I know there are some blazingly fast 5.0s out there, but guess what: on the street in two years of having a turbo 5.0 that only made around 420rwhp I only ran into one other fox-body that could run with me. They've got a corvette now from the factory that's faster than both of us were, and there are plenty of '03-'04 Cobras that I see around town that would've run with me.
Here's the deal. If you want to race, you should go to the track. That's where the faster and better cars are determined, and the better driver for that matter. You can have all the horse power in the world, but if the car doesn't launch well, and the person can't drive it, you won't be winner. And in street racing, you lose either way. You can end up killing yourself or better yet , an innocent family out for a ride. Seems like the horsepower thing is more of an ego thing instead of who has the better car (i.e.
suspension, tuning, consistancy, reliability)
In bracket racing, horsepower doesn't matter. I won twice this past summer in the open trophy class with my near stock 93 GT Mustang, consistantly running 14.2 to 14.4 1/4 mile e.t.s and going up against 10-15 second cars.
I went up against a Roush Mustang in the Mustang Showdown event. It was heads up racing with a .4 pro-tree. I left him spinning helplessy at the line with his $50,000. car that wouldn't hook up and that he couldn't drive. Actually, the owner of the car had someone at the track drive it for him because he couldn't drive it!
5.0s just aren't competitive today.
Ever check out the NMRA? Fox body's are the most winning and most used Mustangs in their compititions.
Fox bodied have been called the 55-57 chevy's of this decade.
They are everywhere. Parts are easy to find. Affordable. They really hold up from hard driving. They are very quick from dead stop, just as the 55-57 chevy's were in the past. A true racers car. Buy something cheap, and try to make it as fast as you can, instead of buying something fast right out of the showroom. That's for people with loads of money!! I've seen some new GTO's at the track and they don't do anything.
When I use to go to the track as a kid, all you saw where 55-57 chevy's. Now it's Fox Bodies.
Right now in the NHRA stock classes you do mostly see 67-69 Chevy Camero's dominating the class.
By the way, talking about it costing too much money to upgrade a Fox Body?
Have you seen the projected prices for the new Camero's and Challengers? I don't know the numbers, but I remember them being really high!