Much-improved Ford Mustang a Dark Horse worth wagering on

Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda Motor Company, came up with the phrase “racing improves the breed”. But it is Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford Motor Company that is current living this mantra by injecting some serious enthusiasm into the Ford Performance brand.

And this is being done by offering a crazy mix of Raptor lifestyle models like the Ranger, F-150 and Bronco, and cars like the hardcore, racetrack-only Mustang GT3, to the wildest street legal Mustang money can buy in the GTD, right down to the Mustang Dark Horse The Citizen Motoring got to drive this month.

If you exclude the supercharged 600kW left-hand drive only, Mustang GTD, the Ford Mustang Dark Horse is the sharpest, most agile yet production Mustang offered globally by Ford straight off the production line. Offering 334kW of power and 540Nm of torque from its naturally aspirated 5.0-litre Coyote V8 engine and some tailored dynamics to go with a bunch of under the skin improvements, this Ford Mustang actually has what it takes to hustle around a mountain pass and not just straight off it.

The seventh-generation Mustang, released just the other day, is the foundation for the Dark Horse. Visually it differs both inside and out. But it’s the goodies that you can’t see that matters. And that make this Mustang a fun place to be when the road is no longer straight.

Under this pony’s skin

Under the bonnet you have the tweaked powerplant that offers a dual throttle-body intake and large open nostrils in the front grill to improve engine breathing. This powerplant is married to Ford’s 10-speed automatic transmission that offers paddle shifters for those that want to do all the work themselves.

Deeper down you have brake cooling NACA ducts, an auxiliary engine oil cooler, a rear-axle cooler and a unique and lighter-weight radiator with improved cooling capability and more powerful cooling fans to improve endurance and recovery, for those times when you are pushing hard or playing at the track.

Getting the power to the tarmac, the Ford Mustang Dark Horse offers larger rear sway bars, trick MagneRide shocks capable of monitoring wheel and tyre movement 1 000 times per second, a Torsen rear diff and staggered 19-inch Pirelli P Zero tyres.

A new lightweight Ford Performance-designed strut tower brace and K-brace enhance steering response and grip. Huge Brembo six-piston callipers with 390mm ventilated discs in front and Brembo four-piston callipers and 355mm ventilated discs at the rear bring the fun to a halt safely.

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A Ford Mustang that raises the bar

So, the $1 million question, well the R1.5 million question to be precise is, does all this hype on paper translate into a Ford Mustang that handles better than any Mustang we have driven before? The short answer is hell yeah.

Get on the brakes late, dive into a corner with some trail braking going on, get it rotated and turned in, and hoof it, and you come bolting out the other end without too much fuss.

Try this with the previous gen Ford Mustang and you would have understeered to start with. Then after missing the apex and scrubbing off all your entry speed, the car would have tried go around on you as soon as got on the juice on the way out.

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Little niggles

Is it all roses? No. The car weighs just over 1.8 tons and you can feel that weight with ham-fisted steering inputs. And while the 10-speed auto box might be great for easy double cab Ranger driving and CO2 emission reduction, it needs some software tuning or something to sharpen up the shift speed and feedback.

Going up the box is almost okay, but coming down the box, especially in manual mode, you get no feel from the gearbox that it has started the long trek down from whatever gear you were in before hitting the brakes.

And this at times meant you were deep in the corner and still looking for the right gear, or you would come out a gear too high and kill your drive. Not perfect, but still way better than before.

When we get one on test, we will delve into the other aspects on offer like the new digital display and infotainment set-up, improved safety, and luxury, but the R1 500 000 Ford Mustang Dark Horse is a niche car that is still old school performance at heart, with a heavy dose of Americana to go with some much-needed modernising.