Chris Walter grinned. “We’re trying,” he stated, “to seize a brand new Mustang purchaser.”

Walter, middle-aged and match, is the Mustang’s exterior design chief. He appears to be like like a cross between Chris Martin of Coldplay and the retired British System 1 driver Jenson Button, and he was talking to a bunch of journalists on the 2024 Ford Mustang‘s media launch in California. Typically chipper and pleasant, he’s onerous to dislike, and his workforce does good work.

Listening to him converse within the Pasadena warmth, we questioned in regards to the GT’s new display screen. Maybe you may have seen it: an oblong piece of glass consuming roughly half of the sprint, plopped between vents like a hat on a hat. For the reason that mid-Sixties, when the mannequin was new, Mustang interiors have historically been designed with a little bit of restraint. Outdated Mustangs had dashboards that resembled a great pocketknife, easy and purposeful with bits of tidy icing. Similar for the outgoing S550-generation Mustang, which served from mannequin years 2015 to 2023. What’s occurring?

Good issues, it seems. Plus an acre of pixels. However largely good issues.

Ford makes only one automotive as of late, and that is it. All the pieces else within the lineup is a truck or an SUV. The brand new Mustang, dubbed S650, is the mannequin’s seventh technology, primarily that 2015–23 platform plus reasonable beauty and mechanical updates. The GT badge, historically the Mustang’s happiest stability of velocity and worth, will get a fourth-generation model of Ford’s Coyote 5.0-liter V-8.

2024 Mustang GT Mechanical Updates

For many individuals, the Mustang is the explanation for the horse-car season. That naturally aspirated 32-valve 5.0-liter beneath the hood for 2024 is a light-weight refresh of final 12 months’s engine, nudged right here and there to cut back friction, improve effectivity, and bump output. The place the outdated GT engine had one throttle physique, this one will get two; the oil pan, exhaust cams, and left-side exhaust manifold are additionally new.

The result’s 480 horsepower at 7150 rpm and 415 lb-ft of torque at 4900 rpm. These numbers are up from 450 horses at 7000 rpm and 410 lb-ft at 4600. There’s additionally a feisty bark-burble on startup. Select the optionally available active-valve exhaust ($1225), which was fitted to our automotive, and output rises to 486 horsepower at 7250 rpm and 418 lb-ft at 4900. As with the outgoing GT, redline is 7500 rpm no matter muffler alternative. The usual six-speed handbook and optionally available 10-speed computerized additionally carry over.

Beneath lies delicate massaging. The electronically assisted power-steering ratio has been quickened barely, from 16.0:1 to fifteen.5:1, and its management software program has been reworked within the curiosity of improved really feel. The physique has been stiffened in crucial locations. The brakes are actually electronically boosted, changing the outdated vacuum setup.

2024 Mustang GT Inside and Exterior Design

Inside, the basic dual-brow sprint is gone. That lengthy rectangular show is absolutely two shows beneath one piece of glass: a 12.4-inch display screen for the instrument cluster and a 13.2-inch touchscreen for many cockpit capabilities and options, from local weather to stereo to launch management. It gathers finger gunge rapidly however presents a largely intuitive interface.

The brand new styling, naturally, resembles however doesn’t lockstep mirror the outdated. Ford says that externally, the three variants within the Mustang line—the four-cylinder EcoBoost, the GT, and the approaching track-focused Darkish Horse—share little greater than headlamps. The panels are principally smoothed and clarified S550 items, dotted with tasteful hints of older Mustangs: the newly emphasised hips, the hood extractor vents and extra aggressive grille openings on the GT and Darkish Horse, the notch-shaped “bent” panel between the taillights.

The final half is a neat contact, shadow-bound in all however direct mild, serving to the automotive look longer and decrease. The brand new grille opening and underbody panels assist scale back drag. The sum bundle appears to be like good in footage and higher in individual, and the extra you take a look at the fishlike nostril, the much less fishy it appears. Which can sound like damning with faint reward, however is absolutely simply proof that the human mind can adapt to something and can take any oppor-tuna-ty to anthropomorphize the face of a brand new car. (Forgive us; your creator is a sleep-deprived father of younger youngsters and by legislation should make a sure variety of unhealthy puns yearly.)

