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These days if you want to make horsepower, there’s only about a thousand different power adders to choose from. Turbochargers, superchargers, and nitrous kits are so prevalent these days that it has become almost, dare we say, boring? Depends on who you ask, but we sort of miss the days when all-motor big block motors ruled the drag strip, filling the air with the roar of internal combustion rather than the whine of a turbo or supercharger.
But there are still those who prefer the road less traveled, like Paul Fercho and his 2005 Ford Mustang, which is powered by a 572 cubic-inch big-block Ford motor. You might think that dropping a 572 into an S197 Mustang is a big deal, but in actuality it’s not all that different from any other engine swap. The 4.6 liter mod motor is a big, wide motor, and the 572 big-block is actually about the same width. The 572 is about 2.5 inches longer than the 4.6, but that is nothing a hammer can’t solve.
What about weight? Well as Paul figures it, once you factor in all the supercharger and support equipment like the intercooler, icebox and so on, the 572 big-block only adds about 120 pounds to the Mustang. At the track, the 572 Mustang weighs in at just 3,420 pounds. And with a 16:1 compression and tons of cubic-inches to work with, Paul’s Mustang makes 924 horsepower and about 781 ft-lbs of torque at the engine, good enough to take him down the ¼ mile in 9.46 seconds at 142 mph. He puts about 755 of that horsepower to the wheels, an approximate drivetrain loss of 18%.
And it sounds so sick. There’s something special about an all-motor Mustang, and since Ford isn’t bringing back big-block motors anytime soon, Paul’s 9-second drag racer is the closest we’ll come to a modern big-block Mustang.
