Ford Mustang

The Ford Mustang, welcome. The original ‘pony’ car, long in hood, short in deck and often vast in engine, has too long lingered in the tall grass of European car culture.

In the US, its fame in Ford’s canon is rivalled only by the impossibly influential Model T and the unimaginably big-selling F-Series trucks.

Since its launch in 1964, the Mustang has never been off sale, even if its popularity has waxed and waned. But away from North America, and certainly in the UK, the car’s import status has rarely progressed beyond ultra-low-volume novelty – despite widespread nameplate recognition.

The reasons for this are simple enough. From Ford’s perspective, it did export the Mustang, but it was the idea, not the metalwork, that was dispatched across the Atlantic.

Thus Europe’s cheap-to-build fastback coupé was the wildly successful Ford Capri, followed, inauspiciously, by the charmless Probe, a car we suggested should not make a comeback.

In retrospect, this was no bad thing. Cared-for, impossibly pretty mid-1960s classics and V8-engined, late 1960s Mach 1 muscle cars are the Mustangs most encountered in Britain, ensuring that the badge remains largely unsullied by at least three generations of intervening mediocrity.

Around a decade ago, though, with the fifth generation, the Ford Mustang rediscovered its stride. Moreover, with the European version long dead and the concept of ‘global’ cars suddenly fashionable in Dearborn, the possibility of the model’s expansion overseas was finally on the table.

The sixth generation, engineered from the outset for right-hand drive, realises that ambition. Offering inimitable space, scale and style, it will be sold in both fastback and convertible guises here, starting at just over £33,000 for one with a turbocharged four-pot petrol engine or, more tantalisingly, a little under £40k for one with a 5.0-litre V8. There is also a couple of tuned Ford Mustang monsters by independent dealer Clive Sutton producing a frankly ludicrous 700bhp and 800bhp from the 5.0-litre V8 - albeit thanks to the addition of new components and improving on what rolled out of the factory.

Guess which one we opted to test?

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