Facelifted Mustang is still a true thoroughbred

Ford is the most fun you can get for £40k

COSMETIC surgery just for the sake of it is always a little unnerving.

I’m sure Ford’s sales and marketing people thought it was necessary to take the knife to the Mustang for the 2018 model year, but I – and the 6,000 people who have already bought a Mustang – would disagree.

That’s a significant number and makes me wonder why Chevrolet has never taken the plunge and built a right-hand-drive Corvette.

The Mustang’s facelift sees the bonnet being lowered, meshcovered air-intakes added, the headlamps redesigned to be more aggressive and the front splitter more squared off.

Small visual changes that don’t make the car any better looking, but thankfully don’t spoil it either.

Inside, you’ll immediately spot a new instrument panel that is now entirely digital. As you scroll through the various driving modes, one of which is a launch control called Drag Strip, the presentation of the information changes colour and graphically too.

Drag Strip mode, for example, gives you a ‘Christmas tree’ stack of numbers. It moves the car on from the classic analogue speedo and rev counter while looking slick and modern.

The Mustang’s interior is still pretty plasticky compared to European and Japanese cars – and that goes for many American performance cars like the Chevy Camaro and Dodge Challenger.

Just remember the price you’re

paying though, and the performance that you’re getting for it.

Talking of which, Ford has given the Mustang’s engines a bit of a tweak, too. The 2.3-litre four-cylinder Ecoboost, which for me has no place in the Mustang, has been retuned to give more torque at the expense of a few horsepower, and the 5.0-litre V8 has had its power increased from 415bhp to 444bhp.

This is the same power output as BMW’s Competition Pack M4

Instrument panel is now slick, modern and all digital

that costs several tens of thousands more than the Mustang.

The majority of British customers choose the V8 model, and four-fifths buy the fastback rather than the convertible, with a small preference for the manual gearbox. Three choices that I would make if I was buying one.

That’s especially so since we drove both the automatic and manual versions. The automatic is new to the car and has 10 gears to the outgoing car’s six. It’s a traditional torque convertor automatic rather than a double-clutch or robotised manual, and while it’s smoother and more efficient than the old six-speeder, it seems never to know which gear it wants to be in. Its ability to miss out several ratios on purpose – which can see it go from second to sixth seamlessly – actually spoils the driving experience.

One day, cars like the Mustang won’t exist. Ford is already working on an electric version and I can’t see the naturally aspirated V8 engine being around for many more years. Already it’s one of the few non-turbocharged high performance V8 motors on sale today. For me it’ll be a black armband occasion.

I love the Mustang. I loved the original one that lived a few doors down when I was a kid and I love the current one. We had our Fury Orange test car for a week, I put a lot of petrol in it (but managed an impressive 31mpg on a run) and loved every burbling minute.

As thousands of happy UK Mustang owners will tell you, forty grand simply doesn’t buy this much firepower and excitement anywhere else.