The setting: A late-March week in the City of Angels on a mission to get desperately needed sunlight and fish tacos after a dismal winter. Picked up from Sixt at LAX; airport-arrival pickup for a rental is more or less mandatory unless you already have a ride to escape the airport zone, and the rental companies all know this and charge accordingly. Lots of hitting up the obvious places plus a few pleasant surprises: downtown, Mulholland, Malibu, Griffith Park, Beverly Hills, the Petersen, Iconic Motorbikes, the Sunset Strip, some very random side neighborhoods, the works. Piled on a bunch of miles having an absolutely lovely time. (Yes, this review has been on hold for four months, but that's the way this year has been and the 2020 Mustang is apparently a carryover anyway.)
Driving: Expectations are strange things. I suppose the idea of "a Mustang" was fixed in my own thoughts back with the Fox-body cars, which were simple and compact. The S550 is (obviously) much more sophisticated and (maybe more subtly) much larger - and that latter trait was both the biggest surprise and the defining element of the experience.
This is a pretty big car - 107-inch wheelbase, 188 inches overall, 75 wide. More's the case that it felt big, especially when trying to park and swing open the long doors but also around town and when trying to get situated on a highway lane where those fenders stretched a bit further than seemed consistently comfortable. The steering was great along Mulholland but the tighter-radius curves showed up the Mustang as a bulky-if-fast cruiser instead of a tossable knife fighter, following the driver's lead instead of feeling closely connected.
Take a car of this size and lop the top off and you lose a significant part of the structure - and that loss was readily perceptible. Nothing rattled or crashed or felt loose, but bumps would induce a noticeable degree of flex and quiver. That said I'm seriously tempted to favor living with the ongoing experiment in body integrity, not only for the quality-of-life factor that comes with open air but because the convertible is a far more attractive overall design than the coupe with its ill-proportioned greenhouse.
As far as what was installed in that somewhat large and supple body: I grew to deeply dislike the 10-speed automatic, which would have benefitted from the deletion of about three ratios. Trying to shift it manually felt like quick-flipping a trigger on a video game controller to keep up with the motor, and it never seemed to find its own groove when left to its programming. Flip side is that the EcoBoost motor is definitely one of the better turbo powerplants I've sat behind. No, it isn't quite as immediate and linear as a good naturally-aspirated engine through its long pedal travel, but it feels close - and once up on boost it lunges forward with enough thrust to mute stubborn traditionalists. Instrumented tests put zero-to-60 scores in the mid-five-second range.
It helps to be in one of the more ambitious drive modes, though. Sport amped up the responsiveness without being obnoxious, Sport+ was aggressive fun but a bit harsh, Normal was definitely too soft. Tried Track and Drag (or Launch? whatever flickered on the display) for a few seconds apiece before switching to something more civilized. Again, it felt like there were two or three too many modes on offer, and pedaling through the multitude of settings was often slightly exasperating and definitely more distracting than it should have been.
The presence of the Safe & Smart pack was personally noteworthy. This was my first experience with automatic emergency braking and lane-keeping assist, two technologies that quickly became annoyances. AEB never beat my own reflexes, although it came in on top of my pedal pressing more than once. The lane keeper was simply irritating as I worked through highway traffic. AEB may be important for the broad market, but I personally would have erred on the side of daring and dumb and left the Safe & Smart box blank.
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| A study in degrees of disappointment: mildly oversized and misequipped vs. gratuitous hype and the worst fries on Earth. |
Sitting: Let's get the most important and endearing part out of the way first - this is the car that converted Anna from a somewhat anxious skeptic into a convertible fan. Twist the latch, let the motors do their thing, and the occupants get all the joys of open-air driving with no downside save that chassis flex. Top-down we were able to carry on conversations in essentially a normal tone of voice at highway speeds and I was able to wear a baseball cap without fear of it getting blown away. Visibility was predictably awful with the top up - the rear window is exactly as effective as its scant dimensions would indicate - but solving that problem was a simple and smooth process.
That top covers a cabin that is surprisingly snug given those external dimensions, a feeling exacerbated by a low seating position and high sills; people of average height or less will have to reach up slightly to realize the classic elbow-out pose. We didn't get the chance to carry anyone in the back seat which was probably for the best because even reaching for a hat or purse was awkward, a situation made less enjoyable by the need to reset the seat back every time we flipped them forward.
Our Mustang otherwise scored well on considerations of day-to-day comforts and conveniences. Materials quality was generally good if not lavish and controls felt solid in their logically expected places, although the reconfigurable instrument display is the definition of a gimmick. Sync mated quickly and effectively with my iPhone. Climate control for us mostly involved opening the top, although heated and ventilated seats were included to back up the air conditioner.
Concluding: The Mustang has been around in one form or another for fifty-five years now, introduced as part of a wave of Ford products with names that drew upon Wild West mythology: the Bronco, the Ranchero, the Ranger, the Thunderbird. (And the Pinto and Maverick, I suppose, but anyway....) That original formula of reasonable size, daily practicality, and accessible performance has been stretched and trimmed along the way, but the car has usually held close to its identity and roots. A Mustang wasn't unreasonable for a high school kid with a decent job or someone just out of college, and it was both practical and gratifying to drive for a huge segment of the population.
At least until recently. Yes, there's been some big Mustangs before (1971-73 in particular) and yes, we all talk about everything getting bigger and prone to bloat, but this is more than that. This is about a new ambition for the name. The Mustang isn't so much a teenager's speedster anymore as it is something that would be much more appealing - and more appropriate, in many ways - to that kid's parents.
That's the truth that hit me at a certain point: The current Mustang is what the Thunderbird was, in its size and equipment and price and attitude. It's now very much a personal luxury car, not far removed from a BMW 4-series, and in that it works very well indeed. I suppose that means that the Mustang's original people's-sportster mission is now being fulfilled by the Fiesta ST and Focus ST, but...oh, right.
That said, this is still at its core a very attractive and desirable car. Towards the end of the trip Anna asked (with a hint of wistfulness) if I would consider buying a Mustang. The short answer was: Not this one with the awful automatic and the optional excesses. But let's try this again with a base EcoBoost convertible with the six-speed or maybe with a GT coupe. The legend deserves further understanding, even if it's not what it once was.
