#MustangGT

Car salesmen call buyers like me, “squirrels.” It seems like whenever I buy a new car, I pull a handbrake 180 turn at the last moment and purchase a completely different vehicle than originally planned. Last week I was so close to buying a new Mustang GT with the Track Package that a friend at Ford was poised to set me up with an insider deal. The only problem was I seemed to have forgotten that this will not be my daily driver so why was I analyzing SYNC Packages, luggage space, resale value and the like?

I regrouped and asked myself two questions: which vehicle will have the soul of the two most fun cars I have ever owned, the 1994 Mazda RX-7 and the 1988 Honda CRX-Si? Why do I live in sunny San Diego and have never owned a convertible? The halogens went off in my head. As fate would have it, a dealer I know had just traded for the exact car I wanted. Say hello to my little yellow friend.

A 2000 Ford Mustang GT is not exactly a car that I would like to call a second home.

It’s a tad claustrophobic. The plastics are borderline industrial grade. And the Ford 4.6 Liter Modular V8 is not especially known for offering the level of fuel efficency needed to make this car a long-term money saver.

Thankfully, this vehicle was quickly disqualified thanks to a Carfax that showed it only had 123k miles back in 2010.

300k a year? Two years in a row? I think not!

When we awarded the Scion FR-S DFL in our three-way affordable-sportster test, many commenters both on TTAC and elsewhere pointed out that the FR-S supposedly wasn’t meant to be a complete package from the factory. Rather, the new hachi-roku was intended to be a platform for individual development, you see. By judiciously applying the finest in aftermarket upgrades, the FR-S would become a highly personal racetrack scalpel.

Well, to paraphrase Katt Williams, “The Scion do look like an outstanding platform on which to build one’s ideal track car… until a real outstanding platform on which to build one’s ideal track car pull up.” As it turns out, one of our Best&Brightest brought his lightly-modified “New Edge” Mustang GT to our test, and he was gracious enough to let your humble author put twenty or so laps on it.

How’d it do?

After driving the Chevrolet Camaro SS for a couple of days, and enjoying the experience much less than I expected to, I began to question my expectations. Perhaps having the Lexus IS-F for a week had unfairly put the Chevrolet in a bad light? After all, the IS-F was twice the price and a Lexus, so of course the Detroit Oshawa, Ontario iron seemed coarse in comparison. The obvious test: a 2011 Mustang GT 5.0.

Unless all the reviews you’ve read about the 2010 Ford Mustang appear in publications like Mustang Monthly, you probably know that the car is (a) an evolutionary improvement of the hold-over SN197 chassis and (b) still far from perfect. After a conflicting afternoon with a beautiful Red Candy Metallic 2010 Mustang GT Convertible [not pictured], I feel compelled to say something about how the Ford Mustang is currently situated in both the market and in our minds.