Item: Ford Mustang
Rating: 4

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How many sub-£100,000 cars can you name with more than four cylinders and a manual gearbox? It’s slim pickings. There’s the BMW Z4, BMW M2 and Lotus Emira. A last-of-the-line Porsche 718 GTS 4.0 or Toyota GR Supra, maybe? Good news: there is one more option, which has, instead of a piffling six cylinders, a full eight of them, and neither a supercharger nor a turbocharger. It is, of course, the good old (new) Ford Mustang.

Verdict

Model tested:

Rating: 8

Ford Mustang

Digital, youth-oriented appeal meets traditional V8 grunt in a car that is still thousands of pounds cheaper than its rivals.

Good

Utterly charming

Good value

Entertaining

Bad

Interior has lost some character

Chassis lacks some sophistication

Not exactly economical

DESIGN & STYLING

Pros

A fresh and modern interpretation of a traditional design

More aerodynamic than before

Cons

Even larger than the car it replaces

European customers don't get as much choice as those in the US

It might seem ironic that this manual straw to clutch comes from the country that embraced the automatic transmission before the rest of the world. But the thing is, the Americans still love a stick shift in their performance cars, and if it weren’t for their appetite for manual Porsches and M cars, the Germans would long have made those auto-only.

This isn’t the first time we’ve driven a seventh-generation Mustang in the UK: we road tested the Ford Mustang Dark Horse version in November of 2024, but it failed to convince, precisely due to its clunk-o-matic 10-speeder – that and the mismatch between the Mustang’s core character as a bruiser and the Dark Horse-specific track addenda. So here we will focus on the standard GT with a six-speed manual, which we like a lot more.

We will get to why in a second. If you want to learn about all the nuts and bolts of the new S650-generation Mustang, our Dark Horse review has all the details.

INTERIOR

Pros

Digital dashboard is highly customisable

Perceived quality has taken a step up

Cons

Screen can lag when it is asked to perform simple tasks

Previous-gen car had more charm than today's screen fest

Inside, the big change compared with the previous-generation car is that the traditional double-cowled analogue instrumentation has been digitised. The double-brow dashboard remains in a sense but is now topped with a massive screen.

All UK cars come with a dashboard-width digital display running Ford's latest Sync 4 software. It combines a 12.3in instrument cluster and a 13.2in infotainment screen and can receive over-the-air software updates. Too modern? Just switch those new graphics for a recreation of the clocks from the 1979 Fox-body Mustang.

My test car had the standard seats, rather than the £2000 Recaros. They’re not great, feeling a bit like a worn-out couch: the padding feels soft at first, but when you actually sit down, you hit the hard frame very quickly. The backrest also seems to make you hunch.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

Below the screen sits a row of shortcut buttons for things like defogging the windows and turning off the traction control, plus a knob for the stereo volume.

Fit and finish are quite good. The controls and buttons feel sturdy enough, well-damped and evidently on the receiving end of some real attention to ergonomics, with a traditional-style handbrake lever (even though it is electronic), a button to turn off the lane-keeping assistance mounted on the steering wheel and the gearstick sited close to your thigh.

The infotainment is generally fine to use. It's easy enough to get used to, thanks in part to being powered by the Unreal Engine developed for console games. It can occasionally be slightly laggy, particularly when switching drive modes. You can blame the slightly over-the-top accompanying animation for this.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

Pros

V8 sounds wonderful at any point in the rev range

Feels faster than the numbers suggest

The manual is great

Cons

The automatic is terrible

Drive modes are convoluted

But back to the main event: the powertrain. Let’s start with the gearbox. You might expect a really burly shift quality, but it’s surprisingly delicate, with a light action and relatively short throws. It can feel a bit snaggy if you rush it, but surely learning to finesse your shifts is part of the fun when you have deliberately said no to an automatic? And unlike the auto, the manual doesn’t disobey your commands.

The clutch is fairly heavy, but not annoyingly so, and while the throttle and brake pedal aren’t ideally aligned for heel-and-toeing, it’s doable. There’s an automatic rev-matching mode as well. It is absurdly long-geared: second tops out north of 80mph.

Weirdly, the manual Dark Horse gets an entirely different manual: still with six speeds but made by Tremec instead of Getrag and with shorter ratios. The Tremec’s shift quality is a lot meatier too.

The long ratios are doubly odd because Ford’s Coyote 5.0-litre V8 isn’t some old-school chugger. It revs to 7400rpm and wants to be kept on the boil. Accelerating from 50-70mph requires a downshift from sixth.

The good news is that it sounds spectacular at any revs, so you don’t feel like you’re missing out if you don’t take it to the redline all the time. It’s perfectly burbly at lower revs and hardens to a hammering roar at higher revs. And with the manual, you just feel even more connected to that amazing engine.

