Beginning next year, if you are so inclined, you'll be able to walk into your local Ford dealership, pass by the showroom, step up to the parts counter and order from the Ford Racing catalog a Trans Am spec Boss 302R priced at $79,000 or a Grand Am spec Boss 302R1 at $129,000. The car is considered a racing part and ordered as such. The Boss is a track-only race car with a maximum run in 2010 of only 50 cars and while it shares a great deal with the factory Mustang, it's heavily modified to take the place of the Ford Racing FR500C.


It takes guts to put your untested new engine straight into a race car, but Ford is doing just that. At the heart of the Boss 302R is the all-new aluminum 5.0-liter V8, though it's been stripped of the superflous gadgety, equiped with a high-rise intake manifold, race exhaust, and data aquisition systems. At the corners the car is fitted with adjustable Koni coilovers and Brembo four-pison calipers over slotted rotors, 18x10 BBS wheels are shod in racing slicks.

The car is equipped with a 25 gallon fuel cell slickly integrated into the trunk with quick-fuel connections, a multi-point fire supression system, race seats with driver restraint netting. It's body is fully seam-welded and augmented by an FIA-certified roll cage. Any thought of this car as anything but a VIN-free race car is eliminated when you open the door, a plastic skin stretched over a lightweight door frame, side intrusion beams being completely superflous when a race cage is installed.