Gary Patterson, president of Shelby American Inc, speaks to Autocar about UK plans, mixing old with new and what lies ahead for the performance-led Ford tuner.
What are your plans for the UK market?
“We’re looking to do a lot more business in the UK. It’s clearly a market that has some real excitement for Shelby: it has embraced the Mustang Bullitt, which shows that the market for speciality V8 Ford Mustangs there is very strong. Everybody wants a V8 if you are getting a muscle car from America. We love V8s and we love boost: for 2019 the Shelby Super Snake has more than 800bhp and is emissions legal on pump fuel. We also think that the new Shelby GT, with 480bhp and Ford Performance-tailored suspension, has great potential as a muscle car that can be driven every day.”
How would you characterise a modern Shelby vehicle?
“I would say it’s about balanced performance – a good blend of straight-line [performance], handling and braking. Since the 2007 Super Snake, we’ve created a look and feel for all the vehicles through the signature front fascia, bonnet, wheels and stripe. When you see one from 50 yards away, you know it’s a Shelby. There are a lot of people out there doing things to Mustangs – Roush, Saleen and others – but we want to make sure that we’re not just stickers and scoops, that we have a lot of content in our cars.”
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After Brexit...........
After an hard brexit, UK adopting WTO rules, tariffs on American imported cars will fall to 5%!!
Shelby could be out selling "M" models & AMG. We'll all be buying American because we won't be able to afford German anymore.
EU Tariff
What's stopping American built cars coming over, a 20% tariff. Until this is removed cars like the Model 3 will always struggle, unfortunatly the German car industry will never allow it bacause they don't want to see a repeat of what Tesla has done to BMW Series 3/4 etc in the US
xxxx wrote:
As per usual, ad nauseum, you do NOT do any background checks. NOTHING is stopping American built cars coming over...simply demand is limited and can be satisfied by either personal import or paying a firm to do this. You have a command of language that would be a FAIL in middle primary school..."bacause"?...lack of correct grammar, virtually no punctuation, lack of coherent thought and no writing skill. You are a WINNER!!!. TwIT, the w is silent, as you should be.