Ford, Inside Story

Inside Story: 2010 Ford Mustang GT

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November 26, 2009

The Overhead

2010 Ford Mustang GT. Click image to enlarge

An open air feel without the open air blast is the task of the $2,200 Glass Roof option. Even with the manual sunshade on full open, the cabin never felt overly toasted. Ford reports an acoustic layer in the glass to minimize road noise. Inside Story reports no strange creaks or clunks from the Fishbowl Edition fitment. The interior rear-view mirror is auto-dimming, while the dual vanity mirrors are just plain dim, with no glow to throw. The decklid-mount satellite radio antenna pod begs to be hidden.

Seat Treat

Power seating positioning occurs for driver and passenger, with manual recline, and power lumbar for the driver position. One-step heat occurs for the front occupants. Inside Story continues to wonder why a Mustang backseat exists, with miniscule legroom, and non-existent ease-of-entry systems. (The seatback lever shown is only a release, with no fore/aft glide ability.) Note the seat anchor extenders for the front seat passengers.

Cargo Embargo

The trunk space appears to have received a smidge more finishing than the last generation, though it is not without concern. Note the routing of key wiring harnesses beneath the floor covering. Depending on the amount and type of cargo hauled, these harnesses could become compromised over time, so use caution. The 50/50 split foldong rear seatbacks achieve a practically flat load angle.

Spare Care

Considering the wide range of wheel size and skin combos for the steed, Mustang opts for a space-saver style spare. Ford will change it for you, during the first five years or 100,000 kilometres of ownership.

The Mill

It’s not that often that car show-cool makes it beneath the bonnet these days, but that’s exactly what the GT brings. The 315-horsepower 4.6 litre V8 gets a purposeful ‘Power By Ford’ topper. The strut tower brace seems to border on cutting-edge bridge design. The rest of the mill is surprisingly accessible for fluid and key component changes.

The Fed (Transport Canada) rates the manual V8 combo at 12.7 L/100 km city, and 8.4 L/100 km highway. (Numbers which are almost identical to those for the automatic/V6 combo.) Inside Story adopted a Jekyll-Hyde comparo; In conservative mode, the GT returned 13 L/100 km city, and 9 L/100 km highway. In Fun Throttle Mode, the GT hovered around the 15 L/100 km combined consumption mark, which is where most V8-stickshift drivers will live. That includes Inside Story.

The Verdict

As long as we aren’t headed along a duplicate path of the evolutionary chain that brought us such notables as the Mustang II, the current Mustang, in both V6 and GT form, has little trouble yanking on your heart – and throttle – strings. Many auto scribes were curious as to the ‘What’s Next’ on such an obvious retro homage. It still works, with key interior improvements that are driver-driven. Fit and finish is spot-on within, with a new soft-touch dash topper, and thoughtful additions to padding and materials.

A note on retro colour schemes: Grabber Blue needs stripes, and badly. It screams Mach 1 or Boss 4.6, and should be reserved for those eventual editions. A passenger side EZ-Access seat glide for rear passengers is long overdue. Now if you’ll excuse us, Inside Story has to get back to the driveway lawn chair, and watch the sequential LED rear turn signals in action. Blink-blink-blink! Blink-blink-blink!

Next week: Lexus RX

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