GTP Cool Wall: 1984-1986 Ford Mustang SVO
- Thread starter White & Nerdy
- 197 comments
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- 27,203
- United Kingdom
I'm not.
I'm saying numbers can't tell you about something subjective. I'm saying a butt dyno can, because a butt dyno is using your subjective judgement to assess something subjective.
Edit: Actually, whut? I'm agreeing with Cano (hence, y'know, agreeing with what he said and using a smiley to show I agreed) and disagreeing with Adamgp. Cano is basing his opinions on the SVO on something subjective. Which is fine. Adam is saying a car "handles" by using numbers, which is trying to use objective data on a subjective faculty.
Which is why I said exactly what I said. Try and keep up.
- 8,191
- Southern Louisiana
- GTP_Kent
Really? Come on man, you don't always have to try insulting people (or just me for that matter).
I genuinely read your post about the butt dyno with the smiley as sarcasm, not as acceptance, it was a misunderstanding, no need to act like I'm slow.
- 4,543
- Bay Area, CA
- Zenith113
Any Mustang with a special moniker at the end is uncool.
GT, GT350, GT500, GT390, Boss 302, Boss 429, Cobra, Cobra R, GT/CS, King Cobra, Mach 1, Bullitt, SVO, etc.
By the time you've explained what SVO means, whoever you're talking to has realized that you have devoted way too much brain power to memorizing marketing gimmicks by Ford.
GT, GT350, GT500, GT390, Boss 302, Boss 429, Cobra, Cobra R, GT/CS, King Cobra, Mach 1, Bullitt, SVO, etc.
By the time you've explained what SVO means, whoever you're talking to has realized that you have devoted way too much brain power to memorizing marketing gimmicks by Ford.
- 7,313
- Land of the smelly onion
A car's handling is subjective? Wat?
And the numbers I posted are stats to back up that this car handled good for the time period.
- 7,703
- Indy
- xXKingJoshXx
I agree that taking a ton of time to explain something can make the subject boring, and therefore uncool, but how does taking a minute (if even that) to explain something bore someone that much? If it bores them that much, it shows that you shouldn't even be around them in the first place.
- 2,037
- Colorado
Really? Most people here don't need to have those monikers explained to them, except maybe teenage girls who think cars are just bigger iPhones. Running into someone who doesn't know what the majority of those monikers mean is almost as rare as running into someone who doesn't know what a Ferrari is. Not to mention nearly every car made, in the history of the automobile, has a varient in the lineup which has a moniker attached onto the name somewhere. So I'm not sure why you think the mustang is any different.
- 2,364
- Albuquerque, NM
- BloodDiamondPant
- 2,421
- Kentucky, USA
- James_Page
- PageyTheSquid
Exactly. I was driving with my wife just today and we saw a new Challenger SRT8 and she asked me what was different about it. I said it was the high performance edition of the car and she said, "oh, that's cool" and we left it at that. I could've gone in a lot more detail but there is no point in doing so when you aren't talking to someone who really knows or cares about cars.
Obviously there was something "cooler" about that car to make her notice it over a regular Challenger but that doesn't mean I have to ramble on about what makes it different, thus supposedly making it uncool.
Joey D
Premium
- 47,364
- Lakes of the North, MI
- GTP_Joey
- GTP Joey
I'm not entirely sure how you can think this car isn't rare or unknown. They made 9,488 SVO's over the course of three production years, that's not exactly a ton of cars. To put it into perspective, for the 1984 model year, they made 4,508 SVO's out of the 141,480 total Mustang's produced.
- 8,191
- Southern Louisiana
- GTP_Kent
You have a point about the specifics and I was thinking of it more generally as a Fox body. Wasn't really thinking of it as a specific special edition.
With you pointing that out I can understand why people would label it as a rare car. That said, I'd still see it as just one more special edition mustang. :meh:
Even if I saw it on the street and recognized the rarity of the car I still wouldn't think it was cool.
