2016 Yahoo Autos Epic Ride Of The Year: Ford Mustang Shelby GT350

Through Wednesday, Yahoo Autos will unveil the 2016 Ride of the Year awards, our picks for the best of the best among new cars and SUVs. Here’s the second, our Epic Ride of the Year.

The car that brings the neighborhood kids running; the machine you brag about to your friends. The one that replaces caffeine in shaking that morning coma—the car that makes you feel alive.

When we tested 22 of the most important new models of 2016, searching for our Yahoo Autos Epic Ride of the Year, these were the traits we were looking for. And while the competition was hot, one vehicle stood tall above the rest, delivering a driving experience reminiscent of the first time you fell in love.

The word “epic” is often thrown around loosely. But the 2016 Ford Shelby GT350 Mustang truly defines the term. It’s a car that ensures every fiber in your body tingles before you’ve even turned it on. And when you do, grown adults giggle like pre-pubescent youths, its 526 horsepower, 5.2-liter flat-plane crank V-8 gurgling and popping like a tectonic shift capable of demolishing an entire continent.

You wouldn’t notice if did. The GT350 captivates, in a way few modern cars can. But the Shelby didn’t have it all its own way, reminding us that we live in a glorious era for the automotive enthusiast.

General Motors has been on a tear. The Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 won our Performance Car of the Year 12 months ago and the year before that the Corvette Stingray took our overall prize. For this year’s competition, of our five top contenders for Epic Ride of the Year, three were GM products—the 2016 Chevy Camaro and the 2016 Cadillac ATS-V and wild CTS-V (the other favorite being the Lexus RC-F).

Ford hasn’t matched GM’s capability on the racetrack in recent years—not because its incapable, but because it hasn’t had a model that really demanded it. Cars like the Focus ST and Fiesta ST, while fantastic, require a different level of tuning to a track-ready monster like a Corvette Z06, and the Shelby GT500 was more straight-line maestro than on-track killer. With the return of the fabled Ford GT and a shot once again at Le Mans glory, Ford’s path has now changed. Its muscle car lineup, too, is evolving to one with more focus on lap times. The GT350R, then, is the Camaro Z/28 fighter, a car that’s sole purpose is to excel on the circuit; the base GT350 is somewhere in between—a more polished and improved version of the fabulous Boss 302.

But the new Camaro SS ($45,085 as tested) surpassed our expectations. Now based on the Cadillac ATS platform, with its previously numb steering well and truly fixed, dynamically the Chevy is leagues above its base V-8 competition. Plus it sounds positively menacing. When Chevy unleashes its ultra-high performance Camaros on this new platform in the future, watch out.