Before you go dropping money into a mustang, you need to learn a LOT more about what it takes to make them handle well for autox.

The front suspension geometry is pretty much horrible. It suffers from severe camber gain under compression. The only way to combat that and make it turn is to allign it with a large amount of static camber. That's a bandaid fix at best. It hurts straightline braking and makes turn in feel very soft (basicly you're running on the inside edge of the tire whenever the wheels are near straight so there is very little contact patch). And you'll still plow and eat tires.

You will not be competative at autox. The only real cure to the front handling is a k member and tubular lower control arms. That will fix the geometry (but at the same time, you'll be bumped to C Prepared and that's an difficult place to think about being competative in anything that still resembles a mustang)

The chassis is not rigid. Subframes help some. Through the floor subframes help more. A cage helps alot.

You'll see similar issues with road racing and although I don't really know much about drift setups, I would imagine you'll have problems there as well. (The front is supposed to stick and not plow, right?)


The 2.3 is a great powerplant, but I think it's better suited to drag racing than autox/road racing. It's only about 100lbs less than a 5.0. Granted, I don't know a lot about it, I'd opt for a naturally aspirated setup over turbo for autox. The lag (even if it's short) will hurt your times alot. When road racing, you have a ton more cooling issues.

That's my $.02. Take it for what it's worth. I'm sure others can step in with more info about the 2.3 vs the 5.0 (dave?)