The new Mustang is no crude one-trick pony. There is a level of refinement and quality present here that simply eclipses even last year’s Mustang (a car I still covet). Although drawing some design inspiration from the interior shapes of Mustangs of yore – such as the double-hump dashboard – this car is thoroughly modern now, highlighted by the tech of niceties like adaptive cruise control and the Sync infotainment system.

Ford has suffered a lot of grief over Sync, deemed by many to be cantankerous. I’ve never had any major issue with it, and after spending a few thousand kilometres playing with this latest version of the system, find it to be pretty intuitive to operate. That said, on a few occasions, the navigation system had difficulty locating hotels and restaurants programmed into its system and would get us close, but curiously would try to direct us a few hundred metres past our destination.

No matter, road trips are about a bit of adventure and if you don’t make a few wrong turns, you’ll never find the spots that make a trip special. One of those special spots for us is the Morgantown Brewing Co. in Morgantown, West Virginia. With the car and bikes parked for the evening, we ventured in to check out their creative menu and sample some of the craft beers brewed on location. Craft beer aficionados should try the Kettle Bottom Brown Ale – a favourite amongst our group.

Gripping the wheel, his knuckles went white with desire.
The wheels of his Mustang exploding on the highway like a slug from a .45.
True death: 400 horsepower of maximum performance piercing the night…
This is black sunshine.

“Black Sunshine”, White Zombie

It’s possible to do the 600-or-so kilometre drive between Morgantown and Asheville, NC inside a day without too much difficulty. Hop on Interstate 79 and keep heading south. But with the Great Smokey Mountains right at the doorstep of Morgantown, the route we have planned is a far more circuitous one that will require most of the next two days.

Early on a Sunday morning, the dense forests and significant elevation changes just south of Morgantown make for temperatures brisk enough that the Mustang’s top stays up for a while after breakfast. Ford fits the new Mustang with a windshield laminated against sound, and with the lined fabric roof and other considerable sound deadening, do an impressive job of keeping wind and road noise suppressed. The intake noise (piped into the cabin) and burbling V8 exhaust note are now audible too (they get drowned out with wind noise when the top’s down).

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