Saleen Releases Mustang Named After Awesome Road Racer

Saleen is starting up a Heritage Collection with the George Follmer edition Mustang, named after a successful road racer from the 1970s. George Follmer was known for his appearances in Formula One, Can-Am, and Le Mans, so this car should basically be like the cars from that type of racing, right?

In all fairness, Saleen does perform suspension and other handling modifications to the base Mustang, and honoring a great road racer like Follmer is never a Bad Thing. In case you're not familiar with his achievements, Follmer competed in the 1969-1971 Indianapolis 500, winning both the Trans-Am and the Can-Am Championship in 1972 (with the Can-Am in the crazy Porsche 917/10), managed to get on the podium in F1 despite only 13 starts, competed in Can-Am a few more times, managed three top-5 finishes in the NASCAR Winston Cup despite only 13 appearances, and came out of retirement in 1986 to race Le Mans, where he still managed a third overall finish.

Not too shabby, then.

The George Follmer edition 'Stang appears to be mostly a cosmetic upgrade over the already-existing Saleen 302, and is modeled after Follmer's 1969 Boss 302 Mustang race car. The Saleen 302 pumps out anywhere between 440 horses and 625 horses, according to Saleen's website, though Saleen says that the Follmer edition will have 470 horsepowers.

This Mustang aims to be the first of three cars in Saleen's Heritage Collection, with a Swede Savage edition Challenger:

And a Mark Donohue-edition Camaro, which has great big gold wheels:

Donohue was known for piloting the truly nuts 1500+ horsepower Porsche 917/30, so I think I'll just wait for that edition, thank you very much.

All photos credit Saleen