PP0001
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Great point that you raised and prior to my departure I would like to pass along a few comments and thoughts about a few "Pre-Production" cars that I have experienced over the last many years which differ from the actual final product vehicles and suggest that some of my comments may be pertinent to the upcoming GT500.
I was very fortunate to purchase from Ford the first two Pilot Production 2012 Boss 302 Mustangs with "PP0001" being a Laguna Seca the first 2 seat car and "PP0002" being the first 4 seat car Boss 302.
These two Boss 302's were built in October of 2010 with the first regular production Boss 302's being released to the public some 4 months later which was late February 2011. One of the significant differences on these 2012 PP cars compared to the production cars was the exhaust system that was hand built on these PP cars compared to the regular production cars. The side exhaust underneath was totally fabricated by hand with the rear exhaust having a different color muffler and different material for exhaust tips. Of course the VIN series for these early cars were a separate series unto themselves. Only 12 PP cars were built for the 2012 MY and only 5 got away from the factory.
The Performance White 2013 Pilot Production car shown was "PP0004" and is the earliest known Pilot Production 2013 Boss 302 known to exist. With this car being #4 car it was produced with White air extractors on the hood but cars #5and #9 were also White cars but Ford decided to install Black air extractors on the hood for those 2 cars as an experiment and obviously did not like that look. There were 14 PP regular Boss 302's built for 2013 and 8 PP LS cars built for the 2013MY.
When it came to the two engines for the 2012 cars they came installed with numbers matching engines that were assembled back in late July 2010 which was some 3 months earlier than when these cars were assembled in Flat Rock with PP0001 being the only car hand assembled on Monday, October 25th and PP0002 being the first car assembled the following morning.
If you followed the evolution of "Project 747" as I did along with numerous meetings that I had with various personnel that worked for and with Dave Pericak the Chief Engineer for the Boss 302 project it was noted that the early horsepower rating that was released to the public came in at 440 HP after which a short time later the horsepower rating was then revised to 444 HP. From July 2010 until some 7 month later it was apparent that the engineering team continued to tweak and work on this high revving and strong low torque engine with the final horsepower results in February 2011 being certainly North of the advertised 444 HP but Ford elected to not change the official HP rating.
I had the opportunity to drive some of my Boss 302 cars back to back with a 2015 Mustang GT which had an advertised horsepower rating of 435 HP and without question there was a significant difference between the two cars with supposedly only a 9 HP difference. Average 0 to 60 and quarter mile times for the 2015 Mustang GT was 4.5 and 13.0 seconds respectively compared to 4.1 and 12.4 seconds for the Boss 302 therefore I suggest that the Boss 302 cars were underrated from a horsepower standpoint and that stems back to continual development over the last 7 months prior to production. I also came across numerous individuals that chassis dyno tested their stock 2012 Boss 302 engines with many of them coming away with between 400 and 415 RWHP which certainly indicates a flywheel horsepower well above the 444 advertised number. One individual actually got another 4 HP from utilizing the TracKey on his car and came away with 418 RWHP.
My point is that Ford engineers continued to develop more HP from the Boss engine during the last 7 months prior to the launch of the car and suggest that instead of the sitting around over the next 7 months until next Fall that the Ford engineers will do the same with the upcoming GT500 in spite of what a couple of other individuals on here may indicate.
My apologies for being so long winded but I hope that some of this information is interesting to some of you and wish you all the best going forward!
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