None the less, good catch, I really was thinking of it as if it were just another limited edition fox body.
- 40,740
The Corvette of the exact same vintage was a fantastic car for turning left on a skidpad and darting through a slalom. One of the best ever made. A first year Z51 Corvette pulled over a G with nothing more than camber changes, and even in regular trim it would do .9 flat. It wasn't just better than most of its competition. It was the best, period, when it came out; and that was what GM targeted from the start. That's all with early 1980s tires, too.
But by any other standard (meaning what the numbers didn't tell you), the thing was crap. The wheels were practically bolted to the chassis so the slightest bump would completely unsettle the car. The chassis flexed and the car was considerably over-tired; meaning the thing would try to kill you if you came anywhere exceeding the limit (which the suspension exacerbated). The steering itself was vague to the point of not feeling connected to anything. You took the top off (since the targa top on the C4 acted as a stressed member of the chassis that you had to screw in and everything) and the car would act as two separate halves fighting for attention. They spent the rest of the decade trying to fix most of that without damaging the raw grip too much.
And I know the SVO isn't like that. I'm aware that Ford put a lot of time and energy into giving it things that the contemporary GT wishes it could have had. Better brakes. Much better suspension. Better weight distribution and notably lower weight. And it was all let down by how junk that 2.3 really was, and how much all that stuff cost when combined with how junk the 2.3 really was (and how much cheaper the GT was). But the raw numbers it achieved weren't why American magazines loved it; because see the Corvette Z51.
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- 4,543
- Bay Area, CA
- Zenith113
@Slash @peobryant @XS You're missing the point. Most cars have special editions, M versions of BMW's are a good example of this. The explanation of "This is a faster version" works with BMW M cars. Mustangs have like 14 variations of "This is a faster car."
"Nice Mustang! Is this a Shelby?"
"No."
"Cobra?"
"No."
"Boss?"
"No. This is an SVO."
"How is that different than any of the ones I already listed?"
At this point you have two options.
Option 1 makes you look like an idiot. This is the standard "This is a faster version" response that would work with an M car.
"Well the Cobra is a faster version of the Mustang, the Boss is also a faster version of the Mustang, and the Shelby is a faster version of the Mustang. This SVO is a faster version of the Mustang."
Option 2 makes you look like a dweeb.
"Well the Cobra is a faster version made by SVT, the Shelby is also a faster version made by SVT but it's not considered a Cobra because reasons. The Boss was originally a track car but is now a faster version blah blah blah"
Either way, you look uncool.
I said that Mustangs with special monikers are uncool. That doesn't mean that Mustangs without special monikers are cool. Those Mustangs are uncool for different reasons.
This particular Mustang has several reasons for being uncool.
I got bored just typing all of that above. Car people should avoid looking like a bunch of nerds who know trivia about X company's marketing gimmicks if they want to look cool.
"Nice Mustang! Is this a Shelby?"
"No."
"Cobra?"
"No."
"Boss?"
"No. This is an SVO."
"How is that different than any of the ones I already listed?"
At this point you have two options.
Option 1 makes you look like an idiot. This is the standard "This is a faster version" response that would work with an M car.
"Well the Cobra is a faster version of the Mustang, the Boss is also a faster version of the Mustang, and the Shelby is a faster version of the Mustang. This SVO is a faster version of the Mustang."
Option 2 makes you look like a dweeb.
"Well the Cobra is a faster version made by SVT, the Shelby is also a faster version made by SVT but it's not considered a Cobra because reasons. The Boss was originally a track car but is now a faster version blah blah blah"
Either way, you look uncool.
I said that Mustangs with special monikers are uncool. That doesn't mean that Mustangs without special monikers are cool. Those Mustangs are uncool for different reasons.
This particular Mustang has several reasons for being uncool.
I got bored just typing all of that above. Car people should avoid looking like a bunch of nerds who know trivia about X company's marketing gimmicks if they want to look cool.
