Here’s a little fun fact for you: If you get into a violent car wreck, it really doesn’t matter what sort of vehicle you’re driving. Because if emergency workers need to get you out of that car, no matter how nice it is, they’re cutting it apart to retrieve you. They’ll use saws, the Jaws of Life, hydraulic jacks, and axes in the most horror-show ways possible on your ride until they can free you from the wreckage and not think twice about it. Faced with a recent extraction from a 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500, the Dearborn, Michigan Fire Department, local to the Ford Motor Company’s headquarters, might have hesitated to perform their duty, but that’s only because there wasn’t actually anyone in this 760-hp muscle car.
The car was being used to train firefighters on car extraction processes, as first reported by Road & Track. In short, this Mustang was being cut the hell up by a litany of chainsaw-massacre-style tools. No life was at risk. The car could have lived. As the fire department noted in a Facebook post: “It almost broke our hearts to cut up this 2020 Ford Shelby Cobra [sic] GT 500 test vehicle.”
Simply put, Ford had already doomed this GT500 to the crusher. Automakers often destroy unsellable pre-production vehicles to ensure their non-production parts don’t make it out into scrap yards or resellers. So, this specific Mustang Shelby GT500 was going to die one way or another—why not let it go out in style, and with the potential to help sharpen rescue workers’ skills that might someday save a life? Ford must’ve thought just that, too. Why else would it have donated this hot Mustang to the local fire department to meet such a grisly end?
