Affordable Dream Car: The Ford Mustang GT - Does It Work On UK Roads?

The amazing, the iconic, the loud, mad, bad, dangerous to know and very American Ford Mustang GT. Now before we get started proper I just want to say a quick thank you to BOTB for once again sponsoring this video. And they currently have a brand new Mustang GT, that is the V8, available to win for £2.05. That's not too bad. Now details of that are on their website. You have to be at least 16 to play. You will be playing a spot the ball competition and I think you get the idea. But let's talk about the car. The Mustang is an interesting vehicle if ever there were one because the way people respond to it varies very, very greatly. In the USA, if somebody said what car do you drive and you said a Mustang, I think the usual response would probably be like, oh cool, or something like that. However, in the UK, if somebody says what car do you drive and you say a Mustang, people are much more likely to go, ooh, a Mustang. Now for my American viewers, you have to imagine something. Today I have seen, including this one, three Mustangs. That's actually quite a few. To further give you an idea of how the balance of cars plays out here, this month in the UK, I have seen a grand total of zero Corvettes. I know that's something that's very, very hard to imagine, but here you're far more likely to spot a Lamborghini or a Ferrari than you are a Corvette. You've always been able to buy a Mustang in the UK, thanks to the way that our import laws work. However, very few people did because you had to go through the import process and the vehicle you wound up with was almost certainly going to be left-hand drive. However, with the introduction of the sixth generation Mustang, which is still the current car, a lot of radical changes were made. Now for many people, the big change was the introduction of a fully independent rear suspension. However, for those of us on this beautiful little aisle, the really big news was the fact that not only was the Mustang going to be available in right-hand drive, it was going to be sold in UK showrooms. And the news got even better when we found out how much they were going to cost. A fully specced V8 Ford Mustang in about 2016 was going to set you back 40 grand. That's not a lot of money, that was about half the amount it would take you to get into an entry-level 911, which had about 100 fewer horses. This car is powered by the five-litre Coyote engine. It's a fairly new design for Ford at the time and it's still around in not just the Mustang but other products too. And here it produces about 420 horsepower, down a little bit on the American spec cars, and just shy of 400 pound-foot of torque. I suppose this is as good a moment as any to talk about the effect that owning a Mustang has on people in the UK. People absolutely love it. That tractor driver over there, for example, big old thumbs up. The social side of cars is something that I think is far too often overlooked and something that I'm always trying hard to sort of impress upon people because cars like this can genuinely make someone's day. Just seeing one of these can ignite a passion in somebody, just like it did in this car's owner, Joel. Now it wasn't a Mustang that actually started his American car obsession. It was in fact a Corvette C3 that he spotted in a car park in his youth. From that moment, or more accurately, from the moment he realised what it actually was, he was set on American muscle cars. And then when the news broke that the Mustang was coming to the UK, he knew that he had to have one. So in this series, we're looking at things a little bit differently to normal. I have driven a sixth generation Mustang before, but it was a rental spec car in America. That really wasn't a pleasant experience whatsoever. You see, the Mustang, as far as I'm concerned, has a little bit of a problem. We consider the Mustang to be something of a halo product, the flagship of the Ford brand. But in the USA, it is, I guess, in some ways similar, but it's also a car that you can buy very cheaply. How cheaply? Well, a number of years ago, when the V6 Mustang was still on sale, you could pick up one of those for almost dollar for dollar, the same price as a Transit. Now, why is that a problem? Isn't it great, surely, that these cars are available at next to no money? Well, yes and no. The issue is that Ford need to build these cars in such a way that they can actually make money on them at $25,000 a piece. The reality was that it was only ever rental companies that bought those kind of cars. Most people, even in the US, speccing them up to about $40,000 to $50,000, usually going for the V8, with a few people sticking with the V6, and perhaps even fewer still going with the four-cylinder. Amusingly, when Ford announced that they were going to bring this car to the UK, they anticipated a roughly 50-50 split between the four-pot 2.3-litre EcoBoost and the 5.0-litre V8. Be honest here, you've never laid awake at night dreaming of owning a 2.3-litre turbo Mustang, have you? I thought not. You want a Mustang that makes this kind of noise. Now, American engines often have this reputation as being very unhappy to rev, and while this certainly doesn't go to the stratosphere like an old M3 V8 might, it's still happy enough to go to its 6,500rpm redline, and more importantly, it's got plenty of go at basically any rpm you so desire. 