The Ford Mustang Dark Horse Is Just a Beginning
Greatest hits compilations are, by nature, backward looking. They are the already popular, beloved things brought together in one place. Nothing surprising. The 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse is familiar in the expected ways, comforting in every riff and harmony. It feels only so new because, well, it’s only so new.
This story originally appeared in Volume 19 of Road & Track.
There’s a horse running in the grille, the taillights have three segments each, and that roofline has been around for a while. The double-overhead-cam, 32-valve Coyote 5.0-liter V-8 is 88 hp more robust than when the engine first howled for 2011, but it’s still a Coyote. And it’s still in the front and still drives only the rear wheels. Both the Tremec six-speed manual and the optional 10-speed automatic transmissions are known quantities, and all the important dimensions and basic chassis designs from the S550 Mustang generation have been ported to this S650.
Yes, the Dark Horse is both quick and fast. It bites into corners gluttonously, and its exhaust roars with a stallion’s lust. Previous Mustangs from not that long ago also did that. Boss 302, Mach 1, GT350, Bullitt—there have been a lot of special-edition Mustangs that have performed well. And yet, dang, this Dark Horse is a blast. Talented enough for the track and civilized enough for commuting. Not quite so easygoing, though, that it would be happy crossing a continent.
Considering how Ford mines its own heritage, the Dark Horse moniker is the most (maybe only) surprising element of the package. Bullitt was the last new name applied to a Mustang back in 2001, and that relied upon nostalgia for the 1968 Steve McQueen film of the same name.
Though this is the most powerful factory-made naturally aspirated Coyote 5.0-liter V-8, the “5.0” fender badges are missing. In their place is the new Dark Horse logo, which, Ford announces, is the first Mustang badge to depict a horse head-on. It’s got a ghostly “Riders on the Storm” vibe. The 5.0 is, however, featured atop the engine itself, just as it is with the 2024 Mustang GT’s engine.
“Externally, the two engines look the same,” explains Rob Williams, Ford’s 5.0-liter Mustang engine program engineer. “The primary hardware difference between the Dark Horse and Mustang GT Performance pack is the connecting rod based on the 5.2-liter GT500 design. The Dark Horse’s larger, stronger rod requires a unique crankshaft balance and 5.2-liter con-rod bearings.”
What’s in a Neigh’m? Ford, never reluctant to mine its past for marketing purposes (Bronco, cough, Ranger, ahem), nonetheless went with a new name for its latest high-performance Mustang. “We have a new aesthetic with the Dark Horse. Not just heritage design cues. More black accents. More war paint. A more sinister look,” explains Matt Simpson, Ford’s general manager of enthusiast vehicles. For the record, the car has four matte-black horse logos affixed to its exterior.
How sinister any Mustang can be is an open ponder. But this breaks the Mustang’s string of expected variations—Boss, Mach 1, Bullitt, all the Cobra riffs—and opens up breathing room for whatever comes next. And there will be a next.
“There are more planned derivatives coming,” says Simpson, to no one’s surprise. With Chevrolet’s Camaro evaporating and Dodge’s Challenger on the verge of transmogrifying into something electric, Mustang will soon have the American-made V-8 coupe market to itself. But with a clear track ahead of it, the horse must continue to run. The customers are fickle, style obsessed, and often distracted by nostalgia and unrealistic performance expectations. For Ford to keep eyeballs on this Mustang as it ages, it must gallop onward.
Both the GT and Dark Horse engines run a 12.0:1 compression ratio and use the same voluptuous twin-throttle-body intake. “Dual airboxes with dual throttle bodies reduce the flow restriction in the air-induction system,” Williams contends. “Each bank flows about half as much air as a single-inlet system. This results in a significant reduction in airflow losses.” The fourth-gen Coyote engine is blessedly naked and gorgeous.
For a moment, weep for the passing of the 2015–20 GT350’s flat-plane-crank Voodoo based on the Coyote from the current Mustang lineup. That 5.2-liter engine made 526 hp and sang better than Adele during the best 10 minutes of her best-ever day. It’s also why Ford hedges that this is the most powerful 5.0-liter Mustang—emphasis on the 5.0.
