ONE LAST FANG

We farewell the 6th-gen Mustang with a last blast in Fanga Dan’s personal RTR model

To New Zealanders of a certain age, “RTR” means Ready To Roll. Cue the RTR dancers. Young people, ask your parents.

In terms of Ford Mustangs of course, it’s Ready To Rock. As anybody (a) mildly interested in muscle cars or (b) who saw a particular episode of The Grand Tour in 2018 knows.

RTR is all about customising fast Fords. The company was founded by US drift champion and racer Vaughn Gittin jnr and released its first modified Mustang in 2009. It’s since become an official Ford partner, producing a wide range of individual accessories and packages. The idea is you can do as little or as much as you want, and all with the Ford stamp of approval (and more importantly, warranty).

That brings us to the Grabber Blue machine you see here. You could well argue we’re a bit late with this one, given the all-new seventh-generation model is on the way this year; don’t worry, the RTR packages for that one are all ready to go and on the website of local distributor CTB.

But we got the offer and we couldn’t say no, especially given this vehicle has some providence: it’s the daily drive car of four-time D1NZ Champion Daniel Woodhouse — “Fanga Dan” to us. So thanks . . . um, Mister Dan.

Like we said, you go as wild as you want. This one is really just a starter — a bit of a showcase as to what an RTR can look like. It’s the Spec 1 package, which costs $16,500 on top of the base car, which in this case is a Mustang GT V8 fastback at $84,990.

It’s a pretty long list of additions as you’d expect/hope, but the key thing is this is a mechanically standard Mustang GT, although it does come with RTR Tactical Lowering Springs (you probably spotted that).

But you can go all the way to a Spec 3, which increases the standard 339kW/ 556Nm to a whopping 559kW/908Nm thanks to a bit of supercharging. Yours for just $58k.

The rest is cosmetic and includes the now-rather-iconic RTR grille with the illuminated nostrils, spoilers, splitters, special wheels, badges and a dashboard plaque carrying the company founder’s signature. If you have a manual you also get a special gearknob, but this one’s an automatic. Because even drift champions like to relax.

So we won’t get into the driving experience too much for a couple of reasons.

First, we’re very familiar with the GT fastback in many of its incarnations, most recently the standard GT automatic and the very excellent Mach 1 special edition.

So it’s a Mustang GT, which means riotous V8 noises, a suprisingly slick 10-speed automatic and a chassis that really does take this Pony Car off American freeways and on to some proper global backroads. We love it.

This particular car had further modification that made a big difference to the drive. The RTR Aero 7 wheels were shod with semi-slick tyres (“because Dan is Dan” was one explanation given), which were incredibly noisy on the highway and incredibly grippy everywhere else . . . the dry. In the wet they were rather skiddy (technical term), so that combined with the very firm suspension made the Spec 1 a bit of handful for anybody whose name isn’t Fanga.

But it looks incredible, and on standard tyres you’re far less likely to swap ends on the driveway in winter.

Either way, the Spec 1 is quite an experience and we’d have to say the standard V8 powertrain still provides the performance and noise to match the looks.

So next stop Mustang 7 RTR, although this one was well worth visiting because of course these parts are available to owners any time. It’s a broad church and actually, RTR also does gear for the Mustang Mach-E EV and Ranger ute.