Battle of Horse Power (Mustang GT vs Dark Horse 2026 comparison)

I've been the custodian of this Race Red Ford Mustang GT manual fastback for around five months now, this car here having almost 12,000 kilometres on the odometer, although I've only added about 4,000 of those. But why do I have a Dark Horse next to me? Now this Dark Horse here, like this GT here, is an MY24 car and has been on Ford Australia's press fleet for 15,000 kilometres in this case. And so what a perfect example to see whether my long-term GT manual is a better car and easier to live with than essentially Australia's long-term Dark Horse manual. Now it's not just a silly test here because there are very strong rumours that the Dark Horse is coming back to Australia once again as a limited edition model and likely only as a manual for MY26. So what a perfect time to have the Dark Horse manual fastback against the GT manual fastback. I want to find out which one's better, I want to find out if this is worth $25,000 more or is the base model actually a better all-round car. That's what we're here to find out. I'm Nathan Ponchard and this is Chasing Cars. Chasing Cars. Honest reviews of your next car. Brought to you by Logitech. Looking at them from this angle, the Dark Horse essentially looks like a decal on a spoiler pack and to an extent it is that. But there is so many engineering changes to this car compared to the normal GT that Ford in the US said has spent more than three years developing the Dark Horse. And so as we go through it you can see that all these little tweaks here and there do add up to a quite different whole even though essentially these are the same car underneath. Now the 5 litre Coyote quad cam 32 valve V8 under the bonnet of both of these Mustangs is essentially the same but the Dark Horse has had its ECU retuned, it has forged connecting rods, it has a different exhaust cam duration and it does have tweaks to the exhaust plus bigger rear pipes at the back and that achieves very little on paper in terms of power. 345 kilowatts, 350 kilowatts and essentially 550 newton meters out of both vehicles. Now the US car does have quite a lot more grunt than the right-hand drive Dark Horse because of something to do with the re-rooting of the complex exhaust system with the right-hand steering column and all that sort of stuff but it really doesn't matter because the changes, all of those little changes make a difference. Now underneath these two Mustangs are pretty similar mainly because this GT here has optional MagneRide magnetic adaptive dampers which are standard in the Dark Horse although they've been retuned here and it does have stiffer front springs and it does have a Torsen limited slip differential, not the regular limited slip differential that's in this GT manual here. The diff themselves is different because this one's a 3.73 to 1 and this one's a 3.55 to 1 and they both have completely different manual gearboxes as well, this Dark Horse here having much shorter and tighter ratios than the GT. A Tremec here, a Getrag here and so on the road all of these little things matter. Now what sets the Dark Horse apart from the regular GT isn't just the stickers and the spoilers, it's actually quite different. The bonnet may be the same and the air extraction vent here may be the same but it does have all that sticker stuff there but it's down here where it starts to show what it does. These ducts here are completely open and really suck air through, it's a completely different bumper design down the bottom, it's got quite a bit deeper chin spoiler so going over speed humps in the GT is quite effortless but you need to be careful in the Dark Horse because you can scrape the front end and as we go through the side and the rear it's little bits of colouring, this blue ember paint which looks amazing in sun in my opinion and the rear spoiler and stuff and badging because it does have different Dark Horse badging, no 5.0 here it just has a pony symbol looking you dead in the eyes to show that it does have a level of intent and that is exactly how it plays out. You can add spoilers and stripes to the GT but it just doesn't need it, it already has this beautiful muscular shape that is nice and clean, this shows what this car is really capable of. The most interesting thing about the Dark Horse interior is that it is incredibly similar to the GT's interior, it's just all the tweaking here and there, the general architecture is the same, all of the padding is the same, this here being the same as the GT but it has blue stitching, the fake carbon fibre here is the same, now it does say 6057 Dark Horse here meaning this is not a limited edition globally although it was in Australia, we only got a thousand of these in the MY24, hopefully we get more for MY26. There is a different sill insert there but everything else is the same, even the door trims here, the strakes, the shape, it's the same but here we have grey leather, blue leather suede whereas the GT has the same colours, the seats again the same as the optional Recaros in my GT but here they have sort of Alcantara suede centres, again perforated, again with no heating or cooling but you don't really need it. The thing about the Dark Horse though is that this suede holds you in place a lot better than the regular leather in the GT. Looking forward, again same thing, different leather around the steering wheel, different stitching, a bit more matte blacking rather than gloss blacking, essentially looking at the same instruments although the Dark Horse has little orange LCD bars for the fuel and the engine temp whereas the normal GT has white, that sort of stuff is all very very similar, same with the engine modes, same with the drive modes here, all of that kind of the same. Where it stands