The difference between the GT’s 486-hp Coyote (with optional active exhaust running 93-octane fuel) and the Dark Horse’s 500-hp version (standard active exhaust on 93) comes down, it seems, to how each is calibrated. And the calibration difference isn’t much. Both make their rated peak power at 7250 rpm and generate the same 418 lb-ft of peak torque at 4900 rpm. It’ll take a state-of-the-art, fine-tuned ass to feel much of a difference in daily driving.
But daily driving isn’t every day. The clear powertrain advantage the Dark Horse has over the GT Performance package is its manual transmission. While the GT offers the ag-friendly Getrag MT-82 six-speed self-stirrer, the Dark Horse gets the sweeter Tremec TR-3160 six-speed. Beyond the subjectively better shift quality of the Tremec, it’s a more closely geared box. For instance, fifth in the Getrag is a 0.81:1 overdrive, while it’s a direct 1.00:1 in the Tremec. The closer ratios mean the torque can be applied on track better with the Tremec. Both transmissions have comparably deep overdrives in sixth and finish with a 3.73:1 final drive lashed to a Torsen limited-slip differential.
The GT and the Dark Horse share the same automatic option: a shiftable version of the 10-speed codeveloped with General Motors. It worked well during a brief exposure at a press event in North Carolina. The Tremec is a mountain more fun and was aboard the tested vehicle.
With the Dark Horse’s optional Handling package comes massive rubber: 305/30R-19s on 10.5-inch-wide rims in front and 315/30R-19s on 11.0s in back. That’s the same-size tires Ford fitted to the GT350R and the outgoing Mach 1 with its Handling package. These baloneys are 50 mm wider in front and 40 wider in back than what’s offered on any 2024 GT. However, while the GT350R and Mach 1 used Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s, the Dark Horse gets Pirelli’s new P Zero Trofeo RS tires.
Tipping into the throttle, the Dark Horse’s Coyote seems to growl up the scale at a rate of about one octave per inch of pedal travel. The clutch operates with some effort, but that’s the fun of it. Release this darkest horse, and the result is a 60-mph time of 4.1 seconds, with the quarter-mile flying past in 12.5 seconds at 115 mph.
That’s 0.2 second quicker to 60 than the 480-hp Mach 1 and 0.1 quicker in the quarter with the same trap speed. And it’s well behind the 2020 GT350R, which leaped to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds and wrecked the quarter in 12.0 seconds flat at 120 mph. Alas, it’s also behind the 455-hp current Chevrolet Camaro SS 1LE, which hit 60 in 3.9 ticks and ran the quarter-mile in 12.3 seconds at 116 mph. In a few months, however, the Camaro won’t be here to kick the Mustang around anymore.
With the suspension’s MagneRide system in Sport or Track mode, diving into a corner hard and letting the big, six-piston Brembo front brakes clamp onto 15.4-inch discs is rewarded with astonishing turn-in. The new Pirellis may or may not be as sticky as the Michelins, but Ford gets the most out of them. And short of a stint at Le Mans, those brakes won’t fade.
On track, the rev-matching feature makes screwing up shifts a matter of willful malice instead of driver incompetence. Maybe Parnelli Jones could coordinate the dance of clutch and shifter more efficiently, but you? You are, presumably, not Parnelli Jones.
If big digital things are your thing, the 2024 Mustang has adopted a massive, sweeping display that runs across most of the dash, with modes ranging from modern gamer to pure science fiction. But the most effective setting is a throwback to the instrumentation once found on the 1987–93 Fox-body Mustang. It’s a tach, a speedometer, and a few discrete ancillary gauges. Easy to read and kind of pretty, it almost makes up for the lack of a volume knob.
