Hennessey Streetfighter Ford Mustang GT: Hot Tuner 2016

KPM Motorpsort has been a fixture of Hot Tuner since the very first time we assembled the country’s leading tuners and let them loose in the interests of science.

Hot Tuner 2016 is brought to you by Valvoline SynPower

Straight away, KPM impressed us. You may remember that big, burly, ever-so-purple VE Commodore that turned up at Hot Tuner 1 to scare the kids and outrage pensioners. So, yeah, MOTOR and KPM have some history.

This time, KPM was back with a Mustang. Now I know the Mustang is the big must-have at the moment. It’s fast, it looks great, it’s new and it’s the future for fans of Blue Oval performance now that the local shop has shut its doors for the last time. But when KPM has finished with a brand-new Mustang GT, the results are not likely to be for the faint-hearted.

And they weren’t. In fact, it reeled off a 405kW run on the dyno, suggesting that every one of the advertised 700 horsepower might, in fact, be present and accounted for. For some reason, it didn’t suffer as badly as the other Mustang (the Herrod car) from the crook fuel with which we unwittingly brimmed each car, but KPM’s own dyno testing suggests the engine is good for even more than 450kW, making that same 710-neddie claim seem a bit shy to us. So it was definitely in with a shout here.

The modifications are the guts of what’s called the Hennessey by Streetfighter HSF670 package. According to KPM honcho David Roscio, the Hennessey gear got the nod simply because that’s what his customer (and the understanding owner of the car) ordered.

“It’s a customer car and the customer wanted a Hennessy package,” Roscio explained. “So that’s what we’ve built him. But using a Mustang as the base makes lots of sense. It’s simple and clean in its looks and it’s effective in its output. I really like the simplicity of the presentation. And it’s a straight forward package… it does what it says on the box.

“The other thing worth mentioning is that our package is fully ADR-compliant, and there’s a three-year, Australia-wide KPM driveline warranty.”

So what do you get? At the heart of the kit is a 2.9-litre supercharger, higher-flow fuel injectors, Iridium spark plugs, a cat-back stainless exhaust system, HPE engine tune, and a set of bonnet struts (which, arguably, the Mustang should have had all along).

The price of $15,890 includes the installation, all the gaskets and fluids, the badging and under-bonnet identification plate and, of course, that all-important ADR-compliance certificate to keep in the glovebox for when you-know-who wants a chat.

If you have a bit more to spend, you could pony up for the option package which gets you a Hennessey 132mm throttle-body, Hennessey airbox, Streetfighter oil breathers, ceramic-coated headers, high-flow cats, lowered suspension and an even bigger injectors. All that will add another $8000 to the price tag.

But as seen here, that lot will get you into the realms of KPM’s claimed 3.8-second 0-100 time and, in perfect circumstances, a quarter mile in a mid-11. Like we said at the start of this, we didn’t actually get a representative time out of the KPM ’Stang, but seat of the pants says a lazy 12, with very definite 11-second potential.

WORKSHOP
car: 2016 Ford Mustang GT
who: Streetfighter
where: 2 Dunorlan Road, Edwardstown, South Australia
how long: Since 1996
contact: (08) 8299 9998
Email: orders@streetfighter.com.au
Web: www.streetfighter.net.au

SPECIFICATIONS
Drive: rear-wheel
Engine: 4951cc V8, DOHC, 32v, supercharger
Gearbox: 6-speed manual
Suspension: struts, anti-roll bar (f); multi-links, anti-roll bar (r)
Brakes: 380mm ventilated discs, 6-piston calipers (f); 330mm ventilated discs, single-piston calipers (r)
Wheels: 20 x 9.5-inch (f); 20 x 10.5-inch (r)
Tyres: 285/30 ZR20 (f); 305/30 ZR20 Pirelli P Zero

PARTS AND PRICES
Supercharger kit: $15,890
Exhaust: $4935
Handling pack: $2732
Wheels/Tyres: $7340
Total mods cost: $30,897
Vehicle cost(mSrp): $57,490
Total cost: $88,387