When the 2015 Mustang was revealed along with its specs, old school guys were going nuts over the fact that it will be equipped with independent rear suspension. This is a boon to the corner carving guys (although the Boss 302 Laguna Seca with a solid axle is a holy terror on the road course) but the drag strip guys were weeping in their beer because IRS isn’t typically the way you want to be going on the strip. Yes, the Camaro has it and guys are making it work, but IRS with its moving parts, too many universal joints, and complexity will never been seen by drag race dudes as the “right” thing. We surmised in a piece that’ll run in an old school print magazine that Ford would never offer the Cobra Jet with IRS and like Chevrolet would be sending its factory drag machines out the door with a solid axle in it. Like Carnac the Magnificent, we were right and word is coming from Ford that they’ll have a stick axle in them.

The better news is that Ford will send its bodies in white out the door with a bolt in solid axle along with the Cobra Jets. To us, that means Ford Racing will have a bolt in solid axle kit available at some point for racers who want to run a new Mustang but don’t want to work with the wheel-hoppin’ IRS setup. Who will make it and how much it will cost os anyone’s guess at this point but we have to believe they have or are in serious R&D mode with it at this point because they are going to be fielding Cobra Jet orders in the none to distant future along with orders for bodies in white for racers who want to build their own race cars from scratch based off of a 2015 Mustang. Supposedly all this stuff will be publicly announced at PRI next year.

One of the other interesting things we saw at PRI was a new drag racing tire from M&H. The tire is designed for use on IRS vehicles and it is actually made with two degrees of camber built into it to compensate for   the geometry of the rear end as it squats. This is the obvious tough thing about IRS outside of the more complex and theoretically weaker mechanical layout. While it isn’t impossible to be quick on IRS (Mark Carlyle for example) most guys don’t want the hassle of figuring it out on the strip, so the solid axle is their jam.

Will anyone be bolting solid axles into their street cars? We know of one Camaro owner locally who spent a mint to put a stick axle under his 2010 Camaro because he had blown up the factory IRS being violent so there may be a market, however small for street guys to ditch the IRS and put an old school axle under the car. Would you do it?

Here’s one of the places we have heard this story rolling out from. Either there was a chatty and creative Ford Racing employee at PRI or this is coming for 2015