Ford Mustang GT on the road to Le Mans
There’s a lot to love about this modern classic, starting with the unmistakable sound of the monster living under the bonnet.
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If the key to a road trip is the soundtrack, then Ford’s V8-powered Mustang GT can’t be beaten – particularly in Europe.
Muscle cars with 5.0-litre engines are exceptionally scarce in France, where the most popular cars are 1.0-litre hatchbacks.
So a thoroughbred V8 is something of a celebrity encounter.
Kids rush to school fences for a closer look, road work crews urge you to give it heaps, and tradies in clattering diesels lower their windows down to cop an earful of Americana.
Ford returned to France for a tilt at Le Mans, the world’s greatest endurance race, where the Mustang GT3 race car took on rivals from the likes of Ferrari, Porsche and Aston Martin.
The big American coupe sounded exactly as epic and out of place on the Mulsanne Straight as it did growling through stop-start traffic near Charles de Gaulle Airport.
A slow slog through Paris affords time to take in the car’s heavily reworked interior.
The 12.4-inch driver display looks ace, particularly when you pick the green-lit retro mode inspired by the 1980s “Fox Body” Mustang.
An enormous 13.2-inch centre display angled toward the driver makes navigation easy as we cruise through St Denis, home of the Stade de France stadium that will host the Olympic Games, and Versailles, where King Louis built his palace.
Dual intakes snort like a frustrated racehorse in traffic jams, where it’s hard not to be impressed by the absence of slack or harshness in the beefy drive train.
Before long, a vacant slipway unfurling onto a multi-lane autoroute offers the opportunity to stretch its legs.
The big V8 sounds truly musical under load, with a rich torque curve that swells to make 550Nm of punch at 4900rpm, and a mighty 345kW at 7250rpm. It’s not the fastest car you can buy for about $85,000 drive-away — think a tick over four seconds to 100km/h, and a mid-12 quarter mile.
But it can’t be beaten for feel-good factor. The reworked manual transmission of our atlas blue car has a funky “no lift shift” function that allows you to keep the throttle pinned while changing gears with gusto.
Available only with heavy throttle applications and high revs, it allows you to “flat shift”, automatically cutting spark momentarily so you can stay on the gas between ratios.
It also has an automatic rev match function that will blip the throttle on down changes for folks who don’t heel and toe. Other toys include a line locker function to aid burnouts, and a “drift brake” lever.
After all, this car doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Mustang engineers recognised that driving should be a fun and involving experience. I’ve driven more than a dozen electric cars that would dust this noisy coupe at the traffic light Grand Prix, but there are none I’d rather take on a Sunday morning cruise along favourite roads.
The Mustang is in its element on relaxed country routes in rural Normandy.
It lives for third and fourth gear corners that allow you to savour its melodious motor, as opposed to the tight hairpins and switchbacks suited to more compact machines.
Its war cry echoes off the hedges and pine forests near the ruined mansion at La Ferté-Vidame, and through the historic hamlet of Longny-les-Villages, a township that could have been a film set for Saving Private Ryan.
Of course, the Mustang has a few flaws. Our test car’s fixed suspension settings were a touch firm on bumpy roads — optional adaptive shocks might be worth a look.
The new flat-bottomed steering wheel looks ace and responds crisply, but offers little in the way of feel or feedback when pressing on.
We didn’t get on with some of the driving assistance tech reminding you to hold the steering wheel, and outward vision is compromised. The long and high bonnet makes it hard to place the car precisely at low speed, and over-the-shoulder glances are compromised by its fastback roofline.
Visibility is less of an issue in the convertible, which offers a panoramic view of your surroundings.
A quick go in the drop-top revealed that the al fresco version is even more of an event to drive, bringing you closer to that marvellous V8 and its surrounding environment. But it can only be raised when stopped, which isn’t great when rain strikes.
The big V8 sounded better than ever at Le Mans, where the Mustang was a dose of classic rock’n’roll alongside the electro-synth of hybrid racers. It also set the fastest lap of all GT cars on the way to taking a podium on debut, suggesting there is plenty of life in the V8 yet.
Australian examples delayed by the Baltimore port disaster arrive in the second half of the year, in time for early owners to see – and hear – their Mustang’s racing cousin take on the Bathurst 1000.
Originally published as Ford Mustang GT on the road to Le Mans
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