Ford Mustang Dark Horse review

In Europe, all Mustangs, be they bay, black, chestnut, dun or just Dark, now come with the 5-litre Coyote V8, the 2.3-litre Ecoboost motor being left behind in the US. There are three gearboxes, a 10-speed auto and two six-speed manuals, one for standard cars, the other for Dark Horses.

The Dark Horse Mustang has a little more power than the standard Coyote, because it comes with conrods from the old GT500, allowing it to withstand the additional internal pressures of a slightly more ambitious engine map. But it’s still only a gain of around 15bhp, and because European legislation now requires such motors to be somewhat strangled, the 455bhp of the Dark Horse is actually significantly less than the 480bhp of the US-spec standard engine. Dark Horses sold over there will have around 493bhp or, Ford likes to express it, 500hp. And, to be clear, I have only driven US-spec cars as European sales don’t start until the New Year and the car is not yet homologated there.

The point of the new Dark Horse nameplate is so that, half a century into the future, the old can look wistfully back to their youth and identify the ’Stang that was created when they were kids, much as I might look at the Mach 1 in Diamonds Are Forever with a certain wistfulness. But in essence it is a lightly, but comprehensively upgraded car.

In the UK and Europe, all Mustangs, Dark or otherwise, will come with ‘Performance Packs’ as standard. Which means a Torsen rear diff rather than a conventional locker, a front strut brace, magnetorheological dampers, wider wheels and tyres, and bigger Brembo brakes. All of which will set you back around £51,000 when sales begin. The Dark Horse has that slightly stronger engine and a Tremec rather than Getrag six-speed manual because it is more robust and has more sporting ratios. It also has a bespoke suspension tune, with its own spring, roll bar and damper rates. All in, a Dark Horse will cost about £61,000.

In the US, there is also a ‘Handling Pack’ featuring enormous tyres – 305s at the front, 315s at the back, up respectively five and four sections. What’s more, these are the newly developed Pirelli Trofeo RS boots, in place of the standard Zeros we’ll be getting. Moreover Handling Pack cars have their front struts rotated through 180 degrees to provide dramatically more negative camber, yet another tune for the suspension and even a revised aero package incorporating a Gurney flap on the wing. Over there the pack costs $4995 but it’s not coming to Europe at all. So why even mention it? Well because not only do we have subscribers in the US and around the world, but for reasons that will become clear, it’s important.

To work. I’m not sure the Dark Horse aero kit works particularly well, especially the new apertures in the front grille which I guess are meant to resemble snorting nostrils, but the interior is transformed. Some will lament the passing of analogue instruments, but I’d far rather a cabin that functioned well and didn’t look cheap as buttons. And while it’s true the cabin is still unlikely to be mistaken for any kind of luxurious environment, it’s good enough for this car and its pedigree. Similarly, the new screens look infernally complex thanks to their enormous spheres of operation, but spend any time at all with them, realise that there are plenty of reassuring actual buttons to press too, and it all becomes quite straightforward.

And anyone worrying this car may have lost some character need only to hear the Coyote fire up to have their fears laid to rest. Depending on which exhaust mode you choose (there are four), you’ll find it anything from pleasantly invigorating to wanting to make sure your children are safely inside before you press the button. Wide open it is ridiculously, comically, wonderfully loud.

I did drive the auto but won’t dwell on it because while it’s good enough, it doesn’t really suit the character of the car on the road and, if you use the paddles on track, it soon gets flustered and starts forgetting instructions.

By contrast the Tremec couldn’t be more appropriate. Were this a light little gnat of a car it would be terrible because its shift is heavy and slow, but it suits the Mustang to perfection, requiring you to add a little of your own muscle to that already provided by the Coyote. For an engine that (in US-spec) is pushing 100bhp per litre without turbos, its powerband is wide and strong and while performance is not exactly infarct-inducing, it’s quick enough to hold your attention, while leaving plenty of space to spare for the even faster Mustangs that must, in time, surely come.

As ever, though, the Mustang, even in Dark Horse configuration, is quite limited in what it can achieve dynamically. Three years ago I tested the previous Bullitt Mustang (which is as close to a predecessor as the Dark Horse had) against a common-or-garden Focus ST costing a fraction of the price and in everything other than a straight line, the little European hatch ran rings around the big American bruiser. And I can see no reason the same would not be true were the experiment repeated today with the Dark Horse.

The car seems heavy – I’m leaving a small question mark over the claimed weight because it’s less than the 1818kg of the Bullitt for no reason I can discern – so will wait for a proper DIN kerbweight of a car homologated for Europe, and that slight vagueness around the straight ahead remains, as does the slightly woolly feel of the steering. It likes being settled into medium speed, constant radius corners where its modest traction is not an issue and you’re not white-knuckling it in the quick ones. It is an entertaining and always engaging car to drive quickly but one that encourages a six-to-seven-tenths approach.

Yet driven flat out on a race track, its composure does not desert it in quite the way its fairly casual approach to the open road might suggest. I can’t say it felt exactly in its element coming off the banking of the Charlotte Motor Speedway where I drove it in North Carolina, but it didn’t wobble too much and would execute amiable drifts through the tight turns of the infield section as you might expect of any Ford with a pony on its nose.

But just a word about that Handling Pack referred to earlier. I didn’t drive a car so equipped on the road, nor did I try those new Pirellis in the wet – though its spokesperson said they were 2sec quicker than a Michelin Cup 2 in the rain and 1sec in the dry, if that’s any guideline – but on the track the effect of the pack on the Dark Horse was profound. Indeed I’ve never driven any Mustang with close to that level of composure. For the first time in any such car, it no longer felt like one whose limitations needed active management. Of course there was more grip, but really it was the precision with which it could be driven right across the speed range that I’ll remember most. It gave me confidence to push harder, and enjoy more.

I hope Ford finds a way to homologate it in Europe – I’m told the sticking point is that the tyres come too close to the edge of the wheel arch for our legislators, so perhaps some kind of arch extender may fit the bill.

As it stands, I still really enjoyed the Dark Horse. A BMW M2 is a vastly more capable car for this kind of money – and, thank heavens, you can still have that with a stick shift – but that old Mustang charm endures. It’s not a 10 out of 10 car, nor even close, despite that engine and driveline configuration because, being blunt, it’s not that new a car.

Indeed I suspect the reason this seventh-gen Mustang is, in fact, merely a substantially overhauled sixth-gen car, is that everyone knows there won’t be an eighth, least not with a V8 breathing air at atmospheric pressure. Its days are numbered and while part of me feels inclined to carp about its weight, its imprecise steering and the fact that it’s nothing like the bargain it used to be, I’m still glad it exists. And I already know how much I’ll miss it when it’s gone.