AmericanMuscle, one of the world’s leading sellers of aftermarket Mustang parts and accessories, was recently on the hunt for Mustangs in the area of its Malvern, Pennsylvania, HQ to take part in the first Mustang Mayhem competition on May 31st. After choosing six cars out of a stack of entries, each monster Mustang was strapped down to AmericanMuscle’s own dyno for 30 minutes of testing and tuning. And they got it all on video.

If you’ve spent any amount of time modifying your Mustang, then chances are you’ve probably ordered aftermarket parts from American Muscle, the leading aftermarket Mustang parts retailer. They certainly know their stuff, plus they can put on one hell of a car show!

Our year of high-performance Mustangs winds down with the Performance Racing Industry trade show. While it's not the actual end of the year it's a symbolic punctuation on the year. It also presents a crystal ball into the future of hardcore performance gear for the coming year.

For our yearly American Muscle King of the Street competition, we usually choose 10 to 12 cars. Our hope is—and it has been true to form in the past—that if a couple cars fall out (and they will), we’ll still have at least 10 cars competing. In 2012, the pre-competition attrition was at an all-time high. We picked our usual 12 cars and waited to hear the fallout. Of course, we heard from a couple leading up to the competition that they wouldn’t be able to make it. But when we arrived at Beech Bend Raceway’s amusement park area for the start of the competition, we were down a few more cars for a dismal six contestants. To say we were disappointed would be a huge understatement.

Last week we held our second-annual 5.0 West Open House event at our Source Interlink Media Tech Center in El Segundo, California. Mustang and Ford enthusiasts from all over Southern California and beyond were looking forward to the Fabulous Fords Forever show at Knott’s Berry Farm and we had the perfect set of pre-game activities last Friday (April 19) to help kick off their fun Ford weekend properly!

It may seem hard to believe, but the 49th birthday of the Ford Mustang just passed this week, specifically April 17th. As if that wasn’t special enough, another milestone was accomplished at Ford’s Flat Rock Assembly Plant in Michigan -- the one-millionth Mustang rolled off of the assembly line at the automaker’s state-of-the-art Auto Alliance International plant.

While a good portion of our event coverage is predictable, every once in a while we're encouraged to play nice with our sister magazines. Your author received orders in January 2012: "You're going on Drag Week this year!" This directive was handed down from on high, so my schedule for September 9-14, 2012, was cast in stone.

Put away that winter gear, dig out your T-shirt with the catchy racing slogan, and prepare for the 15th NMRA Anniversary Tour! Get out to the racetrack this season and you'll behold the most magnificent array of Ford hot rods in the country, on-track and in the UPR Products All-Ford Auto Show & Shine.

Following in the burnout marks of 5.0 Mustang pioneers like Brian Wolfe, Craig Radovich, Nitrous Pete Misinsky, and Stormin' Norman is a huge undertaking. However, just like those shootouts organized by Super Ford magazine back in the day, the current crop of Mustang pioneers are making their own mark in the hobby. These days guys such as Adam Browne of Revolution Automotive, Justin Burcham from JPC Racing, and Nelson Whitlock from Evolution Performance are paving the way for Coyote performance.

Longtime readers-and certainly any Canadian quarter-mile fans in the crowd-may well remember Joe DaSilva's cross-border exploits back in the formative years of Pro 5.0 racing. The immensely likeable, high-energy racer from the Toronto area originally campaigned under the J&P Performance banner (together with brother Paul) before branching off onto his own with DaSilva Racing, a speed shop that is going strong to this day.

We always look forward to getting out into the world and seeing Mustangs in their element. It's always a great time to get out, see cars, and talk to enthusiasts. Events are great, but there are always a few that receive special attention on our calendars. For your scribe, the top event on the calendar has become Mustang Week.

We don't attend many pure car shows. We tend to focus on multi-faceted events blending auto-crossing, drag racing, open-tracking, and showing. However, one dedicated show we make sure to mark on our calendar is www.AmericanMuscle.com's annual car show.

The NMRA/NMCA Super Bowl of Street Legal Drag Racing is a special event. Not only are racers from both the NMRA and the NMCA on the same property, they also face off against each other. So once each respective winner from each NMRA and NMCA class has been crowned, racers from the two different sanctioning bodies square off to see who gets a Nitto Tire Diamond Tree ring. You see, instead of winning as an individual, the Super Bowl is a team sport, meaning members of the winning team receive the Nitto rings whether they won their individual match-up or not.

This year marked the 38th annual Mid America Ford and Shelby Nationals event in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So it was about bloody time we finally got around to attending. What we experienced over a few hot, humid days in middle of June was likely one of the biggest, best organized, and most enthusiastic gatherings of the Ford and Shelby faithful on the 2012 calendar.

Our continental weather is such that outdoor automotive events have to be shoehorned into just a few short months of the year, at least in the more northern jurisdictions. Up in Pennsylvania, they celebrate the beginning of car season in major fashion with the Carlisle Ford Nationals, typically scheduled just as the calendar flips to June. This is an all-round gathering of FoMoCo faithful that combines a huge show area with an equally expansive vendor midway, and a gigantic swap meet. It's garnished by some eighth-mile drag racing, auto-crossing, a burnout contest, a bikini contest, and a Saturday evening cruise that ends up taking over Carlisle's downtown core.

Unlike any other race on the calendar, the NMRA's Milan, Michigan, dustup packs its power into two days. This year, due to the NASCAR event on June 17, Father's Day, Milan was a two-day event taking place June 15 and 16--a Friday/Saturday event instead of the usual Friday/Sunday routine.

When Billy Moose finally quit working in NASCAR, it was good to get off the road and find some normalcy in life. Even so, it left a void that wasn't easy to fill. Moose had always had a passion for cars--and working in racing was a good fix for that. Yet, finding another creative outlet was the order of the day if he was going to find happiness in semi-retirement.

The sight and sound of a pair of Mustangs blasting down the quarter-mile in the heat of NMRA competition is a spectacle that every hard-core enthusiast needs to experience in their lifetime. When said Ponies are the wild, crazy and wickedly fast rides that star in the sanction's premier heads-up classes, you really don't want to miss it.

The Atlanta area is ideal for a drag race. In a world all about location, location, location, Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, Georgia, might as well be in the middle of it all. It makes sense for the NMRA and the NMCA to come together for one big race in this Mustang hot bed.

When the U.S. Congress passed a resolution citing July 13 at National Collector Car Appreciation Day, the powers that be a parent company Source Interlink Media decided to host an open house at all three of its editorial locations—Tampa, Florida, Irvine, California, and Los Angeles—to celebrate.

It's nice to have things in life that you can count on. When the racing season finally ends after the PRI show, the performance world takes a deep breath over the holiday season. There seems like so much time to work on those cars over the offseason, but once we hit the new year, time seems to fly by, and the first race of the season is suddenly upon us.

Over the years, our travel season has expanded beyond the traditional races and car shows to include a second season. This is a season of trade shows. These extravaganzas allow us to wean ourselves off of the performance world by teasing what will spin our tires in the new year.

A decade has come and gone. That sounds like a long time, but it seems like only yesterday when we held that first Mustang Week in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The staff talks all the time about what really makes Mustang Week stand apart from all the other events. Participants, sponsors, and vendors all say the same thing. What makes Mustang Week different is the overall feeling you get throughout the week.