A real fast Ford
Even with no blue oval badge, a bit of the old Essex spirit of RS is discernible in the hottest electric Ford. Or is Ben Oliver starting to feel his age?
Ford Mustang Mach-E GT Month 1
The story so far
Performance EV beaten by EV6 and Model Y in group test, but hopes to impress long-term
★ Big power; sharp handling for an EV; kerb appeal
- £76k for an orange Ford?
Logbook
Price £74,540 (£76,420 as tested) Performance 91kWh battery, twin e-motors, 480bhp, 3.7sec 0-62mph, 124mph E ciency 3.1 miles per kWh (claimed), 2.4 (tested), 0g/km CO2 Range 310 miles (claimed), 190 (tested) Energy cost 14.2p per mile Miles this month 722 Total miles 5415
At 48, I worry that I might be too old for my new Ford Mustang Mach-E GT already: at least in this specification. And it’s not just the shouty Cyber Orange paint, a £1150 option I’d leave unticked were I ordering this car myself. It’s also the length and machismo of both the name and the bonnet. Its ocial title tells you three times that this car is FAST, and its physical badging adds a ‘4’ for four wheel drive, an ‘X’ for the extended range battery and a giant pony on the fake grille, but entirely omits any blue-oval Ford badging.
And that humped bonnet is massively priapic: an obvious reference to Mustangs of yore but a bit pointless when it opens to reveal charging cables rather than a 302. To my eyes it unbalances the car: in profile the hatchback rear end looks a bit apologetic by comparison, and the bright paint makes the sections of the roofline and sills which have been painted black to cut the car’s visual mass too obvious.
My 10-year-old son gleefully reports from the front seat all the attention the Mustang garners
from schoolmates and pedestrians: the very thing late-middle-aged men like his father seek to avoid. My practical concerns about the car are age-related too. Despite the still-desperate state of our public charging infrastructure my partner and I pigheadedly insist on doing long road trips across the UK in our electric cars with the cargo that comes with our stage in life: two kids, a dog, bicycles attached to the roof or towbar and a very full boot.
With 98.7kWh of nominal capacity, 91kWh usable and an average of just 2.4 miles per kWh so far, I worry that we’ll be looking for chargers every 180 miles or so. When we find one (working) the Mustang will charge at a maximum of 150kW, while the Kia EV6 GT we had would charge at up to 240kW and then travel on at around 3.0 miles per kWh, albeit on a slightly smaller battery. But my first month in the Mustang has made me largely ignore these reservations. The school run involves 20 minutes of poorly-surfaced but generally quiet B-road, and with the kids safely in class the Mustang goads me to attack it like no other electric car I’ve driven.
With 480bhp propelling 2348kg it’s not quite as Star Trek fast as the BMW iX M60 I’ve been driving recently, but it’s still more than fast enough for British roads, and the handling is the real draw. Others have been more critical of it, but for me the steering is quick and talkative for an EV, the firmer springs and adaptive dampers keep the bodyroll in check and – probably most significantly – the torque vectoring lets it dive into corners in a manner remarkable for something that weighs as much as my van with a full load on.
It feels like a proper, aggro fast Ford of old. I might worry about its suitability for a man in his forties but it’s reminding me just a little of the Focus RS I road-tested in my twenties, and that’s not something I expected to write of any EV. I look forward to the physical activity of driving it, and not just the ease and silence in which it conveys me.
I’m not yet sure if that’s worth the compromises, especially to the ride and noise levels. Triangulating power, range and more practical attributes such as comfort and space to find your perfect EV spec is tricky, and I’m not quite sure the Mustang Mach-E GT hits my sweet spot. But finding out is the point of a long-term test, and Cyber Orange aside, it’s going to be instructive driving something so different in concept to the impressive iX and EV6.
| look forward to the physical act of driving it, and not just the ease and silence with which it moves