Black is the New Orange - Traded-in My 2007 Mustang GT

So it has finally happened.  After years of moaning and complaining that I wanted something else in my garage I finally made my choice.  I purchased a 2014 Mustang GT500 Shelby Cobra.

A couple weeks ago I narrowed down the choices between the 2014 GT500 and a 2016 GT350.  The GT500 was in Nova Scotia and the GT350 was being shipped from Ford to a dealer here locally.  Both were black which isn't a color I get excited about but both are damn hard to find so it's hard to be picky about the color.

2016 GT350

The GT350 is of course an awesome car and has all the hype around it this year.  Everyone wants one and I was lucky to have found one.  But a few things bothered me about it.  First the car had been ordered by a guy who ended up getting divorced and canceled his order.  So the car coming to the dealership wasn't something I would pick.  Like I said it was black, no stripes, and had the technology package rather than the track package.  Why someone would rather have the nav and fancy stereo than the extra cooling for racing I have no idea.  They had no others so I couldn't come for a test drive.  So I told them it wasn't really exciting me.  Then out of the blue they said a guy that had ordered an orange GT350 was thinking he'd rather have black so there was a chance he would want to switch.  Well I was all over that idea.  If he wanted the black one I would happily take the orange one.  But in the end he decided to stick with orange.  I gave the dealer another chance saying, "If the black one just had the GT350 stripes I'd want it."  But they either didn't take the hint or weren't interested in adding them because he said, "Well you can do that yourself later."  I looked up the cost of adding a stripe to the car and it was around $900.  So awesome car but no sale.  I called other dealerships, the best I could find was one dealer willing to take a deposit to order a 2017 GT350 when available.

2014 GT500

The GT500 was also black but does have matte black stripes which looks pretty mean.  It's also fast as hell with that 662 hp 5.8L.  This particular car only had 4000 miles (6000 km) so is basically new.  It has the track package but not the performance package.  Personally I'd rather have the extra cooling than the adjustable dampeners so I was fine with that. Carson Exports was willing to take my '07 as trade-in which would bring the car's price down to $63,000, not bad for a car selling for $68-69k here in Canada.  The biggest bummer was that the car was clear in Nova Scotia.  So I wasn't going to take it for a test drive or anything.  I had driven one locally last fall and really like it so I had an idea of how the car drove.  What really made my decision to get the GT500 was Carson Exports.  Such a great bunch of guys!  Really easy to talk to and very down to earth.  They even offered to ship the car and pick up my trade for free!  To be honest I was pretty wishy-washy at first on whether to get it or not and they were super patient with me.  No pressure.

In the end I had to just be realistic about it.  Both these cars are super expensive for my modest income.  Cars are my passion so I'm willing to have this expense on my budget.  But due to the extreme expense this is likely to be my last "fun car" purchase ever so I wanted it to be a good one.  The GT350 is a track car, it's slower 0-60 and slower 1/4 mile than the GT500.  The GT500 is a street brute and the GT350 is a driver's car.  But the question I had to honestly answer was would I really use the track capabilities of the GT350 or would I most likely just drive to work on sunny days and cruise around on the weekends?  The real answer was that the GT350 would be wasted on me.  Currently I haven't gone to a track day since I got to Canada and the few times I might go the GT500 would be loads of fun.  So I went with the GT500.

And another thing I had to admit is that if I owned a GT350 there would always be a little voice in the back of my mind reminding me that somewhere out there is a GT350R that is a lot better. ;)

So my GT500 should arrive in a few weeks.  It's going straight into storage until all this Canadian snow and salt is off the roads and gone.  Here are a few more dealer shots.