One of the best Mustangs ever
FORD recently launched the 2021 Mustang Mach 1 in South Africa, and we had an opportunity to live with this unicorn of a car for a couple of days.
The Mach 1 comes as the halo pony car for Ford in South Africa as it doesn’t officially import the GT350 and GT500. The special edition was sold out on the day it launched in South Africa a few months ago. Ninety cars, 15 manual and the rest automatic, found homes before local media had a chance to sniff at them.
If you want a 2021 Ford Mustang Mach 1, you can expect to pay a premium for it as a used car and that’s what happened with Ford’s other limited edition, the Bullitt (which sells for a few hundred grand more than new in most instances these days).
Beefed up in just the right places
Consider the Mustang Mach 1 to be a Mustang GT with Premium pack that went to gym and bulked up a little bit in the right places.
It still runs the Coyote V8 engine, albeit with a few parts borrowed from the aforementioned Bullitt to give you slightly more punch than you get in a standard Mustang GT.
In the Mach 1, the 5.0-litre V8 makes 338kw at 7 250rpm and it’s one of the most glorious engines you will ever hear in your life. There’s torque everywhere too, 530 newtons in total, and everything works with symphonic precision, from its intake rasp to its exhaust bark to create sensations in your ears and body that genuinely make you tingle with excitement and fear at the same time.
Built to be driven harder for longer
To ensure you can really lean on the car for long periods of time without compromising its durability or performance, Ford has fitted the Mach 1 with an auxiliary engine oil cooler and a new engine oil filter adaptor to ensure optimum oil flow and consistent performance. On a hot Saturday afternoon, carving through the majestic rolling hills of the Cradle of Humankind, I was able to keep going and going and going in the Mach 1.
The brakes are also kept cool thanks to aerodynamic witchcraft that guides air under the car and through the wheels to reduce turbulence and to help with rotor cooling. The diff is also bolstered in this car, and you can get it locked up again and again without any form of warning or overheating or limp mode. I even tried a few hard standing launches in the car and it simply refused to break a sweat, gobbling up the road with gritty performance that feels like you're wrestling that bear that Leo had an issue with in The Revenant.
High quality autobox
Our car came with the 10-speed auto box and while purists will lift their noses at it, the slushbox is actually very slick-shifting and eager to dish up the speed. I found that upshifts, when you're in the Sport driving mode, worked exceptionally well, but it’s the downshifts that can catch you out sometimes as you call for a lower gear with the left paddle and the car says no, not yet.
Thirsty, but worth it for special drives
There is one thing that irritated me and that was the amount of fuel the Mach 1 chowed over a period of three days. I swear I could see the fuel gauge dropping while standing still in traffic sometimes on the N1! In fact, when I checked the onboard computer at the end of my test drive I had been using 21.5l/100km on average, but it felt like more fuel was used because the first tankful of unleaded was sucked up in 180km.
People talk fearfully about range anxiety in electric cars, but you should see me when someone mentions a V8 Mustang these days… I shudder from head to toe thinking of the cost of filling it up with fuel at R19/litre.
You should try to find one of these cars to own if you can because all that fuel use is worth it when it comes to experiencing one of the best vehicles of this high performance golden age we’re living in.
Yes, it’s plasticky in some places inside the car and it has that awful Ford Sync system which takes time to get used to, but it’s the way this car exudes presence and delivers on that presence when you drive it that makes it special. Taming the car on challenging roads will take some practice as it’s big, wide, heavy and full of torque that’s ready to help you swap ends so if you do get one, it’s best to get to grips with the car first before turning off some of the driver aids. VERDICT
If you're looking for a vehicle that oozes street cred and delivers thrills from start-up to redline, this is the car for you. It's a naturally aspirated monster machine we’ll be talking about 20 years from now as one of the finest cars that Ford ever launched in SA.