The 2024 Ford Mustang carries over its muscle automobile and sports activities automobile roots whereas being totally introduced into the trendy digital age.
A stampede swept via Detroit Wednesday night. A Mustang stampede, to be extra exact. To assist have a good time the debut of the seventh-generation pony automobile, Ford Motor Co. invited house owners from everywhere in the nation to collect at company headquarters within the suburb of Dearborn after which gallop downtown for the official unveiling of the 2024 Mustang.
GearJunkie has a more in-depth take a look at what they found.
Ford Mustang Origins
All of it started 60 years in the past with a blue sheet of paper. Signed by one-time Ford Motor Co. President Lee Iacocca, it was the formal order to start the event of a brand new sports activities coupe that might goal the upcoming flood of Child Growth automobile patrons.
“Iacocca knew there was a brand new era developing and he acknowledged the youth section would need one thing completely different and sportier” than the staid sedans and wagons that then dominated the American roads, says Ted Ryan, Ford’s archive supervisor, as he shows the letter despatched from Iacocca’s workplace on December 5, 1962.
There was loads of inner debate over the plan, even when it got here to what the brand new sports activities coupe needs to be known as. Some favored “fowl” names, and others appreciated “Cougar,” a nameplate that Ford’s mid-range Mercury model would finally undertake.
The eventual winner: Mustang. And although it was initially meant to reference the legendary World Warfare II fighter aircraft, it was a very good pairing with the opposite breakthrough product Ford was engaged on: the Bronco SUV.
Skeptics Shocked
Whilst the brand new coupe was getting readied for market, there have been loads of skeptics they usually anticipated Ford would wrestle to simply promote 75,000 of the coupes a yr. However when the ’64½ Mustang made its debut on the New York World’s Honest, it turned an instantaneous sensation. Patrons snapped up each one Ford might construct, about 475,000 that first yr.
Within the 6 many years since, the Ford Mustang has had its ups and downs. There have been nice variations and a few forgettable ones. However it continues to defy the continuing shift to SUVs, CUVs, and pickups.
Certainly, Mustang is the one passenger automobile mannequin that Ford nonetheless produces within the U.S. And it has been the bestselling sports activities coupe on the earth for the previous 7 years — with cause to count on it’ll stretch that to eight years by the point the all-new 2024 Mustang involves market in 2023.
There’s been loads of hypothesis about what the brand new pony automobile may appear to be. And even these inside Ford weren’t fairly certain till the final potential second as to which of dozens of potential designs may wind up going into manufacturing.
Virtually Lacking the Mark
By late February 2020, simply 3 weeks earlier than the ultimate model needed to be locked down to satisfy the manufacturing schedule. “We weren’t hitting the mark,” remembers Chris Walter, the outside design chief. And the state of affairs turned all of the extra problematic as COVID hit and most Ford staff have been despatched to make money working from home.
Someway, by March 16, the design group discovered the look they cherished. And pony automobile followers gathering outdoors Detroit’s Huntington Place conference middle are getting their first take a look at it.
2024 Ford Mustang Revealed
In trade parlance, the brand new automobile is “evolutionary,” slightly than “revolutionary.” It picks up on most of the fundamental styling cues that date again to the unique Mustang first accredited by Lee Iacocca 6 many years in the past.
There’s the menacing grille with its acquainted pony brand, the lengthy hood broadly hinting of Mustang’s muscle, and the sweeping roofline that provides the sports activities coupe a way of movement even whereas standing nonetheless.
The 2024 Mustang will get a extra aggressive “forehead” up entrance, giving it an impatient scowl. The triple-LED headlamps now wrap into the entrance quarter panels. The again haunches are flared out practically an inch, each including to the sense of stressed movement.
There are distinctive entrance fascias, relying upon whether or not you’re wanting on the base automobile or the GT — the latter mannequin additionally getting practical hood extractors and large Brembo brake calipers barely hid behind new wheel designs. The bottom automobile, in the meantime, has twin exhausts, with 4 pipes distinguishing the GT.
‘Full-On Muscle Automobile’
“For the seventh-generation Mustang, we’ve gone full-on muscle automobile,” says Walter.
Ford PR of us are well-known for the mantra, “We don’t speak about future merchandise,” and that extends to the opposite Mustang variants that everybody is aware of will comply with: the probably Bullitt and Shelby editions amongst them.
