One thousand brake horsepower. One thousand. One thousand! It’s an obscene number of gee-gees to put into a road car, and an unprecedented number for me. Even Jenson Button didn’t have that many as he sped his way to become Formula One’s latest world champion. In fact, he had 200bhp less.

And, to put it into even better perspective, the majority of cars on our roads struggle to produce 200bhp at all, so this orange mass of Mustang muscle is a very rare monstrosity. Only Bugatti’s 250mph Veyron can boast a near-identical figure, though at £1.25m it is 15 times more expensive than the ’Stang. I’m no virgin when it comes to power. Over the years I’ve been in a Jaguar jet fighter plane and driven an F1 car, experiencing their phenomenal g-forces and neck-snapping twists and turns. But nothing I’ve experienced comes close to the thrill of burying the throttle of this Mustang.

The company behind its fabulous fiendishness is Ultimate Bad Boy. It’s based in America but is owned by Tim Porter, a Brit, who wanted to show the likes of Shelby and Saleen that a Limey can beef up motors just as well as a Yank. Heck, even the joint forces of Ford and Shelby can muster only 500bhp with their offering of the same car.

Porter reckons his creation is the world’s fastest street-legal Mustang. At the heart is an aluminium 5.4-litre engine from Ford’s GT supercar, but with one of the biggest superchargers you can buy this side of a drag strip. It furnishes a vast amount of torque as well as power — 825 lb ft of the stuff. A Lamborghini Murciélago can manage a mere 487 lb ft.

The Mustang has a 0-60mph time of an eye-watering 3.8sec and its exhaust note is sonorous enough to make a nun blaspheme. If you don’t fit extra silencers, it’ll snarl its way to 124 decibels at full chat, which, the experts say, poses the risk of permanent hearing loss if you are regularly exposed to it for more than a minute.

Unbelievably, the engine would cope with a further 500bhp but the chassis wouldn’t. As it is, the 1,000bhp has to be fed to the rear wheels in three parts. From a standstill you get 500bhp until you snatch second gear, when you’re given some more, before you get access to the whole juicy lot in third gear, once the accelerator’s wide open.

When parked, and silent, this car still manages to look predatory. The 18-inch magnesium wheels, which have been tested to destruction, are wrapped in rubber with so few grooves cut into it that they’d be at home on a racetrack. The bonnet clips actually are from a race car, and then there’s the hole in the bonnet for the supercharger to poke through (a Perspex cover is being designed).

Round the back are twin tailpipes and a boot spoiler, and the whole car sits just four inches from the ground. Then there’s the orange paint job, the most stealth-like of five wild colours on offer. Fluorescent green? It’s yours.

With a quickening pulse, I opened the door (a right-hand-drive conversion costs £5,000), slid into the seat and was reassured to see a bog-standard Mustang interior with no intimidating switches or gauges to navigate. There’s just the addition of three small dials on top of the dash, displaying delights such as the supercharger boost level.

Firing the car up involves nothing more sophisticated than a turn of a key and a push of a button, but then it becomes quite special. First, there’s the thunderous start-up from the engine, and then the whole car vibrates just enough to get the adrenaline pumping. Because this car is seriously conspicuous, your pride can’t afford a stall at this moment. My preconceived idea was that it would need a heavy right foot and a slipping clutch to get it to move, but that’s absolutely not the case. It’s easier than a Porsche 911. The gearbox was another surprise. I’d expected to stir a big stick and use a fair bit of muscle to guide it into each sloppy cog, but the lever is palm-sized and goes through all six gears in just a few inches.

Knowing I’d need a straight road for my first taste of 1,000bhp, I took it steady for a few miles of country lanes en route to the nearest dual carriageway.The Mustang gurgled its way up to top gear and to the speed limit, where it remained with revs barely higher than at tickover. Over the potholes and ruts, the ride was not as smooth as that of a BMW 5-series, but it wasn’t hideously wide of the mark.

The big leather and suede seats are comfy and more practical than they are pretty — no delicately designed Ferrari carbon fibre structures in here. Of course it’s not going to handle with the poise and purpose of an F430 either, but don’t let its macho physique deceive you. It does take up a little more of the road than your average Euro machine, but it changes direction quickly and with little body roll.