My little pony
Mustang makes Kiwi comeback
The Mustang could not have re-entered the Kiwi car market at a better time. With the curtain already closed on Ford Australia’s alliance with Prodrive to create Ford Performance Vehicles, and the last Falcon XR8s coming down a production line in Victoria that is soon to fall silent, our Ford dealers now have something to tempt the loyal buyers of those models.
And the big surprise is finding that it definitely will be an upgrade when anyone trades a $69,990 Falcon XR8 in for the $74,880 Mustang V8 GT fastback you see here. Ford’s iconic pony-car might stay true to its blue-collar roots in several areas, but it’s easy to conclude that the latest iteration also exhibits all the benefits of 50 years of continuous development.
That half-century has also had little influence on the political incorrectness of the model. You don’t get a speedo in this Mustang, you get a ‘‘ground speed indicator’’ instead.
Which means Ford probably thinks that you could be about to channel the spirit of the late Steve McQueen and fly the car all over the place as the King of Cool once demonstrated on the hilly streets of San Francisco during the infamous car chase in Bullitt.
Other markets outside Australasia get a ‘‘line locker’’ function that applies the front brakes and releases the rear stoppers, presumably so that Mustang owners who take their cars to the drag-strip on the weekends can properly warm the rear tyres up before their runs.
However, visions of Mustang owners performing burnouts in the drive-thru lanes of takeaway restaurants got the feature deleted from the models destined for Tasman Sea markets.
It’s no great loss, as there’s a handy stability control-off switch located the thumb’s length away from the gearlever that will allow instant vapouration of the GT’s sticky rear Pirellis when desired. So you can still easily enjoy your day in court for breaching our repressive ‘‘sustained loss of traction’’ laws.
There’s plenty of noise on offer here too, and the primeval Friday night mating call of a V8 on full song is relatively intact when listened to from inside the cabin of the GT. You can also order the Mustang with a six-speed manual gearbox in lieu of a six-speed auto, and I got such a shock when first viewing that third driving pedal that I almost had to refer to the manual to remember what it would do.
It’s this: a positive and progressive introduction of the engine to the rear tyres that is made ridiculously easy via the light clutch pedal action, the dual-mass flywheel that allows stall-free congested motorway trickling, and an automatic hill-holder function that allows handbrake-free takeoffs.
With the drawbacks of a manual gearbox mostly sorted, the 87 per cent of Kiwi Mustang buyers who are ordering their cars with only two driving pedals are missing out.
For the DIY gearbox really suited the old-school character of the famous Ford. This is a more primitive car than the Falcon XR8 that it will replace in the hearts of many blue-oval fans, as witnessed by the ratio count of six-speeds instead of eight (in auto XR8s), and a lack of a blower to puff up the lower-rpm performance while turning down the honking of the air flowing through the engine intakes.
The row of flick-able levers ahead of the gearlever that give access to car-tailoring functions feel as cheap and nasty to touch as those of a BMW-managed Mini don’t.
Some of the hard plastics that furnish the cabin don’t do the prestige of the car any favours, but they are countered by a genuine aluminium panel that forms the majority of the dashboard, a brilliantly-formatted touch-screen, instantaneous connectivity, and ergonomic tailoring that ensures everything that is important, bar the handbrake, is readily at hand.
But never mind that this is no Porsche inside, feel how it drives. The only awkwardness occurs at parking speeds thanks to a turning circle as wide as that of a doublecab ute’s. At all other times, the Mustang feels like an extension of the driver’s body. It locks you into position with body-hugging seats, then generates serious levels of lateral G-force, pivoting around the driver’s hips like some new kind of four-wheeled motorcycle.
Where bumpy Kiwi back roads once presented real challenges to past Mustangs, this latest fully independently-suspended generation has absolutely no fear of them.
You see the badge on the wheel and oncoming surface imperfections, and automatically tense up, but the Ford soaks it all up in its brisk stride. This Mustang feels like it wears jogging trainers instead of horseshoes, and it steers with an agility and balance that’ll make as at home at a race circuit as at a drag strip.
So it’s a fine drive, looks the part, and has the option of lots of performance-enhancements that are capable of lifting it from the realms of the sublime to those of the ridiculous. But what’s really important is how this car makes you feel.
I personally felt 28 years old again when at the wheel of the GT, and that’s something that no FPV or Falcon XR8 could ever do.