96 Cobra-and we didn't believe it back then any more than we believed the rumors regarding the '03 Mustang Cobra you see here. It wasn't until SVT's Tom Scarpello took us for a ride in the car that reality began to set in. Something has changed at Ford. It is building a new GT40, and you can responsibly buy a 390hp Mustang Cobra. Change, it seems, must be a good thing.

On the Cobra, the big change is the addition of a supercharger. The Eaton blower produced such positive results in the '99 and '01 Lightnings that it seemed a natural addition was looking to table all arguments in the recently ended ponycar war. Unlike the Lightning, the Cobra's supercharger and air-to-water intercooler sit atop a Four-Valve engine wearing cylinder heads redesigned for more flow. This car does share the same 90mm mass air meter as the Lightning, and it feeds the standard dual-57mm throttle body seen on all 4.6 Cobras.

Adding eight or so pounds of intercooled boost to a Four-Valve 4.6 doesn't sound like such a big deal, as there are thousands of blown Cobras roaming the streets right now. Those Cobras, however, don't have to pass rigorous Ford durability tests and live up to a three-year/36,000-mile warranty period. The result is the stoutest factory modular short-block this side of the 2000 Cobra R. SVT switched over to an iron block for increased strength. It fit the block with the familiar forged-steel Cobra crank, then added a shot of aftermarket strength in the form of Manley H-beam rods with ARP fasteners. The pistons are forged, dished pieces similar to those in the Lightning.

That's some engine combination, but you are left with little time to take a breath when reading the '03 Cobra's specs. For the first time outside of an R-model, an SVT vehicle sports a T56 six-speed transmission. It's fronted by an 11.2-pound aluminum flywheel and an 11-inch clutch with suitably increased clamping force. Behind the tranny is a new aluminum driveshaft with upgraded U-joints. All that leads to another familiar aftermarket upgrade now stock on the Cobra-3.55 gears, which reside in an upgraded IRS 8.8 fitted with rugged 31-spline halfshafts.