Black and Silver Is the New White and Blue for the 2024 Shelby Super Snake; Take or Pass?

A little under a month ago, Shelby American Inc. announced the Super Snake variant of the Ford Mustang S650, the seventh-generation iteration of the primordial pony car. Since January 27, 1965, Shelby and Ford have been intimately linked by an iconically rowdy family of performance automobiles bearing the seal of approval from the spirited Texan racer. That’s when the first Shelby Mustang GT350 was revealed to the world. To this day, Carroll Shelby's name remains synonymous with Ford performance.

Sixty years after Lee Iacocca entrusted Carroll with the Mustang transmutation into a performance vehicle, the Shelby name still spurs tire smoke and lateral acceleration like day one. When Ford lifted the veils from the seventh-gen Mustang last year, it brought a new pony to Planet Piston. It opened the dams of dreams for high-performance FoMoCo diehards.

Shelby didn’t wait long to up the ante and announce the most powerful version of their Mustang spin-off, the 830+ hp supercharged model based on the S650 Mustang. The fourth-generation Coyote 5.0-liter V8 gets a Whipple 3.0-liter supercharger to boost its output (pun intended) from 500 hp in the factory Dark Horse apparel to the number above.

Some say this car is just a GT with a blower and that there’s really not much about it except its price tag, calling it absurd for what it offers (a supercharger, suspension, and a body kit). That’s one point of view, and I’m not advocating the proverbial lapidation for expressing opinions.

Then there are the supporters who go as far as claiming that this is the only S650 worth spending money on. To each their own – tire smoke is impervious to personal preference. After all, the customer is always right, but only in matters of taste.

And since we hit that spot, how about this proposal from the American tuner? An Iconic Silver paint job with black stripes. The customary trio of longitudinal ribbons running from the front lip to the rear diffuser is present on each of the 250 examples of the 2024 Shelby Super Snake. Shelby announced on its website that it would offer six base colors with contrasting stripes, but who’s to say that’s the end of things?

I know you can’t see the outside of your car when driving it, but how about onlookers, bystanders, and eyewitnesses? They are entitled to know what is that car that’s roaring supercharged tunes as it lays rubber and puffs tire smoke out of habit.

The Super Snake triple stripe – one wide, two very thin flanking it on each side – is sign enough (but there are fender emblems, too). This Silver with Black is not among those six combinations on Shelby’s lineup. There’s the silver-with-gray version, but this new proposal is much richer in contrasting accents, sending some powerful Eleanor vibes a quarter-mile in all directions.

If you were to make a choice based on chromatic traits alone (thus ignoring the carbon wing hovering over the ducktail spoiler or other performance-inducing alterations), would you take one in this combo? Or would it best suit the Shelby heritage to have the signature blue striping over the Silver?

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