The Ford Mustang has been upped to 850 horsepower for a one-off special edition in honour of the late Carroll Shelby.

A group calling itself the Friends of Carroll Shelby, including Ford Motor Company, Shelby American, Ford Racing and many others have added a Ford Racing 4.0-litre Whipple supercharger to give the unique `Mustang Cobra' biblical performance.

Taking a wide-body 2013 Shelby GT500 as the base car, the collaborators have increased the standard 662-horsepower engine to more than 850.

To increase the chances of putting that power down without just spinning the rear wheels, the already bulky back tyres have been widened to 345-section high-performance monsters surrounding 13-inch wide wheels.

Ford Motor Company teamed up with Shelby American for several key components on the tribute car. Shelby American provided a specially designed bonnet, new rear wide-body kit to accommodate the new wheels and tyres, Shelby Wilwood brakes and new 20x13-inch rear and 20x10-inch front wheels.

The bodywork is finished in the same Guardsman Blue with Wimbledon White stripes that graced so many of the Cobra roadsters built in the 1960s.

"Even at 89 years of age, Carroll was an inspiration to us all," says Jim Farley, Ford's group vice president for sales and marketing. "This year marks the 50th anniversary of the original Shelby Cobra. The one-off car we have created represents the very idea he had about making the 2013 Shelby GT500 into a true Cobra."

In addition to the one-of-a-kind creation, Ford is also announcing a renamed road at its Product Development Center in Dearborn, Michigan. Cobra has been the consistent performance label as Shelby worked with Ford for most of the last 60 years, and Shelby was instrumental in the creation of Ford performance vehicles including Cobras, the GT40 and Mustangs since the mid-1960s.