One other difference was obvious, and that was in the exhaust note. Both SCs sounded equally pleasant, with a nice X-pipe rip under acceleration, but the '02 exhibited the common Mustang-with-an-aftermarket-exhaust drone, particularly in the 1,800- to 2,200-rpm band. This, to me at least, gets really old, really fast, on any sort of highway trip. The '03 car, by comparison, was blessedly quiet under 80-mph cruise conditions, allowing normal conversation or actually hearing the whole tonal range of the sound system. Chalk this up to a revised muffler design this year.
We can't leave the topic of sound without one further observation: The new P Zero Nero Pirellis fitted to both our test SCs went about their oh-so-sticky business more quietly than the older-generation P Zeros that were on the Extreme. Yet, based on our kamikaze attack on the Tail of the Dragon, they give up absolutely nothing in grip, taking everything we dared throw at them without even so much as a squeal or slide. Given our duck-friendly weather, we also had plenty of opportunity to experience their prodigious wet grip.
On early Saleens, the price for that performance was a race-hard ride that limited the car's appeal as daily transportation on anything but the most velvety of roads. Not so with the current generation, which combines quick reflexes and athletic handling with surprisingly supple long-distance comfort, in the true gran tourismo tradition. How would it do on a racetrack? We haven't a clue, nor do we care, because the Saleen Mustang isn't a race car. It's a high-performance road car-one that will be equally at home doing slot-car duty on some canyon road, swallowing hundreds of miles of freeway in a single gulp, or just profiling down Rodeo Drive.
I'll have to try and get my hands on one more often.
Pirelli Invades North AmericaPerformance-tire giant Pirelli has recently opened its first North American manufacturing facility. We don't know whether it was through sheer coincidence or a corporate sense of humor that the Italian-based firm chose Rome, Georgia, as the locationfor this leading-edge-technology plant that also encompasses its North American headquarters.
Tire production in Rome will use Pirelli's revolu-tionary new Modular Integrated Robotized System, a highly automated design and manufacturing process that is more efficient and much more flexible than "old-fashioned" tire production. Rather than be batch-processed in a multitude of phases, each tire built in the MIRS facility will be handed from robot to robot, and go from raw material to finished product in as little as 72 minutes. Tires built the old way could take as long as six days because of various storage phases along the way. Processing phases using MIRS are, in fact, reduced from the traditional 14 to just 3
Maybe most important to Mustang owners is that the only tire currently being built at this world-class Georgia facility is the equally world-class P Zero Nero (aside from sounding catchy, nero is the Italian word for black). This latest member of the P Zero family is intended to provide the ultimate in grip, under both wet and dry conditions. The best accolade we can offer is that it got us safely through the Tail of the Dragon-no mean feat when you have auto writers playing tag in someone else's cars.