apart a little bit is that this has a 3D printed titanium gear knob for its Tremec TR3160 manual transmission and the GT has a leather and metal one for its Getrag MT82 transmission and they do feel a lot different to hold in your hand and they feel quite different in practice. One thing that these cars do get is wireless phone charging that has been removed by all Mustangs since and I can tell you now it doesn't matter because it doesn't really work very well anyway, you're better off just using a cord so that is no loss. The general quality here is really good, again the same thing in the Dark Horse is that this panel here is a bit loose just like the normal GTs, it doesn't have stop start there though which is what I'm pushing right now which is a good thing in my opinion, let us know what you think, but I just kind of want the engine to be running all of the time and the rest of the interior, this is seriously the best made American car I've been in probably ever, way better than some of the other ones that I've driven recently. About the only thing you can really pick on is the way the sticker on the windscreen is stuck on saying it's built with pride in Flat Rock Michigan and I don't think it really needs that. I've done a lot of driving in this GT manual over the past nearly 4,000 kilometres but the first thing that I do other than start it up with the button here is to hit the pony symbol down the middle here and when it comes up on the screen I turn the exhaust to sport, you don't necessarily need it because it's still quite fruity this bi-modal system that Australia gets standard on the GT but it just adds that extra little bit of pop and crackle and especially if you get the clutch depression right. Now comparing and contrasting the GT to the Dark Horse, notice just how effortlessly easy the GT manual is to drive, it's really, really quite forgiving. You do have to have your foot sort of positioned slightly inward a bit almost like you're a little bit pigeon-toed and with your knees a bit closer together which may not suit everybody but if you get it there the clutch feel is beautiful, the gear shift is perfectly smooth, there is more travel here in this Getrag MT82 than there is in the Tremec and the other car but it's so precise and well oiled and lovely, it is way, way better than the manuals that we used to be accustomed to in our Australian V8 GT muscle cars. It's much more European which leads me to the dynamics of this car. I haven't driven an S650 Mustang without the magnetic jampers but I can say that they do make this car really drivable on pretty much all surfaces. The suspension in the GT is firm but not too firm, it can handle big bumps really quite well even wearing these 19-inch wheels and yet when you hammer it, it has a balance and a grip that is just so tangible all of the time. The steering in normal is plenty meaty enough although you can just go to sport here by pressing the mode here in the dial and going one step down and you automatically get the sport exhaust and you get a little bit meatier steering and a little bit firmer damping but again the same old changes the throttle sensitivity as well but none of it is too excessive. Again, it's drivable like this every single day and I have driven this car in very heavy traffic and other than occasionally coming back from the gym and depressing the clutch, see this is the base car remember, still sounds like that, depressing the clutch after doing stuff on your legs and your left calf threatens to cramp, there is that but in which case by the automatic but there's so much to love about this manual. It does have a 3.55 to 1 diff ratio and a limited slip diff so in pretty much all driving environments the traction from the rear end of this Mustang GT is astounding but combined with the gear ratios, it's also very tall geared. You can find that you can pull along at a thousand rpm in sixth gear really quite effortlessly but it is definitely a tall geared car and does take a little while for the engine to sort of come on it's tractable always like I said from a thousand rpm or even less but there is definitely a sweet spot and that's about there three and a half thousand to six and a half thousand it'll rev to seven and a half thousand but the last little bit isn't necessarily as spine tingling as you may want I think max power is at 7250 and after that there's just no point going any further but that's not what this car is about there's just so much to like here even the brakes they're the same as the Dark Horse in the Aussie spec GT and they are ample they feel really good the combination of them with the tyre grip and all that makes this GT feel a little bit like it's been engineered by BMW M. It has a consistency to it in the way that the steering responds in the balance of the car and all of that that is just so massively superior to the previous generation Mustang that I drove multiple variations of and I don't think any of them are completely sorted so this car here really has kind of blown me away a little bit in what it can do just out of the box albeit with magnetic dampers for the most part this is such a great day-to-day livable lovable muscle car that I was fascinated to see just how different or how better the Dark Horse can be so let's find out. The first impression of the Dark Horse is that everything is the same but different little tweaks like we've been through every little thing has changed exhaust a little bit louder the clutch travel a bit shorter the gear shift much sharper potentially notchier but also more defined in its gain and just that combination of short sharp clutch travel short gear shift throw and much shorter gear ratios as well as the media steering we're just in normal mode here and it fills media power gets down