A Super Snake with a tongue sharper than your mother-in-law

When it comes to exclusivity, heritage and presence, you can’t help but reconstruct an image of the Shelby ‘Bullitt’ Super Snake edition.

Finished in highland green and squatting low on 20-inch Michelins, the most powerful Mustang in the country draws your eyes to the gaping front grille and chin spoiler, discreetly adorned with Carol Shelby’s nomenclature.

Primarily, the Bullitt Mustang upon which it’s based is a tribute to the original 1968 Mustang driven by Steve McQueen through the streets of San Francisco in the movie Bullitt, chased by a 1968 Dodge Charger 440 R/T.

Carrying through the colour and unique grille, as well as interior cues such as the steering wheel and shift knob, the 2019 Bullitt Mustang is age and guile draped in the robes of youth and technology.

The recently released movie ‘Ford vs Ferrari’ premiered the birth of the Shelby brand and the development of the Mustang, where Carol Shelby partnered with Ford in 1965 to make their pipe dreams come true, creating the GT350 and later, the Shelby GT500 ‘Eleanor’, made famous by Nicholas Cage in the movie ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’.

To make this rare model, one of it’s kind in South Africa out of 50 brought into the country, Shelby has bolted on a performance-derived aerodynamic body kit onto the fastback Bullitt Mustang, giving the bonnet lifted ram-air scoops to clear the new and bigger hardware underneath, and plying the Mustang liberally with Shelby badges so you’re left in no doubt about what sets this car apart from its brethren.

Not a single Ford badge is to be seen throughout the exterior and interior.

Secondly (and most importantly), the 5-litre dual-overhead cam ‘Coyote’ V8 has been strapped with a gloriously chromed supercharger so enormous it would probably suck up small animals and children as it passes through your neighbourhood.

Power is effectively doubled, from 331kW to 600kW – that’s 357kW per ton – more than a Ferrari 812 Superfast. It goes to show that making power isn’t all that difficult, but nailing it down to the blacktop is.

Vented 380 millimetre slotted discs the size of conference tables bring the 1,7 ton monster to a stop.

One needs quad muscles like The Rock to push down the lead-weight clutch needed to rope down the almost nuclear levels of power to the 6-speed manual transmission.

With almost 1000 N.m. of torque one can hardly conceive that the rear tyres would maintain any sense of self-preservation, but when power figures are almost cartoonishly silly like this, there’s a very real sense of theatre with the Super Snake.

If you even think of asking for a tow bar, you will almost certainly be frog-marched out into the street.

Inside, the centre console has a bespoke plaque featuring Carol Shelby’s signature as well as the insignia dictating the Snake’s position within the limited number of models.

Once again, sitting in the Recaro bucket seats, it’s nigh impossible to find a single piece of trim that isn’t emblazoned with a reminder that you’re in a Shelby Mustang.

A classic white shifter and passenger-centric handbrake lever reminds you that the Shelby was developed primarily for the left-hand drive American on the wide, straight roads of the mid-west. Given that over there, you can run your car on E85 – an 85% ethanol-based fuel mix – I shudder to think of how much more power the Snake could make.

This isn’t a car with a sonorous V8 burble – it growls and snorts like a ring-wraith from a Tolkien novel, snarling mercilessly with disdain at the lesser cars around it.

The Snake has one purpose: to conquer and enslave all others that stand in its way.

If it was a Transformer, this would be a Decepticon, without a shadow of a doubt.

With only 300km on the clock and priced at R2,5 million, the bespoke Bullitt Super Snake is available at SMD Ballito for anyone with the guts to get behind the wheel.

A bargain when you can backhand a R7.5 million Italian supercar back to its room.

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