Mark Mathot

We now have absolute proof that you should be very careful what you wish for. I argued the case for Mustang in Supercars, at length, in this very magazine early in 2018. To me and many, many others, the balance of logic strongly favoured someone – Ford, DJR Team Penske, Tickford, anyone please! – homologating Ford’s wildly popular pony car for Australia’s premier motor racing series. After all, the road car is a rearwheel-drive V8, we said. So it’s relevant, cool looking, has history and is loved – or at least admired – by Supercars’ core audience.

And when the deal was done in April and development of the racecar began in earnest I was thrilled, convinced that it had saved the Supercars category from declining into Formula Commodore.

Now, I don’t back down from any of those arguments. Mustangs racing in Supercars is still a very good thing. Ford is back and evidently highly engaged in promoting their investment. As a bonus, the Blue Oval’s enthusiasm has prompted Holden to slightly increase its support for the category.

What I hadn’t anticipated – despite being warned, it must be admitted – was that when the dream became a reality it would look so… odd.

Watching the Adelaide and Albert Park races from home, I tried (really tried) to build a bridge and get over it. But every other shot exposed the Mustang as too tall relative to its width, the bonnet too short, the nose strangely droopy, the tail too low and long and the rear window

oddly narrow. And that oversized rear wing! The total effect reminds me of that 1980s trend for modifying VW Beetles to look like Porsche 911s. You could see what they were trying to achieve but it fooled absolutely nobody.

Following the general public’s dismay that greeted the reveal of the Mustang Supercar prototype in pre-season, the Ford teams tried to assure everyone their cars would be much improved by the application of race livery. In most cases it proved true and, by race weekend, many fans seemed to have come to terms with the looks. In particular, the general consensus of Adelaide observers was that the matt black Tickford Racing car of Cameron Waters looked pretty cool. But that’s a bit like my wife saying my body looks better in the dark…

I won’t get into the discussion about the common Supercars chassis imposing compromises on the designers – that has been well and truly covered elsewhere. I wonder, however, whether the Mustang racer needed to be quite as awkwardly shaped as it is. The domed roof might have been unavoidable, but the plunging bonnet line and exaggeratedly low nose appear to have been designed purposefully for aerodynamic advantage. Similarly, the low boot height and tapering rear window seem to have been shaped to steer as much clean air as possible onto the cartoonish rear wing.

The result, as we saw in Adelaide and at the AGP, makes for a very competitive racecar but it’s an approximation, or caricature, of the roadgoing car it pretends to be derived from.

Now it seems there was nothing in the regulations to stop Ford from taking liberties with the shape of the racecar. It owns the intellectual property for Mustang and can do what it likes. But by driving this misshapen ‘Mustang’ through what appears to be a loophole in the Supercars regulations, Ford has rudely shattered any remaining delusions fans might have had that the current generation of Australian touring cars are modi ed road cars.

“The car is such a departure from the road car, it is not what Supercars set out to be,” Roland Dane was quoted in Auto Action.

“The DNA of these cars is really important in the way they look.”

“Now we have a sports sedan and I don’t feel it is built with the best interests of the category in mind.”

Does that really matter or are most fans sophisticated enough to understand that times have well and truly changed? And if they do accept that it’s a purpose-designed racecar, then why persist with the ction of calling it a Mustang? Let’s just call it the “Ford Supercar Mk1” or something and move on.

The arrival of Mustang in Supercars was always going to be a big event and there is no doubt that it has injected enormous additional interest into a motor racing series suffering from contempt bred of familiarity. By elding, however, something that is so very obviously NOT a road car, Ford and Supercars have crossed the rubicon into very dangerous territory. It’s anyone’s guess where the sport goes next.