A 2015 Ford Mustang is unveiled during the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Jan. 7, 2014.STEVE MARCUS/Reuters
Forget about the old, solid rear-axle Ford Mustang, the one built for drag strips and burning rubber. That Mustang is dead. Gone. Buried. Kaput.
I know this because I spent the day in the all-new 2015 Mustang. Yes, for some, Ford Motor has committed an act of heresy by deep-sixing the truck-like rear end, but for the rest of us, I have two words: about time. After 50 years, there is a new Pony car in town and it's built for the 21st century.
Please excuse the gearhead-speak, but this is important. The rear-drive 2015 'Stang has a four-wheel independent suspension. I am not kidding. This is so modern. The reinvented Mustang now holds its line in a corner without all the drama. Just like ... a sports car.
That hasn't always been the case. In fact, that's never been the case. If you've driven Mustangs in the past 50 years, even the 2014 version, you'll know that at times the car can get quite "entertaining" – or scary – in a corner. A solid rear end will do that.
I can't count the number of times I've found myself behind the wheel of outgoing and older 'Stangs, rolling through a sweeper, only to hit a bump or some minor road bruise and wham: the back end step out. En masse. There it goes.
The answer is to counter-steer, sometimes quite aggressively. This is not always an exact science, however. There is a little bit of luck and even some of what we'll call "art" in getting this little driving manouevre just right.
When the back end lifts and jumps, when you steer into it you force the front wheels to make up for what the back ones cannot do, thanks to the ancient suspension design. Overcook your counter and the back end can swing the other way like a pendulum. And if you underachieve your counter, that back end might keep going in the direction it first jumped. Uh oh, in either case.
Well, none of this holds true with the new car. Dave Pericak, the Mustang chief engineer, isn't kidding when he says: "This is the best Mustang we have ever done."
Ford has finally put some serious resources into restyling and re-engineering the one model most closely associated with its brand – short of the Model T, of course. Ford has done this to make the Mustang suitable for buyers all over the globe, not just in North America. Left-hand, right-hand drive? Ford's doing both.
Yet pricing remains what it has been for decades – relatively affordable. The base V-6 car starts at $24,999, the four-cylinder EcoBoost has a base price of $27,999 and the 5.0-litre V-8 can be had for $36,999 and up.
The Ford people argue their new 'Stang will "stun" you, it's so good. Is that so? The whole car, I mean. Does the car match the boldness of those words, from the design to the technology and comfort?
More on this to come.
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