The 2013 Shelby GT500 Packed 662 Horsepower Into the Last Solid-Axle Mustang Ford Ever Built

Ford squeezed 662 horsepower from a supercharged V8 into the last Mustang built with a solid rear axle, a combination that made the 2013 Shelby GT500 both wildly fast and genuinely difficult to drive. A decade later, owners are still talking about the sound, the manual gearbox, and just how much respect this car demands. Here’s why the 2013-2014 GT500 remains one of the most talked-about modern Shelbys.

Ford rated the 2013 Shelby GT500 at 662 horsepower, and for a brief window that made its supercharged 5.8-liter V8 the most powerful supercharged production V8 ever installed in a series-production car sold anywhere in the world. It came wrapped in a chassis that still used a solid rear axle — the same fundamentally simple, drag-strip-friendly setup Mustangs had used since the 1960s — right as the rest of the performance-car world was abandoning it for independent suspension. That combination made the GT500 both a throwback and a genuine outlier: a car engineered with one foot in Detroit’s muscle-car past and one foot shoving a supercharger into the modern horsepower wars. In a driven walkaround and review from Roads Untraveled, a clean 20th Anniversary example gets put through its paces, and the reaction is the same one owners have been having for over a decade — equal parts grin and white-knuckle respect. This is the car that closed out an era, and it’s worth understanding exactly why it still commands the kind of loyalty you don’t see with more sensible performance Fords.

Carroll Shelby’s Final Signature on the Mustang

The video follows Roads Untraveled behind the wheel of a well-kept 2013 Shelby GT500 coupe, one of the 20th Anniversary tribute cars Ford built to mark 20 years since its Special Vehicle Team (SVT) division debuted in 1993. The host walks through what makes the car feel different from a stock Mustang GT — the aggressive stance, the functional hood vents feeding the supercharged engine, and a cabin built around a six-speed manual and a set of heavily bolstered Recaro seats. It’s a driving impression as much as a walkaround, and the enthusiasm in the delivery matches what shows up throughout the comments section: this is a car people remember buying, not just admiring.

What the review captures well is the sense of occasion around this specific generation. Ford’s engineers were chasing a number with this car — a horsepower figure meant to leapfrog the competition — and they got there by bolting a 2.3-liter TVS supercharger onto an all-aluminum 5.8-liter V8. The result was a SAE-certified 662 horsepower and 631 lb-ft of torque, numbers that held up as the highest output of any supercharged production V8 in the world at the time. Carroll Shelby himself never got to see this specific model year reach showrooms; he passed away in May 2012 at age 89, just months before the 2013 GT500 went on sale, but his name and his philosophy of raw, uncomplicated speed are stamped all over it.

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The Last Solid-Axle Mustang Ever Built

The 2013-2014 GT500 sits at a genuine turning point in Mustang history. It was the final version of the S197-generation Mustang to use a live, solid rear axle before Ford moved the entire lineup to independent rear suspension in 2015. That’s not a minor footnote — a solid axle is simpler, cheaper, and brutally effective for straight-line traction, which is exactly why drag racers still favor it, but it also means the rear end can hop and shudder under hard acceleration in a way an independent setup won’t. Ford paired that old-school rear end with a revised Tremec TR-6060 six-speed manual, built with 26-spline input and output shafts specifically to survive the torque this supercharged V8 was throwing at it.

On paper and on the road, that combination produced numbers that still hold up against modern performance cars. Motor Trend clocked a stock 2013 GT500 running the quarter-mile in 11.6 seconds at roughly 125.7 mph, with a 0-60 mph time of about 3.5 seconds — figures that put it in the same conversation as cars costing considerably more today. Owners in the comments back this up with the same refrain: on a good day, at a good track, an unmodified 2013 or 2014 GT500 could run into the high 11s, and tuners have since coaxed considerably more from the factory supercharger with modest bolt-on changes.

Beyond the numbers, 2013 also marked the 20th anniversary of Ford’s Special Vehicle Team, the in-house performance group responsible for the Cobra and GT500 nameplates since 1993. Ford marked the occasion with commemorative badging and trim details across the GT500 lineup that year, which is part of what makes a clean, well-documented example like the one in this video worth a second look — it’s not just a fast Mustang, it’s a specific, dated snapshot of Ford performance history.

A Supercharged V8 That Still Intimidates a Decade Later

What makes the 2013 GT500 special isn’t just the spec sheet — it’s how unapologetically analog the experience still is. There’s no adaptive suspension smoothing out the ride, no all-wheel-drive system distributing power to keep things tidy, and no dual-clutch gearbox doing the shifting for you. It’s a supercharger whine, a heavy clutch pedal, and a live rear axle that will happily step sideways if you’re not paying attention — which is exactly the reputation this generation built for itself among the people who’ve owned one.

That reputation is also why values for clean, unmodified examples like the one in this video have held remarkably steady. This was the car built at the exact moment Carroll Shelby’s name still meant something specific and dangerous, right before the Mustang platform moved on to a more refined, independently sprung era. It’s a snapshot of the last time Ford built a factory hot rod this raw, and that’s precisely why it’s remembered today as a modern classic rather than just another fast Mustang.

What to Know If You’re Shopping for One Today

If you’re shopping for one now, the biggest thing to verify is whether the car has ever seen a dedicated track day or a heavy tune — the factory internals are strong, but the stock supercharger pulley and tune leave real headroom that plenty of owners have used. Ask for maintenance records on the clutch and rear differential specifically, since both take the brunt of that torque, and look for a car that’s spent more time being driven carefully than being raced hard.

Values for clean, largely stock examples have stayed strong precisely because so few were kept unmodified. Ford built the 2013 and 2014 GT500 in far smaller numbers than the standard Mustang GT, and a well-documented, low-mileage coupe with the original supercharger pulley still in place is becoming genuinely hard to find. For buyers who want the last word in old-school Mustang muscle before Ford went to independent rear suspension across the board, this is very likely the car.

Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.