Ford has offered Recaro seating in Mustangs off and on since the 1979 Indianapolis 500 Pace Car. The optional Recaros in the Dark Horse are supportive without being confining and are comfortable for hours of hardcore sitting. But another Mustang heritage is chintzy surface texturing, and some of that is apparent on the door panels and center console. That was easier to overlook when Mustangs were cheap, but the Dark Horse Premium starts at $64,860, including a $1595 destination charge. That’s not cheap, and larding up the extras can push the price to nearly $80K.
On a 600-mile trip up and down the length of Michigan, it was apparent the Dark Horse is not a touring machine. Even in Normal mode with exhaust hushed, this is a loud and brassy car with big tires that make a pronounced rolling basketball noise on many surfaces. The ride is always stiff, and sometimes that’s irritating. At other times, it can be infuriating. This car is best appreciated when there’s a track nearby with plenty of open days. The Dark Horse represents the lowest rung in Ford’s burgeoning lineup of track-day and full-race new Mustangs [see “Gran Turismo Dynamite,” left, and “Race to Survive,” page 124].
There’s a certain complacency that comes with a greatest-hits album. They’re often released after a group has peaked and is now playing in tribal casinos and at state fairs. But there are exceptions.
Maybe the 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse is the Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) manifest as a 500-hp, two-door coupe. That record debuted on the Billboard 200 in March 1976 at number four, rocketed to number one the next week, and remained on the chart for 420 weeks. And the Eagles weren’t done. Don Henley told Rolling Stone, “We didn’t really want that album to be released, but had allowed the label to do it in order to buy ourselves more time to work on the Hotel California album.”
There are most certainly more Mustang variations to come. The Dark Horse may just be the compilation that allows Ford enough time to produce something new that’s as great as Hotel California in the next few years.
1965 GT350R
The first factory racing Mustang was the great 1965 GT350R.
2000 Ford Mustang Cobra R
Back in 2000, the Cobra R was a race-ready Mustang with a 385-hp V-8 under its bulging hood.
Ford Mustang Cobra Jet
Factory-built Mustang Cobra Jets have been terrorizing drag strips since 1968.
Ford’s first Mustang was simply a pretty body bolted atop some Falcon economy-car pieces. It wouldn’t seem to have much racing potential. But by the end of the Mustang’s first production year, factory race versions were on sale to the public, and they have been part of the car’s heritage ever since, whether from Ford or its adjacent partners (like Shelby or, more recently, Multimatic). The specials break down into two general categories: road racers and drag racers.
The Shelby GT350R was the first. Following a formula still used today—strip out everything that doesn’t make it faster and add enough structural support to keep it together—Shelby built 36 GT350Rs with distinctive fiberglass front aprons, plexiglass side and rear windows, and an oversize fuel tank, among other tweaks. The suspension was essentially stock GT350, and the 289-cubic-inch V-8s were built to achieve about 350 hp. The GT350R dominated SCCA B-Production racing through 1965 and into 1967.
Since then, Ford’s own road-race efforts have included 107 Fox-body 1993 Cobra Rs, 250 Cobra Rs powered by 5.8-liter OHV V-8s in 1995, 300 Cobra Rs with 385-hp 5.4-liter DOHC V-8s in the year 2000, and only 50 of the 2011 Boss 302Rs (with a few more dribbling out through 2013).
Shelby says it built eight GT350s for drag racing for 1965 and 1966. But reporting suggests Holman-Moody assembled no less than 10 altered-wheelbase A/FX drag Mustangs. Ford’s indelible 427-cubic-inch SOHC V-8 powered at least the first seven of them.
During 1968, 50 “R-Code” Mustang Cobra Jets, powered by the 428-cubic-inch V-8, made it to teams for NHRA Super Stock drag racing. Soon, the Cobra Jets racked up Nationals wins and records. Ford also built 50-car runs of the supercharged V-8 Cobra Jet racers in 2008, ’10, ’12, ’13, ’14, and ’16. Then it built 68 more for the model’s 50th anniversary in 2018.
The most powerful Mustang race car of all, however, isn’t V-8 powered. It’s the successor to the all-electric 1502-hp 2020 Cobra Jet 1400: the 2023 Cobra Jet 1800 with, yup, 1800 hp.
