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As many have said, these cars are close, it comes down to the driver. Look at the Pirelli World Challenge, Andrew Aquilante campaigns a 2013 Boss 302 and in a few races has made others with better cars look bad.
For those not as old as me, this has been a classic battle since the Camaro was released in 1967 and historically, GM has always one upped Ford in this category, but its a constant battle that I enjoy. Ford will come out with the GT500, Chevy will one up them with the Z28. Its only in this last generation Mustang that Ford finally gets it, for years they catered to the drag racing crowd by refusing to go to an IRS when they easily could have. The 2005 Mustang was loosely based on the Ford DEW platform, which was an IRS platform, although heavily redesigned for the Mustang. Ford also made a big mistake switching to overhead cam motors. They thought they could do the "modular" thing and have a whole family of engines based off of the same tooling, as well as most of the mod motors were designed for front wheel drive applications. They found out quickly that GM and Chrysler were able to make plenty of horsepower and fuel mileage staying with pushrod motors, but unfortunately their path was set at that point as they had abandoned pushrod motors. An OHC motor is great for high revving applications, but its tough to get low end torque out of them, especially back in the late 90s early 2000's. Its easier now with the electronics, VVT to do it. Then there's the size and weight, OHC V8's are wide and heavy, unless you're making them all aluminum, which is expensive.
Still, with all of that, Ford has made a very good product in the GT350. I seriously considered buying one but couldn't get past the dealer BS. I'm in the Twin Cities in Minnesota and had dealers with the cars locked up in their showroom where I couldn't even sit in them, let alone drive them. The only way they would let me drive one is if I bought it. Yet I could go to a Chevy dealer and test drive a ZL1, Z06 without question. Mind you I make a very good living and am old enough to where a salesman knows I'm not jerking his chain or wanting to go for a joy ride, that I am a serious buyer. And then add on top of it the dealer markup on the GT350, forget about the GT350R.
At the end of the day the ZL1 is simply a better car when you look at the experience as a whole, what you get for the money and the buying experience. For the money guys are paying for a GT350R, you would be way ahead buying a Corvette Z06.
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