Driving the 2024 Mustang GT

We met the automotive within the type of a Efficiency-pack, manual-gearbox GT, Vapor Blue Metallic, a whopping $60,755 as outfitted. Important choices included Pirelli P Zero PZ4s, MagneRide energetic dampers ($1750), a 12-speaker Bang & Olufsen sound system with a trunk-mounted subwoofer (a part of the $2900 Premium bundle, this sufficient system much better than the bottom providing, if a bit flabby within the mids and bass), and the GT Efficiency pack (for $4995, it contains extra aggressive suspension, a 3.73 Torsen limited-slip differential, wider wheels and tires, and the record goes on). Brembo brakes, a part of the Efficiency pack, have a pleasant really feel and are simply modulated proper as much as ABS engagement.

The earlier GT was gobs of enjoyable to commute in or hammer on, and this machine is barely sharper. With out driving the 2 automobiles again to again, we might say that steering really feel and suggestions appear barely improved. As with the 2024 EcoBoost Mustang we tried earlier, the digital brake booster appeared to make walking-pace braking a bit grabby and digital, however the brakes are in any other case a allure. MagneRide works wonders no matter chassis mode, as magnetorheological dampers are wont to do, sopping up pavement heaves and expansion-joint smacks whereas serving to produce good grip and agility. (With these modes, keep away from Regular or Monitor on a again highway; in contrast with Sport, each commerce physique movement for tempo and response, albeit in reverse methods.) As with all generations of Coyote, the engine sounds deep and burbly down low, good however not nice for a V-8 of this dimension and character, rising to a much less nice, hammering rasp on the prime of the tach.

Should you can not have enjoyable in a automotive like this, you could not know what enjoyable is. Few differentials are as good and progressive on the highway as a Torsen. Torque is stout within the midrange, tapering noticeably above 6500, falling off much more noticeably above 7000, most helpful and satisfying in the midst of the tach. Sixty mph is obtainable in second gear, and third is a pleasure on a again highway, if typically unlawful. On that final level, we are saying who cares, it is a new Mustang, it is a part of the American cloth, you solely stay as soon as, Automotive and Driver doesn’t encourage or endorse lawbreaking, however actually, if you’re alive and respiration, typically the foundations are greatest left for colonoscopies and submitting your taxes.

A short apart on that gearbox: The handbook transmission is a model of the Getrag six-speed supplied in varied Mustang fashions for greater than a decade. When new, it’s a pleasure to shift, with a cleanly outlined sample and chunky motion. Mustang heads will inform you this transmission has lengthy been maligned for its fragility and lack of cooling, and that there’s an ongoing class-action swimsuit over a few of these issues. 5 will get you ten, and that is not less than tangentially tied to why the approaching Darkish Horse will probably be fitted with the comparatively sturdy Tremec TR-3160 six-speed handbook.

Can we want a Tremec have been fitted to the essential GT? Sure. Does Ford’s alternative right here appear odd, particularly given what number of V-8 Mustangs of yore wore great, stable Tremecs and that V-8 Camaros have carried out the identical for years? In fact. Did our low-mile take a look at automotive make a little bit of bearing-like noise when you leaned on the shifter barely throughout an upshift to second? Positive. However not less than there may be the Darkish Horse, which implies somebody someplace is listening.

Should you purchase a brand new handbook GT—and anybody with a pulse ought to contemplate it—we’d solely counsel that you just shift with fingers as an alternative of fist, and that you just faux the gearbox innards are constructed dense however comfortable, like a Burger King Croissan’wich.

A minor observe, in all. What we’ve here’s a V-8-powered, rear-drive, enticing new Mustang within the basic type, properly up to date. It’s a massive and good giggle to drive in any trend, from tame commute to kill them tires lifeless. It is nonetheless a cut price for what you get, it feels extra particular than the spec sheet would suggest, and, surprise of wonders, it will possibly nonetheless be had with a clutch pedal.

This can be a driver’s automotive, easy and sane, the sort we’ve lengthy cherished. It might not be all-new or excellent, however, like so many Mustangs earlier than, it desires you there, wants you there, and calls for you concentrate whereas concurrently refusing to be a ache within the ass. Today, as ever, that is a present.

Freelance

Sam Smith is a contract journalist and former government editor at Highway & Monitor. His writing has appeared in Esquire and the New York Occasions, and he as soon as drove a Japanese Dajiban round a monitor at velocity whereas being purposely deafened by a recording of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.” He lives in Tennessee along with his household, a small assortment of misfit automobiles, and a spaniel who’s afraid of squirrels.