![]() And it’s still offered with a manual transmission of the sort that Transou was using, wearing out her left leg on the clutch pedal, rarely getting past first gear in gridlock traffic.Ībout 40% of V8 Mustang buyers get a manual transmission, she said, going for that truly classic driving experience. The new Mustang Dark Horse’s 500-horsepower V8 engine is straightforward. Once we turned back north, we were headed toward the Lincoln Tunnel at rush hour. Once we’d gone a few blocks on southbound 10th Avenue with little other traffic, it was time to head back north or, in Manhattan parlance, uptown. “The choice for now was to lean into the ICE engine and all that an ICE engine delivers,” Transou said, using an industry term for an internal combustion engine.Ĭustomers who love the rumbling sound might like a hybrid at some time “should we decide to offer that,” she said. Laurie Transou had this 1991 Mustang when she was younger. That is, of course, part of its ongoing charm, and probably one of the reasons Ford decided not to even offer a hybrid version, at least for now. Given room to breathe, the Mustang will remain - like a sort of living fossil of an earlier age in motoring. So Dodge plans to come out with an electric muscle car instead. GM had already announced it plans to sell nothing but electric passenger vehicles by 2035 and, besides, the Camaro hasn’t really been a match for the Mustang in the competition that counts - sales.Īs for the Challenger, it’s been popular but Stellantis, Dodge’s parent company, doesn’t currently have the electric vehicles to offset sales of those big V8s for fuel economy and emissions regulations. Second, its main competitors, the Chevrolet Camaro and the Dodge Challenger, are both going out of production over the coming year. Every other Ford product sold here is a truck or an SUV. First, it’s the only actual car Ford currently sells in the United States. The car we were in, the Mustang coupe, is already an oddity in the American auto industry. That means Ford doesn’t have to worry as much about selling these gas-burning two-door Mustangs. Plus, the Mach-E’s zero fuel consumption helps keep down Ford’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy, the number regulators look at. So each offers something a bit different.” “This Mustang can go fast, but it also has this amazing handling and steering and then the exhaust note. It goes incredibly fast in a straight line,” she said. Transou never spoke a bad word about the Mustang Mach-E but, as someone who learned how to drive a manual transmission car in a Mustang as a teenager, she clearly has a personal attachment. Still, I was getting what will become, over the coming years, an increasingly rare experience. Transou was behind the wheel because journalists aren’t allowed to drive the 2024 Mustang until a few things get finalized. That’s someone else’s job.Īs we took off, there was a burst of speed and throaty V8 engine noise as we blasted down Manhattan’s 11th Avenue. Because of the way Ford is now organized, with separate operating divisions in charge of gas-powered vehicles and electric ones - Ford Blue and Ford Model E, respectively - Transou isn’t in charge of the Mustang Mach-E. But we weren’t talking about that Mustang. Transou and others at Ford will tell you there is an electric Mustang, the Mustang Mach-E SUV. Laurie Transou, Ford Mustang's chief program engineer.
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