#MustangShelbyGt500

When is a Mustang a reptile? When it’s a Shelby, of course.

And when the car has Shelby badging on it, you’re in for a treat.

Not to be outdone by Toyota’s announcement of an all-wheel drive Prius at the Los Angeles Auto Show, Ford issued a teaser promoting the most capable variant of one of its own iconic models — the Mustang Shelby GT500.

However, the car isn’t coming to LA. According to Ford’s social media accounts and a new display in California, the vehicle won’t be on display until January 14th of 2019. As you might have guessed, that’s in the midst of the North American International Auto Show.

How similar is a man to his brother? Their parents flipped the chromosonal coin twenty-five thousand times with each. Perhaps they are entirely different, individuals in perfect reversal. Perhaps they are identical twins. But it’s rarely that simple. Imagine two brothers, similar and different. One is balanced, light, controlled; the other is brutish, temperamental, dramatic. One is well-liked everywhere he goes; the other is either despised or adored. Yet they are both capable of callous viciousness, careless love, arrogant intellect, base stupidity. It would be a rare woman who would want them both.

We’re obviously talking about the 2013 Boss 302 and Shelby GT500, right? As fate would have it, I happened to have the Shelby for a week. In the course of that week I drove it over a thousand miles on gnarled back roads and ruler-straight Midwestern freeways, took it to five different states, and hammered it to one hundred and sixty-eight miles per hour on the back straight of Virginia International Raceway. I would have loved to have compared it to the Camaro ZL1, but I’ll need to do a few more Sonic advertorials before I get GM loaner cars here in the States. Instead, I compared the big Shelby to the only car that its purchasers are likely to genuinely consider. Brother Boss, step forward.