REVIEW | The Ford Mustang 5.0 GT isn't horsing about

If you want to garage a naturally aspirated front-engine, rear-wheel drive coupé in South Africa, you aren’t exactly spoilt for choice. Correct me if I’m wrong but at the time of writing it seems your options here are limited to either the Toyota GR86 or seventh-generation Ford Mustang. 

While the Japanese entry certainly makes a case for itself, Detroit’s legendary pony car is a tough thing to match when it comes to brand cachet, character and heritage. Indeed, just last year the Mustang celebrated its 60th anniversary.

A pop culture icon of both song and screen, it has been around the block more than most and yet still hits home with an almost annoyingly diverse audience. From baby boomers to Gen Zers, this fast Ford’s kerb appeal is seemingly universal. 

Though prior iterations often failed to live up to the hype (especially in the face of far more sophisticated rivals spilling out of Europe) the sixth-generation Mustang launched in 2013 proved it could rub shoulder lines with the best of them. I ran one — a limited-edition California Special — as a long-termer for a few months in 2023 and found it to be a well-rounded fun machine, one keenly priced (R1,154,900) considering what it offered. 

Its successor is thankfully no different. Though it sports a restyled exterior (most noticeable up front courtesy of an aggressive new bumper design), the seventh-generation Mustang is built using ostensibly the same underpinnings as its predecessor. It also comes bolted to the same Coyote 5.0l V8 engine and 10-speed SelectShift transmission.

Sure, Ford could have done something different — but when the recipe already works then there’s no need to change it, right? Especially in this day and age when radical automotive overhauls cost mucho dollars and the corporate bean counters are having none of it. Instead they finessed the formula with some recalibration here, some refinements there.

The fruits of this relatively light labour culminate in the best driving Mustang GT yet. Stepping from the old and into the new, I noticed the rear of this pony car felt particularly more stable. Even when exiting the tighter hairpins of the Tradouw Pass, I was amazed at how long those Pirelli P Zero tyres clung to the asphalt before letting go.

The result is a coupé that displays surprisingly neutral handling characteristics when driven with enthusiasm, an attribute that inspires much confidence when faced with one of the more challenging roads the Western Cape has to offer. You can still get it to over rotate, don’t get me wrong, it just takes a whisker more effort than it has in the past.

And when it does, the slip angle is easy to reduce (or amplify) with some quick opposite lock and a bit of throttle adjustment. As was the case with its predecessor, the seventh-generation Mustang isn’t an out-and-out sports car with scalpel-sharp reflexes, but it does come commendably close — closer than any 1,836kg gran turismo has any real right to be. 

Engaging when you want it to be, I wish the Dearborn engineering team could have dialled more feedback into the steering system. As was the case with the California Special, there’s not a lot of information flowing from the tarmac through to your fingers here. The chassis is similarly muted, meaning you have to trust the prodigious mechanical grip on offer, which is fairly easy to do on public roads unless you are trying something foolish. 

Heading back down the sweeping coils of the R62 — the type of topography the GT gobbles with relish — I’m astounded at how much speed one can actually carry through corners in this car. Unprintable velocities are shrugged off with an icy ease that beggars belief.

One part of this is thanks to the vehicle’s commendable body control, the other is down to its well-judged suspension and chassis set-up. Even with the adaptive dampers set to sport mode, the Mustang GT never feels overly firm, crashy or nervous and is seldom — if ever — upset by unexpected bumps encountered mid-corner.

The upshot of this is that all four of those sticky Italian gumballs always seem to be keeping the maximum amount of hold on the black stuff beneath you. Ditto under heavy braking loads, when there’s significant longitudinal weight transfer, the damping is such that the sharp-end of the GT never comes across skittish or flighty. Ford has done a stellar job with this set-up, one its rivals would do well to replicate with similar products. 

Sticking on the subject of brakes, this latest Mustang offers resolute stopping power right out of the box. You get sizeable 390mm vented rotors with Brembo six-piston fixed aluminium calipers up front and 355mm vented discs partnered with single-piston floating iron calipers at the rear. Calling them to action is a reassuringly firm pedal, one with plenty of bite and great modulation. It’ll stay firm too. Even after a couple of spirited runs up and over the Tradouw Pass in stifling 35ºC heat (it’s been a hell of a summer), the system showed no evidence of fade despite many bouts of repeated heavy braking. 

The star of the GT show, however, remains the snarling eight-cylinder engine caged behind that gloss black honeycomb radiator grille. In a world of turbocharging and electrification, the now ubiquitous 5.0l Coyote keeps things gloriously old-school: a naturally aspirated screamer that pulls hard and fast to its 7,400rpm red line with a rambunctious exhaust bellow capable of waking the dead. No, seriously, this thing is ridiculously loud — louder than I remember the pipes being in the California Special.

