#ShelbyMustang

Last year, Ford announced a new green paint option for the Mustang as a tie-in for Saint Patrick’s Day. This year will be no different. Ford has unveiled Grabber Lime for the 2020 model year and, once again, has timed the debut to coincide closely with the holiday.

While Grabber Lime was never a metallic shade, Ford’s latest incarnation is more shimmery than a school of sardines. That does not appear to be the case for Ford’s other historic hue, Twister Orange, however. We’ve already seen the color roll off the auction block, slathered on the first 2020 Shelby GT500, for a cool $1.1 million, and it’s gloss only. Frankly, Grabber Lime is absolutely blaring in comparison.

Kudos to Ford for doing the shadowy teaser image correctly this week. While the auto industry has decided darkened teasers are compulsory for all upcoming models, some automakers provide photographs resembling Spın̈al Tap’s Smell the Glove album — so comedicaly dark, they become unintentional parodies of the now popular trend.

But Ford’s photo makes us feel like we’ve seen more of the 2020 Shelby GT500 than we actually have without giving up the goods, allowing us to feel simultaneously satiated and hungry.

It’s the clearest look yet of the forthcoming Mustang model, and our first impression is that it seems really angry about something. The grille is expansive, seemingly occupying frontal real estate from the vehicle’s nose all the way down to the aggressive frontal lip.

“Please hold,” the woman with the handheld Hertz computer said, as if she and I were on opposite sides of a WATS call instead of standing twenty-four inches apart, “for a manager.” I didn’t have to hold long. The manager was a short Hispanic man with an all-business disposition.

“You have fun?” he inquired, kneeling to pay close attention to one of the odd little carbon-fiber winglets between the rear wheelwell and the doors. His tone implied that I could be in trouble for having fun, but also, perhaps, that I would have been equally remiss in not having fun. After all, this was a rental car that cost a staggering $343 per diem. In a country where the SNAP program provides a struggling family just $14/day for meals, what kind of bloodless, Zuckerberg-esque Asperger’s alien from the posthuman investor class would spend that kind of money to not enjoy this sullen-faced snorting Mustang?

“I had … ” and here I did some rough privilege calculus of the sort familiar to all college-educated German-Americans in the year 2016, balancing my Chester Barrie sport coat and the dull glitter of my platinum AMEX against my coarse features, Allman Brothers haircut, and visibly crippled left leg, just trying to figure out what I was allowed to say without committing a microaggression.

“… a bit of fun, yeah. But really, I drove it to the hotel and back. Mostly.”

“Is that so,” he said, like a pint-sized Torquemada, and with a quick, knowledgeable motion he swiped his finger across the gap between two spokes of the left front wheel. “Is that so.”

Three hybrid powertrains and three performance powertrains bookended Wards Auto’s top 10 engines, which was released last week.

The list included repeat winners such as the Ram 1500 Ecodiesel 3-liter six, Subaru’s turbo flat-four and Nissan’s veteran VQ 3.5-liter V-6. Appearing for the first time was BMW’s replacement for its N55 turbocharged, 3-liter straight six as well as General Motor’s LGX V-6 — which appears in several Cadillac models and in the new Chevrolet Camaro — with cylinder deactivation.

Volvo’s twin-charged 2-liter four and Ford’s famous flat-plane crank V-8 from the Shelby GT350 made the list for the first time in 2016. Volkswagen’s engines were excluded from consideration this year because of the company’s admission that its diesel engine cheated through emissions tests.