For now, we’ll have to stay with discussing the entry mannequin and the basic Mustang GT. The previous will get 300+ horsepower, redefining the idea of a “base” automobile. Each fashions get vital engine upgrades. And what else actually issues extra? “Mustang’s coronary heart is within the motor,” says Car Engineering Supervisor Eddie Khan.
We will’t supply a lot in the way in which of particulars but. For now, Ford merely says the bottom mannequin can have a fourth-generation 2.3L EcoBoost. Within the present, gen-6 Mustang, the turbocharged I-4 makes 310 horsepower and 350 pound-feet of torque. It has an estimated launch of 5.1 seconds from 0 to 60 mph. It’s an affordable wager the numbers all will enhance within the 2024 ‘Stang.
The identical is probably going for the 2024 GT, with a fourth-generation Coyote V8. At the moment, the 5.0L package deal makes as much as 450 horsepower right here, and 410 pound-feet of torque. The manufacturing facility estimates you’ll hit 60 in 4.2 seconds.
Pony Automobile Drifting
The GT additionally provides a sizzling new Drift Mode function developed in cooperation with Vaughn Gittin Jr. All it’s important to do is hit the “drift button” on the middle console and yank on the adjoining hand brake.
That’s one among an assortment of recent high-tech options coming to the 2024 Mustang, and it displays the modifications in immediately’s market. The place uncooked muscle was the stuff that turned on Child Boomers, immediately’s Mustang patrons need a mixture of efficiency and know-how, contends Alicia Agius, Ford’s Innovation & Technique supervisor.
“We knew we wished to attach with present prospects,” she explains. “However we additionally wished to attract from a brand new era of consumers,” a lot as Ford has performed with every Mustang makeover.
A ‘Disruptive Inside’
You get a way of how issues have modified when you lastly slip inside the brand new pony automobile. Right here’s the place designers pushed for a extra revolutionary look, amongst different issues, getting rid of the double-brow instrument panel.
This “disruptive inside,” says design chief Ricardo Garcia, “was impressed by the inside of a fighter jet.”
Amongst different issues, the instrument panel is dominated by digital shows. Within the base mannequin, there are cut up screens that embody a reconfigurable gauge cluster and a 13.2-inch infotainment display screen. The GT will get a single, angled show mixing the gauge and infotainment screens.
The instrument clusters are utterly reconfigurable, with a wide range of completely different layouts accessible. This features a minimalist Calm and the appropriately named Observe modes.
If the brand new, high-tech format is controversial in any approach, it’s prone to be the choice to take away all however a handful of conventional knobs and switches. Although Ford builders properly retained a basic quantity dial.
A Extra Digital Design
“We knew what prospects wished and designed probably the most digital Mustang ever whereas retaining the all-important driver-focused cockpit,” mentioned Garcia. “Eradicating a few of these bodily buttons, resembling radio and local weather management, and integrating them right into a digital show was fashionable in analysis with Millennials, Gen-Z, and conventional Mustang drivers alike.”
The brand new automobile options the newest model of Ford’s Sync4 infotainment system. And it provides smartphone-style over-the-air know-how that can enable it to remotely replace nearly each little bit of onboard software program. The brand new Mustang additionally integrates Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. That can allow you to function Alexa-enable gadgets, resembling dwelling lighting.
One other new function is the smartphone-as-key. This function lets you use an app, slightly than a keyfob to entry and function the coupe.
On a extra basic notice, Ford has upgraded the general feel and appear of the Mustang’s driver-centric cabin. It will get extra upscale supplies completed in techie graining. The seats promise to be extra snug and supportive. And there’s now a sportier flat-bottomed steering wheel in all variations.
2024 Mustang: Pricing & Availability
Whereas the marketplace for sedans, coupes, hatchbacks, and sports activities automobiles continues to shrink, Ford is assured the 2024 Mustang will proceed to retain a loyal following whereas attracting at the very least some new patrons.
Search for the 2024 Ford Mustang to enter manufacturing within the spring of 2023, with gross sales to start summer time of 2023 within the U.S. The automaker hasn’t introduced plans for abroad markets simply but.
Ford can be going to attend till nearer to the on-sale date to announce pricing. The present beginning value for the 2022 Ford Mustang is $27,470 plus supply charges. The Mustang GT begins at round $37,000.