In addition to the Mustang race cars Ford has sold directly, there were those built to homologate components for racing. The most famous are the 1969–70 Boss 302, built to dominate Trans Am racing, and the 1969 and 1970 Boss 429 built to make the 429-cubic-inch V-8 legal for NASCAR.
This list is far from comprehensive, but it indicates how Ford has long raced the Mustang in order to sell it.
Gran Turismo Dynamite
In August, Ford dropped a bomb on the swells attending Monterey Car Week. It came in the form of the roughly $300,000 Mustang GTD, with an estimated 800 hp. A monster conjured in secret and set upon an unsuspecting world.
The GTD is a two-seat supercar with a mostly carbon-fiber, engorged Mustang body that looks like a GT3 racer for the road—because it is. Ford Performance partner Multimatic will build it. While the dry-sump, supercharged 5.2-liter V-8 is up front, the eight-speed dual-clutch transaxle sits at the rear for nearly 50/50 weight distribution. The semiactive suspension uses short and long arms in front and an F1-style pushrod system in back. Everything, from the optional titanium shift paddles and active aero to the 325-mm- wide front and 345-mm rear Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires, is aimed at posting a sub-seven-minute lap of the Nürburgring’s 12.9-mile Nordschleife circuit.
The GTD will go on sale as early as late 2024 as a 2025 model.
Race to Survive
In the absence of competition from Chevy and Dodge, Ford has decided to take on the rest of the world.
As Ford’s sole surviving car, the Mustang has been liberated. Ford’s SUVs and pickups—gas, hybrid, or electric—handle the chores now. The Mustang is the fun bucket. (For Road & Track’s purposes here, the Mustang Mach-E is not a “real” Mustang.) And there ain’t nothing funner than race cars. So Ford is building different versions, riffing on the 2024 Mustang and its newest variation, the Dark Horse. Together, the following four race cars constitute the most complete ladder of track-car goodness from any manufacturer. All will be available through Ford Performance. Soon. Or soon-ish.
Dark Horse S
It’s a track-day plaything. Drained of civilizing elements and fitted with an FIA-certified roll cage and fire-suppression system, it uses the same 500-hp 5.0-liter Coyote V-8 as the street pounder, plus the production car’s 19-inch wheels. Inside is one seat, a quick-disconnect steering wheel, and a center panel with all the switchgear. The exhaust system is custom, there’s a pit speed limiter, and a passenger’s seat is optional. Outside is an adjustable rear wing, hood pins, and tow hooks. Multimatic DSSV dampers hunker the suspension and facilitate tuning. This could be a turnkey racing trainer.
Dark Horse R
Before it’s assembled, the R gets “strategic” seam welding, then all the good plucks from the S. There’s also an oversize fuel cell, and the wheels are pulled from the Ford Performance catalog. The company plans to kick off a Dark Horse R–spec racing series in 2024.
Mustang GT4
Multimatic of Canada builds the GT4 as an almost greatest-hits concentration of the other Mustang racers. Production based, it uses a 5.0-liter Coyote V-8, a Holinger dog-ring gearbox operated by pneumatic paddle shifters, and a body made of lightweight panels. It will be IMSA, SRO, and FIA GT eligible beginning in the 2024 season. Want one? Contact Multimatic through its website at multimaticmotorsports.com. The Mustang GT4 will cost about $270,000.
Mustang GT3
It looks kinda sorta like a Dark Horse, but the GT3 is a carbon-fiber-bodied pure racer built to compete in IMSA in North America and the World Endurance Championship around the world. The Mustang GT3 has a rear-mounted sequential transaxle and a rear underbody diffuser for additional downforce, complementing an insane rear wing. The engine is a 5.4-liter version of the Coyote V-8 co-developed by Ford Performance and Britain’s M-Sport, the firm that builds Ford’s Puma and Fiesta rally cars. Multimatic constructs the rest of the GT3 for Ford, as it did with the successful Ford GT program. The Mustang GT3 should appear first in January at the 2024 Rolex 24 at Daytona and will surely be at June’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.
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