Fortunately Ford has baked in no less than four preset exhaust volume levels (quiet, normal, sport and track) which, through some hidden acoustic valve trickery, allow you to tailor the timbre to your liking. Normal is probably more than enough for most people in most driving scenarios, but if you want to pretend you’re Christopher Mies hurtling down the Mulsanne straight in a Proton Competition Mustang GT3 race car at Circuit de la Sarthe, then switching over to track will make you feel like you’re halfway there.

As before, this unit’s power delivery is deliciously smooth and linear, with an immediacy to the throttle response you simply don’t get with the majority of modern turbocharged engines these days. Peak power comes at 7,000rpm but there's plenty of low-end torque, meaning you don't need to pummel those valve springs into submission to make progress.

Now while this motor is something you will never grow tired of, the transmission to which it comes attached you very well might. Originally co-developed with General Motors, the Ford 10-speed SelectShift automatic works fine when you’re burbling your way through Cape Town city traffic or cruising on down the N1. Where the cracks start to appear, however, are on stretches of tarmac like the Tradouw Pass, where you’re truly exploiting the car’s potential and ripping up and down the ratios with a zealous regularity.

Though I can feel Ford has done some developmental work on this unit since I did duty in my California Special (particularly on upshifts and probably due to some software tweaks), it still displays a bit too much lag/lurch/shudder on rapid downshifts. As such I’ve got to say it’s a shame Ford South Africa decided against the six-speed manual transmission you get in the US. I feel it would suit the car better and amplify the driving experience further — particularly in the case of the Dark Horse model that gets a trick Tremec gearbox.

Subtly better to drive than its predecessor, the seventh-generation Mustang has also considerably upped its interior game. Yeah, it’s still built to a price point but overall cabin fit and finish is much improved. Perfect case in point being the centre console. Whereas before it seemed to be moulded out of melted-down takeaway food containers, it’s now wrapped in leather and feels way more premium.

There’s also a lot more technology spliced into the mix courtesy two giant screens sat behind a single curved pane of glass. One is a 13.2-inch touchscreen dedicated to Ford’s excellent Sync 4 infotainment system, while the other is a 12.4-inch digital instrument cluster offering a myriad of different gauge displays including normal, sport, racetrack and calm.

Ford also programmed in three retro designs that give a nod to Mustang models past: Classic (1967 to 1968), Fox Body (1987 to 1993) and SVT Cobra (1999 to 2001). Usually I am not a fan of such electro-gimmicks but the Fox Body layout was really cool: a simple and easy to read layout that oozed about as much old-school charm as one of those Casio Databank wristwatches. 

Adding to this digital splendour is adjustable interior mood lighting, fully customisable auxiliary gauges (visual readouts on the infotainment display for things like oil pressure, oil temperature, voltage, g-forces etc), various track apps, a range of drive modes (normal, sport, track, drag strip, slippery, custom) and a fabulous 12-speaker B&O sound system.

It’s a tech-lover’s dream in here — and that’s before you even read through the list of more conventional features fitted as standard. Heated and ventilated seats, two-zone climate control, wireless charging, a reverse camera, multiple USB ports, adaptive cruise control and blind-spot monitoring. Front park sensors are strangely still absent, though. 

Of course this evolution does come at a slight cost and that’s the omission of the old car’s double-bubble dashboard design, three circular air vents set above the centre console and the aviation-inspired switchgear that used to take pride of place in front of the gear lever.

These features gave the interior personality and reminded you that you were indeed at the helm of a Mustang. The new dashboard design is now far more generic and feels like it could belong to any one of the vehicle’s now part of the Blue Oval’s product portfolio.

The reduction in physical switchgear also means that most of the vehicle’s controls are now incorporated into the infotainment system. Before there was a nice cluster of buttons for controlling the HVAC system but now tasks such as adjusting fan speed, temperature or vent selection require a dab/slide of a finger. Fortunately the Sync 4 system has been thoughtfully laid out and once you get the hang of it, these actions become second-nature.

Though still not without foibles, the seventh-generation Ford Mustang GT is a hard car to dislike. From its larger-than-life persona and dramatic styling to its accomplished driving dynamics and storming, naturally aspirated V8 performance, it’s a truly capable — and liveable — coupé that never fails to tug on your heartstrings or turn the shortest drive into a mirth-inducing sense of occasion. At the price, it’s also what I consider to be excellent value for money.

One of the last standing stalwarts of a dying breed, I'm glad it exists — and if you have even the faintest whiff of petrol coursing though your veins, so should you.

Fast facts: 2025 Ford Mustang 5.0 GT Fastback

• Engine: 5,038cc V8
• Power: 328kW at 7,000rpm
• Torque: 540Nm at 5,100rpm 
• Transmission: 10-speed automatic
• 0-100km/h: 4.9 seconds (said)
• Top speed: 250km/h (said)
• Fuel: 13.6l/100km (achieved combined)