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I’m rooting for EV’s over ICE cars all the way (I own one), but I agree — I always found it a bit weird/misleading that the Mach-E carries the “Mustang” name, when they have so little in common.

I feel like it’s just marketing to the “cool” demographic, similar to how Tesla is (or at least used to be) a big status symbol.

These two cars are targeting a completely different demographic and should not be compared/considered in competition.

> Who said Ford’s electric crossover SUV wasn’t a real Mustang? The Mach-E outsold the gas-powered Ford Mustang for the first time last year as one of the top-selling EVs in the US.

Just because the vehicle carries the name and outsold the original Mustang still does not make it a “real Mustang”.

Again, I’m glad it’s selling well (and also glad it’s selling better than the Mustang). I just don’t think the two vehicles can be compared.

2 comments

Real Mustang owner here, at least if you consider the '69 Mustang and the '72 Mustang to be Real Mustangs. I don't have them anymore, but they are forever burned in my driving habits.

What makes a Real Mustang? Head-turning looks? Acceleration? The Mach-E has both in spades. It's a new implementation of the Mustang formula, but it works. It out-Mustangs any parameter that a Real Mustang owner will tell you is the essence of his beloved pony car.

The Mustang is a RWD coupe with the height of a car, not an SUV. It is intended to be affordable for a performance vehicle.

The Mach-E has 4 doors, AWD, and is nearly a foot taller than the current Mustang. Its base MSRP is $10k (more than 30%) above the base Mustang.

I agree. The mach-e looks like a crossover suv. It does not look like a mustang. I would imagine the venn diagram of young drivers that would choose the mustang vs mach e do not intersect.

Maybe ford is targeting older people who are at the stage where they give in and get a "practical" car.

In my view, one of the critical components of these sort of golden-age low cost sports/muscle cars is hackability/repairability.

Nobody makes cars like that anymore. Even the ICE Mustang is a computer on wheels that requires professional dealer-provided software tools to work on. The concept of muscle cars accessible to the everyman for tinkering/souping up is basically dead now.

It's not an inexpensive RWD car with a V8, for the most part.

It's an SUV that can't out-run a Tesla. It's barely faster than the 4-cylinder Mustang

(Except for the most recent model (2024) that you can finally get a performance add-on with ($995). The previous model only lets you accelerate for about five seconds under full power)

  > It's not an inexpensive RWD car with a V8, for the most part.

Neither are most other cars that you consider a Real Mustang. The V8 never outsold the smaller-engine models.

The non-V8's are frowned upon

And yet the SVO turbo 4 cylinder was one of the most coveted Mustangs ever.

I had that engine, intercooled and with a 5 speed, in an '88 Thunderbird TurboCoupe. It would draw more attention than my beautiful '69 Mustang Grande. The Mustangs with that engine would out-handle anything from the Corvette to the Z.

> And yet the SVO turbo 4 cylinder was one of the most coveted Mustangs ever.

BringaTrailer.com prices would say otherwise...

They have a small cult following but that's about it. I had a Merkur XR4Ti, a distant cousin, and while it was a fun car for the time, it was no <insert famous Mustang>

What Mustang can outrun a tesla?

Unless it's the Plaid, the GT500 (which they quit making in 2022)

The Mach E had an optional performance package added in 2024 that allows it to beat some Teslas

https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2024-ford-mustang-mach-e-...

Agreed. Tastes evolve. People want SUV style vehicles and I think Ford did a decent job with the Mach-E. I would hazard a guess that most traditional Mustang buyers aren't the sort who would consider a car that doesn't go vroom and smell of gas, so you've created a weird conflict between your loyal existing fans and people who want a practical vehicle. It'll probably blow over.

In 10 years it might not even be profitable to build a gasoline car. How many times has the Viper being canned and reborn? The only way to continue the Mustang badge at all is electric.

How well accepted is the Urus now in Lambo circles?

Yeah. If they just left it at “Mach-E” I think it’d have been fine.

Yeah. Considering that they said “the fastest Mustang is an EV”, and now they came up with https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a63373349/mustang-gtd-spir....

Damn, that's a nice Mustang.

Is a future generation gas-powered Mustang on Ford's plans or is this the last of the line?

I don’t know. They built this and broke the Nordschleife record for the “first American car to do the lap under seven minutes”. It’s a good lap: https://youtu.be/8AnhxB8Xh6w?si=iL0DoyQDcQdCiARY.

Nice... hit 300km/h too.

> What makes a Real Mustang?

A RWD coupe that'll spin out and crash trying to show off leaving a cars & coffee.

> Just because the vehicle carries the name and outsold the original Mustang still does not make it a “real Mustang”.

I just learned that this is an example of the "jingle" fallacy, one half of the jingle-jangle fallacy pair. The "jangle" half being: the fact that two things are given different names does not make them different.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle-jangle_fallacies