Clear screen before bang (!)

What about using an external plugin for git? fugitive is a great one! Some more details and screencasts. It can show git status with :Gstatus (which you can map to some shortcut key...)

HTH

If you don't mind a little extra typing:

:!clear; git status

If you don't want to type

:!clear; git status

every time (I didn't) so maybe just a slightly better option is to go to your ~/.vimrc and add

command! -nargs=1 R :!clear && <args>

I chose "R" because I thought of the word "Run". It could be any uppercase letter you want or it could even be "Run". You would use it like"

:R git status

And then when you run it again, it will not show the previous Foo! in the terminal. I would say it is almost as easy to type "!". Just a thought!