2,000rpm, foot down, 3,000rpm, 3,000rpm, 3,000rpm, 3,000rpm, 3,000rpm, 3,000rpm, 3,000rpm, 3,000rpm, and it just picks up and goes. So what's the expectation of an American car? Well, I think most people think that an American car will be big, wallowy, soft, rubbish handling, and yeah, maybe have a huge, great big engine, but ultimately not really be that good in the corners. Now, what's it actually really like? Well, it's interesting. It is reasonably hard over the bumps. This car has a few modifications to it. Those include a set of Eibach lowering springs, which drop the car down about an inch or so, a 20mm Eibach spacers, which actually make it sit beautifully, and a rear cradle lockout kit that kind of stiffens up the back end of the car. Other modifications include the Kooks exhaust because, well, everybody wants their Mustang to sound a little bit vocal, and this one actually sounds, well, pretty nice. The controls in the car are a little bit of a mismatch. The gear shift is absolutely beautiful, really spot on. The clutch is a little bit tricky, and the brake is ridiculously over-servoed. It's very, very difficult to drive it gently around town. Now, I'm sure you would eventually get used to it, but having just jumped out of what I class a relatively normal car, well, for today, a Nissan Leaf, does take some considerable getting used to. The car is reasonably large, fairly wide, but you do have a nice view out the front. Most importantly, though, this thing does really deliver on that sort of American muscle car dream. I think I can make a pretty damn good argument that the Mustang is an extremely attainable vehicle. Now, this car, brand new specification, was about £36,000. That's not a lot at all. This car's current owner did purchase it from new. He also bought an extended warranty with it, so the car is still in warranty, and yet there's only one thing that he's actually had to use that warranty for, and those are the puddle lights. Nothing on this car has broken, and that is very good news indeed for those who are thinking of buying one second-hand or perhaps even new. He's also bought a service pack with it, and that is £600 for three years, so £200 a year in terms of servicing. The best part of Mustang ownership, I suspect, though, and perhaps the real reason a lot of people go in for it, is the ridiculous availability of aftermarket parts for them. You can make your Mustang look, sound, and go pretty much however you want it to. That being said, there's very little that inherently wrong with this car. Yes, the ride is perhaps a little bit too firm and, at the same time, a little bit floaty. Dynamically speaking, an M4 will walk all over this. But the M4 is a car which has just never really gelled with me. The Mustang, and I appreciate that this is ridiculously cliche, is very much a car that wears its heart on its sleeve. I don't think I'm ever going to get a thumbs-up from a tractor driver in an M4. He might give me one of his other digits, but it wouldn't be the thumb. It's really that sort of 3,000 to 4,000 rpm bit where the Mustang is just so happy. I'm sure there are plenty of ways that you can improve the ride. No doubt there is a huge amount of aftermarket parts for them which you can stick straight on this. One part of the Mustang experience which, unfortunately, was also watered down for the UK audience was the ludicrous amount of options that US buyers have when speccing their car from new. That's not to say that we've been completely ignored because there's a reasonable amount of parts that you can buy from Ford Performance to enhance your car and maintain your factory warranty, including supercharger kits that'll take this car up to about 650 horsepower. The Mustang is certainly not a perfect car. Many of my criticisms of the first one that I drove do hold true in here. It's certainly a nicer place to be than in the V6 rental convertible that I had, but there's no escaping the fact that it's still a relatively cheap interior. But let's be perfectly honest here. You are not buying a Mustang for the quality of its interior. You are buying it for the way that it looks, the way that it sounds, the way that it goes, and the way that it makes you feel. On all of those points, the Mustang scores perfectly. And even better than that, it's actually a vehicle which is very reasonable to buy, to maintain, and to run. Even things like its thirst in isolation are perhaps, well, a little bit uncomfortable, but if you compare them to something like an E92 M3, not really that bad. So the Mustang, I think, is a great starting point in my dream car series because it is very much a dream car and also, as it turns out, quite affordable too. Thanks for watching. Please like, comment below, subscribe if you haven't already, and I'll see you for the next one. Bye-bye.