Guess What! Your Ford Mustang Is A Girl Car!

In 2016, a panel of 17 women from 14 countries named the Ford Mustang their Women’s Performance Car of the Year, with the Ford Focus RS finishing a close second. The honor pushed back on decades of man’s-car marketing built around the Mustang, while the rest of the muscle car world kept moving too — Classic Performance Products modernized vintage handling, Mopar rolled out new support for grassroots NHRA Sportsman racers, and Hellcat-themed toys sold out before Christmas. Read on for the full roundup of what was happening across the muscle car world that year.

For decades, the Ford Mustang built its identity on being the car magazines assumed only men actually wanted — a straight-line muscle car, a garage bragging right, anything but a girl’s car. In 2016, a jury of seventeen women representing fourteen countries quietly dismantled that assumption, handing the Mustang a title Detroit’s marketing departments had never quite figured out how to chase: Women’s Performance Car of the Year. The runner-up wasn’t a soft crossover or a watered-down compact, either — it barely lost to another genuinely fast Ford, and the numbers behind that near-miss say as much about the award as the winner does.

Seventeen Judges, Fourteen Countries, One Surprising Winner

The Women’s Performance Car of the Year award isn’t a popularity contest run by a single magazine — it’s judged by a panel of women automotive journalists and enthusiasts drawn from 14 different countries, evaluating cars on the same performance criteria any enthusiast publication would use: power, handling, driving experience, and value. For 2016, that panel of 17 judges landed on the Ford Mustang, a result that quietly undercut decades of assumptions about who muscle cars are actually built for. The Mustang has always marketed itself around masculine bravado — the kind of car, as the saying goes, you keep your distance from at a car meet — but the award suggested the people actually driving it fast didn’t much care about that branding.

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The Focus RS Nearly Stole the Title

What made the result more interesting was how close the runner-up came to taking the title outright. The Ford Focus RS, a hatchback built around a turbocharged four-cylinder and genuinely serious all-wheel-drive performance credentials, finished a very close second, nearly matching the Mustang’s own Women’s Performance Car of the Year honors. Two cars from the same manufacturer landing at the top of the same competition wasn’t a coincidence — it reflected a broader shift inside Ford’s performance lineup toward building cars that rewarded skilled driving rather than just raw straight-line output, a shift that happened to resonate strongly with the judging panel.

Why Women’s Performance Car Isn’t a Contradiction

The framing of girl car in the Mustang’s own marketing history has always been a bit of a punchline, precisely because it’s never been accurate. Women have raced, restored, and modified muscle cars since the muscle car era began, and awards like this one exist largely to push back against the assumption that performance driving skews toward one demographic. The Mustang’s win wasn’t really a surprise to anyone who’d spent time at a track day or car show paying attention to who was actually behind the wheel — it was simply the first time a major awards panel put that reality on the record in a headline-friendly way.

Modern Handling for Cars That Were Never Built to Corner

Around the same period, the broader muscle car aftermarket was reckoning with a related problem: classic muscle cars built in the 1960s and ’70s were never designed with modern handling in mind. Detroit engineers of that era prioritized straight-line acceleration on Main Street and at the drag strip, leaving braking and cornering as afterthoughts at best. Companies like Classic Performance Products built entire business models around retrofitting vintage muscle cars with modern suspension geometry, disc brakes, and steering components, letting owners keep a car’s original character while giving it handling manners that could actually compete with contemporary performance cars rather than just outrun them on a straightaway.

Mopar Bets on the Grassroots Racer

On the racing side, Mopar used the same period to lean harder into supporting grassroots competition, announcing a set of initiatives for the 2017 NHRA season aimed specifically at amateur Sportsman racers. That included factory backing for select Mopar and Dodge teams competing in NHRA Sportsman classes, a tier of drag racing built around everyday enthusiasts rather than professional teams with major sponsorship. The move reflected a broader industry pattern: as factory involvement in top-tier motorsport became more expensive and more scrutinized, manufacturers increasingly found it made more sense — and built more brand loyalty — to support the racers actually showing up at local tracks every weekend.

A Reward Program Built for Sportsman Drag Racers

The centerpiece of Mopar’s grassroots push was a program with an admittedly clunky name — the Magneti Marelli Offered by Mopar Drag Pak Rewards program — alongside technical at-track assistance for teams that couldn’t afford a full-time crew chief, and expanded outreach and communication with Sportsman competitors generally. For racers running Dodge and Mopar-powered cars in NHRA’s amateur ranks, that meant access to factory technical knowledge and parts support that had previously been reserved almost exclusively for professional teams, a meaningful shift for competitors funding their racing out of pocket.

Even the Toy Aisle Went Hellcat Before Christmas

Even the toy aisle caught the Hellcat wave that holiday season. With the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat established as one of the most talked-about muscle cars on the market, toy manufacturers rushed out three new Hellcat Challenger RC cars alongside two new Hellcat-themed Hot Wheels models in time for Christmas — an easy, affordable way for fans too young, or too broke, to buy the real thing to get a taste of it under the tree. Between an award recognizing women’s performance driving, aftermarket handling upgrades for old iron, factory support for grassroots drag racers, and Hellcat toys selling out before the holidays, it was a busy, telling stretch for the muscle car world.

A Snapshot of a Brand Redefining Itself

Taken together, these stories captured a Ford and a Mopar caught mid-transition, still leaning on decades of muscle car heritage while actively working to broaden who that heritage included. The Women’s Performance Car of the Year honor didn’t rebrand the Mustang overnight, and Mopar’s grassroots racing initiatives didn’t single-handedly transform NHRA Sportsman competition, but both moves reflected a recognition that the muscle car audience was bigger, and more varied, than the industry’s own marketing had assumed for decades. It’s a pattern worth watching for anyone tracking how legacy performance brands evolve — the biggest shifts rarely arrive as a single dramatic announcement, but as a string of smaller moves like these, each aimed at a slightly different slice of the enthusiast base.

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