RIDE & HANDLING

Pros

Firm but not uncomfortable ride quality

Huge levels of grip in the dry

Deliciously throttle-adjustable in the wet

Cons

Heavy, treacly steering

Firm ride yet slightly loose body control over choppy roads

So, it’s worth sticking with the manual, then, and it’s hard to see why you would bother with the Dark Horse either. It gets only a handful of extra power and no extra torque, and this GT drives every bit as well.

If anything, its damping feels a touch less rigid. The magnetorheological adaptive dampers (a £1750 option on the GT, standard on the Dark Horse) are still very firm, even in the Comfort setting, although the ride feels rubbery rather than brittle.

It settles down on the motorway, making the Mustang a pretty decent long-distance cruiser (if you can stomach the 20mpg).

You wonder which roads they were calibrated for, though, since the firmer settings are completely pointless on the road. Even so, over crests and big bumps, body control can feel a tad loose.

We can forgive it the slight uncouthness, because the Mustang is ultimately a muscle car, and one that’s very willing to entertain. The spectacular sound, the manual gearbox and the classic rear-drive balance make this one of the most simply entertaining cars on sale.

Conditions were cold and greasy for our week with the Mustang, which may sound scary with 440bhp and rear-wheel drive, but this car just has balance to spare. Little slides, big slides: it’s all just a flex of the right foot away and very easy to catch.

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

Pros

It's the cheapest V8 on the market

Cons

Very thirsty

As we’ve said in the intro, it’s impossible to get more cylinders for less money, let alone wrapped up in an attractive coupé. For now, there are two versions on sale: the £55,725 GT and the £67,995 Dark Horse.

But what you gain in purchase savings, you may lose in fuel costs. You will be lucky to get over 20mpg. If you use the performance, economy will drop into the teens.

Then again, given that too few people chose the four-cylinder engine in the old Mustang for Ford to continue offering it here, we suspect fuel economy is low on Mustang buyers' priority lists.

VERDICT

Verdict

Model tested:

Rating: 8

Ford Mustang

Digital, youth-oriented appeal meets traditional V8 grunt in a car that is still thousands of pounds cheaper than its rivals.

Good

Utterly charming

Good value

Entertaining

Bad

Interior has lost some character

Chassis lacks some sophistication

Not exactly economical

You can easily find fault with the Mustang. It’s not the most sophisticated sports car you can buy, but it knows its role in life. It’s a proper muscle car, one that doesn’t get too bogged down in the minutiae of steering feel and secondary ride. Instead, it gives you a mega engine, a manual gearbox, matchbox-car styling and handling that’s just fun. We need cars that are less serious and more fun.

At £55,725, it costs about the same as a four-cylinder Porsche 718 Cayman or a BMW M240i with a few options. Given how unique an offering the Mustang is these days, that’s a bit of a bargain.

TECHNICAL SPECS

Model tested:

Ford Mustang GT

Price:

£55,725

Engine:

V8, 5038cc, petrol, naturally aspirated

Transmission:

6-spd manual (optional 10-speed automatic)

Driveline layout:

Front engine, RWD, LSD

Model tested

Ford Mustang GT

Price

£55,725

Engine

V8, 5038cc, petrol, naturally aspirated

View all specs and rivals

Transmission

6-spd manual (optional 10-speed automatic)

Driveline layout

Front engine, RWD, LSD

Power

440bhp at 7250rpm

Torque

398lb ft at 5100rpm

0-62mph

5.3sec

Top speed

155mph

Kerb weight (DIN)

1733kg

Fuel economy

23.5mpg

CO2

274g/km

Rivals BMW M2 Mercedes-AMG CLE 53 Coupe

Power

440bhp at 7250rpm

Torque

398lb ft at 5100rpm

0-62mph

5.3sec

Top speed

155mph

Kerb weight (DIN)

1733kg

Fuel economy

23.5mpg

CO2

274g/km

Rivals BMW M2 Mercedes-AMG CLE 53 Coupe

Jonathan Bryce

Title: Social Media Executive

Jonathan is Autocar's social media executive. He has held this position since December 2024, having previously studied at the University of Glasgow before moving to London to become an editorial apprentice and pursue a career in motoring journalism.

His role at work involves running all of Autocar's social media channels, including X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, YouTube Shorts, LinkedIn and WhatsApp.

Illya Verpraet

Title: Road Tester

As a road tester, Illya drives everything from superminis to supercars, and writes reviews and comparison tests, while also managing the magazine’s Drives section. Much of his time is spent wrangling the data logger and wielding the tape measure to gather the data for Autocar’s in-depth instrumented road tests.

He loves cars that are fun and usable on the road – whether piston-powered or electric – or just cars that are very fit for purpose. When not in test cars, he drives an R53-generation Mini Cooper S.