Just when everyone thought that Australia's days of building V8-powered muscle cars were over, Ford announced the Mustang R-Spec, a supercharged beast that was to be put together at an old Falcon plant in Broadmeadows.
It seems that the Aussie public was more than happy to get behind this home-grown project, as every single R-Spec was allocated within 60 days of the Bathurst 1000 announcement.
Despite the over A$100,000 price tag attached to the R-Spec, Aussie punters had no issue putting their names down for potentially the last Aussie-built V8 muscle car of all time.
When talking to CarAdvice, one of Australia's biggest Mustang dealers revealed that the cars sold themselves. "I sent the email out to my customer list when the car was unveiled, went to bed, and when I woke up I’d sold all my cars."
R-Spec number 001 rolled off the production line earlier this week, which was two weeks later than Ford's schedule. It turns out that the shipment of parts from the US was held up at the border due to an outbreak of stink bugs.
As the equivalent supercharged Mustangs sold over in America wouldn't have met Australia's strict "drive-by" noise levels, and aren't built in a right-hand drive configuration, Ford Australia managed to get their case for the R-Spec over the line. And it's a roaring success.
Performance figures for the supercharged beasts still haven't beast released, but considering that Ford Performance's supercharger kit is rated for 522kW and 830Nm of torque in the States, fast is an understatement.
When speaking about the car, Kay Hart, President and CEO of Ford Australia said: "It’s fantastic to be able to celebrate with the team that has worked so hard to reach this milestone, enabling us to bring a supercharged Mustang to Australian customers."
Currently, the R-Spec is only offered with a six-speed manual transmission, as fitting the 10-speed auto box would require extra cooling work. At this stage, it's unknown as to whether the automatic car will be going ahead, but if the demand is there, Ford should oblige.
Unfortunately, Tom Clancy from Ford New Zealand revealed late last year that we won't be receiving the R-Spec, as it is an Aussie exclusive. Clancy mentioned that a limited run of RTR Mustangs will be available instead.
If you're more of a Shelby person, it was revealed late last year that the Mustang performance marque will be setting up shop in New Zealand. The Shelby NZ distributor will join award-winning Americana-specialist car builders Matamata Panelworks, and kick things off with a right-hand drive Shelby GT and the Super Snake.