Ford Mustang Mach-E AWD

HELLO

£57,030 OTR/£58,180 as tested/£1,503 pcm

WHY IT’S HERE

Is an electric family SUV charming enough to be a ‘Mustang’?

DRIVER

Jack Rix

UNLESS YOU READ MAGAZINES BACKWARDS, YOU’LL NOW BE AWARE that the Mustang Mach-E is TopGear’s Family Car of the Year 2021. Mustang. Family Car. Doesn’t seem quite right, does it? When the Mach-E was first revealed well over a year ago, I too had a hard time digesting that Ford had slapped a galloping stallion on the front of an electric SUV.

But hold your horses because Ford has history in this department. It wasn’t that long ago we were lambasting it for sticking the Puma badge on a new compact crossover. The leap from small coupe to small crossover is clearly less yawning than RWD V8 muscle car to silent soft-roader, but can the Mustang Mach-E do a Puma and worm its way into our affections through good design and thorough engineering? Well, it sort of has already or it wouldn’t be an award winner... but the daily grind starts now.

Until the 480bhp, £65k Mach-E GT arrives in UK dealers, we have a top of the range AWD Extended Range model. That means the bigger 98.7kWh (91kWh usable) battery, instead of the more modest 75.7kWh (70kWh usable) pack, and twin motors for 4WD grip and more grunt – 346bhp here as opposed to 265bhp in the Standard Range AWD model and 290bhp in the RWD Extended Range Model. So 0–62mph in 5.8 vs 6.3 and 7.0 respectively.

Got all that? Good, now range. Unsurprisingly the RWD Extended Range model is the one-charge champ managing 379 miles on the WLTP test. Our AWD Extended Range manages 335 miles, although that’ll be close to 270-ish in the real world. All Extended Range Mach-E’s are capable of charging at 150kW which, ideally, means 10 to 80 per cent in 45 mins.

Although you can get a RWD Standard Range from £41,330, the AWD Extended costs from £57,030 – £58,180 including our Rapid Red paint (£1,150). Which isn’t cheap, but with loads of kit as standard, picking a paint colour is the only option you need.