better and just that rear diff that torsion diff just works a bit better all of it just kind of amps it so beautifully and I thought how could you make the GT that much better but the years invested in developing this Dark Horse have not been wasted on any level it does require quite a bit of focus when you're feeling lazy the other GT is a much lazier car to drive because it's gearing so much taller its clutch is more forgiving its gear shift is more oiled and longer throw but here everything is very positive now what really changes the driving character of the cars is the gearing 3.55 to 1 diff ratio with the GT 3.73 in the manual of the Dark Horse and then you go through the ratio set if you look at the individual ratios from first gear all the way through to sixth the Dark Horse is shorter but in the middle there it's almost like it has stacked them so tight because fifth gear in the Dark Horse is one-to-one which is fourth gear in the GT and the Dark Horse has a shorter gear ratio so its fifth gear is shorter than the GT's fourth which makes a huge difference to that sort of little bit of doughiness at the bottom end that the GT manual has where it's tractable but like I was saying it needs revs to really pick itself up especially from about 2500 onwards whereas the Dark Horse is already there and that makes a huge difference to the way it drives even just around town the ride is a bit firmer but just every little bit adds to a much greater hole to make this car so lovable like if Ford Australia brings this in for MY26 and even if it costs 125,000 drive away for example it's going to be at least I would say 106, 108, 110 it's going to have to carry a bit of the burden of the Enves stuff for emissions I still think it's a bargain especially compared to what you would need to pay in a German BMW M and that sort of thing to get a similar level of focus and enjoyment and excellence about the only area where the Dark Horse kind of shows a little bit of compromise is the way that it's geared to be on the freeway sixth gear is almost as tall as sixth gear the GT of course it's shorter overall because of the shorter diff but there's a big gap between fifth and sixth kind of just like there used to be in older Aussie muscle cars between fourth and fifth when they were all five speeds the first four would be really tight and fifth would be a huge jump and so is the case here with sixth it kind of drops from about 3,000 rpm to 2,000 rpm in one shift and yet it's still again really tractable really effortless what are you going to 60 at 60 k's an hour 1,000 rpm it moves along fairly leisurely but it doesn't feel uncomfortable and you've also got all those other gears to play with so who cares about that anyway the difference I think in having the wheels a little bit wider with the same tires makes them feel quite different in the way they respond it's almost like they're a different tread pattern but they're not they're the same and I suppose that leads me to what we're left with here this is an MY24 Dark Horse that's been on the press fleet since launch it's done 15,183 kilometers and the only thing that's really worn on it is the tires and even then they still feel pretty good a new set of boots on this thing and geez it would be great it is surprisingly robust this is a proper American muscle car that for us Australians now that we don't make cars like this anymore is a amazing privilege to enjoy and experience because it reminds us of the sort of vehicle that we used to love and build ourselves but it isn't gone completely it remains in the Ford Mustang and I just hope that Ford keeps building this car it doesn't matter that underneath this is the previous generation Mustang with new styling it feels like a completely different and massively better generation and I love it so much and I want a new Dark Horse so bad so keep your eye out for when they go on sale because you don't want to miss this. After living with the GT manual for five months I kind of thought why would you need any more than this and then I spent a month in the Dark Horse and now I know why this car sold out so quickly and why the 2026 model is likely to do the same thing because it deserves to it's had so much focus done in so many areas that it is a less forgiving car particularly at the front end here scraping over speed humps also the clutch and the gearbox and everything all of that is so much more focused but in every way that counts this is a more immediate a better car a more fun car and a more in your face Mustang. Going back to the GT over there certainly approaching the regular GT just from the back end here it almost looks a little bit like a base model but it is so much more than that too it is a more forgiving car than the Dark Horse and it is an easier car to live with but the Dark Horse is worth every cent of its roughly $25,000 premium over that car if it was up to me and I could afford to put my deposit down for an MY26 Mustang Dark Horse I would be racing to get one of these over a regular GT but I wouldn't feel completely short-changed if I ended up with a GT manual with MagnaRide and Recaros because it's still a great muscle car. Let us know what you think do you think this is the best-looking Mustang of all time like I do do you believe me when I'm saying that this is like a BMW engineered German M version of an American muscle car it's also probably the best built American car that I can think of and I'd like to hear your comments have you had experience with owning a Mustang what do you think of your Dark Horse if you happen to have one and would you recommend to have one long term and if you haven't subscribed please do so below the video and hit the notification bell and tell us what you think about chasing cars and thank you for watching