Network
Who invented the hood scoop? The world may never know for sure, though the idea of cutting a hole into a perfectly good hood didn’t really catch on until the 1950’s. Since the 1960’s, hood scoops have become a cornerstone for American muscle cars, and pretty much every American muscle car made has offered a hood scoop as an imagine, real or fake.
Why all this talk of hood scoops? Well one look at the picture of this gaping hood scoop on the front of a Ford Mustang test mule, found by Autoblog spy photographers and all you’ll be able to think about are hoodscoops, particularly this one.
This Mustang was spotted at one of Ford’s many private test tracks, doing its rounds on a set of meaty Hoosier slicks and skinnies and sporting a GT500 front fascia. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that this test mule is obviously destined for the drag strip. But as what? Most likely, it will be the next-generation Cobra Jet, though why go with such a huge, horrendous-looking hoodscoop is anybody’s guess.
The thing certainly looks functional, and it is a good thing this car is likely made strictly for drag racing, as we doubt the driver can see much of anything around that mountain of a hood scoop. The real question here though, is what’s lying beneath the hood? A turbocharged 5.0 V8? Perhaps an even bigger motor, like say, something based on the 6.2 liter Super Duty V8.
