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A SUPERCHARGED MUSTANG FIT FOR THE KING OF SUPERCARS, SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN

- SCOTT NEWMAN

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN HAS HIS name written on two Ford Mustangs. One of them he drove to his third straight Supercars title this year. And then there’s this one – the really powerful one. The Scott McLaughlin Limited Edition by Herrod Performance, or SM17 for short, might have number plates and leather seats instead of sponsor decals and a roll cage, but it’s the best part of 100kW up on its circuit-dwelling sibling. The gulf in torque is even wider.

All in all, 578kW and 810Nm are sent to the rear wheels courtesy of a monster 3.0-litre supercharger nestled in the vee of the otherwise standard 5.0-litre Coyote V8. But what is an SM17 and how did it come about? The car’s creator, tuning legend Rob Herrod, has the answers. “When we did the Dick Johnson Limited Edition car we were going to offer a Dick Johnson and a Scott McLaughlin pack. And then with the R-Spec [program] going on, I said ‘It’s a bit hard to do a McLaughlin car, I’ve only got time to do 30 [Dick Johnson] cars.

“Wayne McLaughlin, who’s Scott’s father, and I hang out at Supercars rounds and he’s been on my back to do a car, so with the lad looking like winning his third championship we decided ‘let’s do a car’.” Left unsaid is that with McLaughlin moving Stateside to join Roger Penske’s IndyCar team next year, the SM17 was somewhat of a ‘now or never’ proposition. The final number of cars is still to be determined, but it looks like 30 will head across the ditch to McLaughlin’s New Zealand homeland and no more than 100 will remain in Australia. Each SM17 starts life as a standard Mustang GT with the transformation costing around $50,000 depending on the specific options fitted.