- 2,421
- Kentucky, USA
- James_Page
- PageyTheSquid
@Zenith I still disagree with that. If someone cares enough about your car to ask what an SVO is (after asking if it is a Cobra, Boss or Shelby) then I think they'd genuinely be interested in learning what it is. Maybe that is uncool to you, but I don't think it is.
For someone who isn't a car fan "this is a faster car" is a completely valid response because they don't care anyways and you don't need to explain it.
For someone who isn't a car fan "this is a faster car" is a completely valid response because they don't care anyways and you don't need to explain it.
- 34,949
- Indian Falls, NY
- slashfan7964
Or you can say it was a handling package.
Which it basically was anyways.
Its really not that hard to the avoid the situation. If someone is asking then they are probably interested to begin with.
Its quirky things like this the Ford did that made them cool because it wasn't like any other Mustang out at the time.
Which it basically was anyways.
Its really not that hard to the avoid the situation. If someone is asking then they are probably interested to begin with.
Its quirky things like this the Ford did that made them cool because it wasn't like any other Mustang out at the time.
- 4,543
- Bay Area, CA
- Zenith113
Not really, since the obvious follow-up question is "Then why is it called the SVO instead of the Turbo?"
Now we're into explaining monikers and we're at uncool again.
Also for @peobryant
Interested? Yes. I'm sure they want to hear a simple explanation. Unfortunately due to the dozen other special editions of Mustang, the person who asked the question has no idea that they just stumbled eyeball deep a lecture on multiple types of Mustangs. They'll walk away their eyes glazed over or with a vague and unsatisfactory understanding of the car.
If Mustangs like this were cool, it would be an easy explanation. You wouldn't have to dodge describing a Cobra instead of an SVO.
Exactly.
That's why Ford putting out a dozen versions of "a couple letters" on the back of the car is uncool. Nobody gives a damn.
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Of course it is.
Put it this way: Two people can agree and corroborate that a car pulls 1g on a skid pad, or hits 60 in five seconds. That's objective data.
But those same two people may not agree a car handles well - one may feel the steering doesn't give enough feedback, another may say it's fine. One might like how the car behaves on the limit, the other may find it a bit twitchy. Those sort of things come under the banner "handling" and they're entirely subjective.
No, they're stats to back up that the car was capable of performing well in a pre-determined test.
And I'm not disputing that aspect in the slightest. Modern Mustangs too have proven they can get around a circuit as fast as an M3 or grip as hard as a Porsche. I've no doubt the SVO was impressive in its day, next to higher-priced rivals from Ferrari and Porsche.
What I'm saying is that skid pad or slalom numbers do not automatically mean a car handles well. They just mean it's good at pulling high cornering forces or going around some cones.
Again, handling is a wholly subjective thing. A car that handles well on one road may not even handle that well on another. Or in the wet. Or once the tires overheat and all of a sudden the car becomes a massive handful while another remains benign.
I don't even dispute that the SVO might handle well. @Cano has offered his input on this and I'm happy to trust his judgement on it. But bare numbers do not prove a car "handles" well.
Or just see what @Tornado wrote, as he pretty much nailed what I've been trying to say.
- 2,037
- Colorado
But you're lumping monikers over 50 years of Mustangs. For each Mustang generation after the 60s there's been no more than three or four variants (excluding Shelbys). It's not like we're talking Skylines here. The 15 years the fox bodies were made there were only the 5.0, GT, LX, and SVO. The 90s had the GT, Cobra, Cobra R, and V6. We're talking decades here, not a dozen monikers for one model year. I don't really see how that's anymore unusual than Mercedez-Benz, Prosche, Lamborghini, Honda, and so-on. And add-on options like Drag Pak, FRPP, and the likes didn't get badges, so no need to explain. I will, however, agree the number of dealer specials (aka the High Country and Texas and California specials) did get stupid in the '60s.
