Test-driving the 2010 Ford Shelby GT500

Cars

Despite torrential rain over most of the test, the Shelby GT 500 proved itself a ferocious, great-looking machine.

Craig Ruttle Bloomberg News

Craig Ruttle Bloomberg News

Any ride’s a sweet ride when it’s a warm, dry summer day and the open road ahead is traffic-free. My 2010 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 test, however, took place on a relentlessly soggy 3-day weekend, during which time the Gods laughed at the journalist waiting impatiently for a break from never-ending vats of water hemorrhaging from the skies, that he might properly test drive and photograph a 540-horsepower car.

“Car?” Please. A Civic is a “car.”

This Shelby GT500 is a massively amped-up version of Ford’s iconic Mustang, courtesy of the company’s “SVT”, or Special Vehicle Team. It was specially engineered for lovers of the brand who wanted something unique, powerful and stylish for a reasonable amount of money. In this case, that meant a $46,325 sticker for the Coupe tester and $51,325 for the convertible version.

Not chump change even in 2010, naturally, but the price tag was nowhere near its American high-performance brothers. This is a pumped-up American muscle car designed to get you where you’re going in a hurry, and look great doing it, rain be hanged.

A cyber Cobra coils up on the center console screen when you spark up the car. Your steering wheel’s a sensuous leather and suede combo and the seats are way more comfy than stock Mustangs, featuring a unique and cool blood-red and midnight black ridges with coiled Cobras embroidered into them. The backseat’s useless except for groceries and a dog or two. The roofline hangs a bit low, slightly intruding on the driver’s sight, but you adapt.

You gaze out over a hood extractor that relieves excess heat from the engine, and a supercharged and intercooled 5.4-liter dual overhead cam V-8, producing 510 foot-pounds of torque, aims and shoots you where you want to be, when you want to be there.

Saturday’s ride took me, windshield wipers shredding, to the artists’ community of Nyack, NY. A screeching start on a straightaway wasn’t to be, nor a spirited rounding of a corner of a bucolic road, nor a wicked acceleration to legal speed limits and beyond. It was simply too wet out, and when it’s wet, a car this powerful is more or less tamed.

But the 2010 GT500’s joys aren’t just engine-driven.

As Sunday arrived and the skies continued to water down my good time, enough was enough. I was going to Drive My Car. Heading 50 miles north out of Manhattan, I leaned on it and found the twin-disc clutch on my six-speed manual transmission greatly enhanced from base Mustangs I’ve tested and the larger brakes, made of copper and fiberglass to make them more robust, stopping me instantly upon a touch of the brake despite the wet.

As I came to a sign reading “Fahnstock State Park”, the rain stopped at last. I turned off the highway and kept an eye out, thinking this park would provide decent photo backdrops.

My attention was drawn suddenly to an enormous plaster Buddha at the bottom of a long, grassy hill. I shut the car, killed “Heartbreaker”, and beheld the Chuang Yen Monastery of Carmel, New York.

It was as if providence had ordained it. I lived in India for five months and I am drawn to silence, meditation and awakeness despite my love for roaring, spitting engines, large doses of caffeine and Slayer.

Here was the physical juxtaposition of a for-real temple, with statues of Gautama Buddha’s disciples on either side of the path leading upward to its mighty doors, and my Mustang GT500, representing The Things Of This World, the objects some humans expend much energy to earn the money to buy, the car that won’t make you happy but looks great in your garage and feels even better on the road.

And a lesson – mother nature doesn’t care what you’re driving.

This article was first published on forbes.com.