This mule can whinny!
Back at the turn of the century, a small skunkworks team at Ford developed a V10 engine for the Mustang.
The 6.8-liter Triton V10 used in its trucks was too big, so it added two cylinders to the modular aluminum block 4.6-liter V8 to create a 5.8-liter V10 with a short deck that could fit under a Mustang’s hood.
They swapped it into a prototype that had been used to develop the 2000 Mustang Cobra R and, at the time, rated it for 426 hp and 400 lb-ft. Tests found it could run a quarter-mile in the 12s on street radials and 11s on DOT slicks and it became known as the Boss 351 V10.
“We did the V10 to inspire the company to get into the supercar segment, to compete with the Viper and Corvette,” Kevin Byrd, Research and Advanced Engines, Technical expert for engine architecture and design concepts and Supervisor for CAD and CAE, explained to Hot Rod magazine. “Another part of the company was doing the Ford GT, but it was not publicized, even within the company at the time. We hoped the two [V10 and Ford GT] could merge. So as it turns out, we built that Mustang not to really push doing a V10 Mustang, but more to inspire something more powerful.”
Ford never made a V10-powered production car, but kept the Boss 351 V10 in its collection, which has since become the Ford Heritage Fleet. Fleet manager Matt Korczyk recently had his team fully refurbish the car’s drivetrain.
“New electronics. A fresh look at systems that hadn’t been touched in decades. The goal wasn’t to make the car faster. It was to make sure future generations could see it, hear it, and experience it the way its creators intended,” Korczyk said. When it was ready, they strapped it to a dynamometer and the results were surprising.
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“When we fired the car up and rolled into the pull, everybody in the room stopped talking. The V10 has a sound all its own. It’s raw. Mechanical. It doesn’t sound like anything we’d build today,” Korczyk said.
It also churned out 510 hp at the wheels, which puts it close to 600 hp at the crank. That’s more than any naturally aspirated production Mustang in history.
Ford hasn’t talked about doing another V10, but Mustang V8s are here to stay, and supercharged versions are now available with 795 hp in the Mustang Dark Horse SC and 815 hp in the Mustang GTD.
