The 2007 Shelby GT500 Mustang and John Force’s Mustang Funny Car share a rich history of competing and winning in their respective motorsports.

The 1965 Shelby GT350 started on top right out of the gate, showing its taillamps to the competition on America’s road courses. At the hands of such drivers as Jerry Titus, Mark Donahue and Bob Johnson, the GT350 took five of the six Sports Car Club of America division titles that year and netted Johnson a national championship.

That same year, driver Bill Lawton added several trophies to his collection behind the wheel of the Tasca Ford-sponsored Factory Experimental (A/FX) Mustang, his biggest win coming at the 1965 Winternationals at Pomona, Calif.

Forty-one years later, Mustangs are still making racing history. Carroll Shelby, the man behind the GT350 has, once again, teamed up with Ford Motor Company and the Special Vehicle Team (SVT) to bring the world the most powerful street Mustang ever. The 2007 Shelby GT500 packs 500 horses of supercharged V-8 under its aluminum hood and comes dressed in pure Shelby splendor. The GT500’s rear suspension design has been validated on the track by Ford Racing on the FR500C Mustangs that run in the Grand-Am Cup series, a class of road racing for production-based cars.

Competing against the best from Germany and Japan, a Mustang FR500C won its first race in the 2005 season opener at Daytona International Speedway. The Mustang went on to dominate the season and clinch the championship.

Lawton’s altered-wheelbase racer morphed into the carbon fiber-bodied hot rod of 13-time National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) Funny Car champion John Force. Force’s Mustang is the fastest on the planet , clocking a record-qualifying run of 4.664 seconds at 329.91 mph in the quarter-mile at the 2006 Winternationals in Pomona in February. And Tasca Ford, who had left the NHRA as a sponsor many years ago, is back as associate sponsor on Force’s car.

While many a Mustang aficionado aspires to someday own a car like the GT500, few could muster the courage to climb behind the wheel of Force’s Mustang. Funny Car drivers look like astronauts in seven-layer Nomex suits and full-face helmets. That comparison isn’t so far-fetched. Straddling a single-speed transmission that’s covered in a ballistic blanket to contain any shrapnel should the tranny let go during a run, Force sits behind the 8.2-liter V-8 that makes 8,000 horsepower and 7,000 foot-pounds of torque, launching the car from a standing start with a lateral acceleration force of 6 g’s.

The huge V-8 runs on a mixture of 85 percent nitromethane and 15 percent alcohol, burning about 15 gallons of fuel per quarter-mile run (including the burnout and staging). The burnout (spinning the rear tires) is done to heat the massive, 18-inch “slicks,” giving the car maximum grip at launch. G-forces aside, it’s not unusual for these “5-second hand grenades” to come apart at the end of a quarter-mile run, showering the driver with hot fluid and engulfing him or her in flames. It’s not a sport for the faint of heart.