Ford’s Mustang Mach-E GT Almost Lives Up to the Name
Change is inevitable. But not everything changes at the same time.
So here is the $64,200 Ford Mustang Mach-E GT Performance Edition, the rortiest-sportiest version of Ford’s all-electric SUV-thing that’s inferentially related to other Mustangs. The Mustang part of the equation has been hammered plenty, so the consideration here is of the GT element and the additional $5000 needed to get the Performance Edition (assuming there’s a dealer willing to sell at list). How is this thing as a “Gran Turismo?” How well can it tour grandly?
Eh, well… it’s okay. And different.
Highway 33 is such a sweet, great drive that R&T has written paeans to it before. It’s conveniently located to this writer, so it’s a go-to test route. It’s such an up-and-down and amusing road that attacking it with anything ranging from my 2006 Toyota Tundra Double Cab to the 1985 Honda Civic CRX Si, Porsche 911, Ferrari Roma or Lamborghini Aventador is giddily memorable. It makes the eastern portions of California’s Santa Barbara and Ventura one of America’s greatest automotive amusements. Familiarity, in this case, breeds affection. That’s where the Mach-E GT Performance Edition was headed.
And yet, as different as an old Tundra is from a Roma or Aventador, the Mach-E GT is more different still. First, it weighs more. According to the scales at Santa Barbara County’s South Coast Recycling & Transfer Station, my Tundra weighs in at 4700-pounds. A beefy boy. According to Ford, the Mach-E Performance Edition punishes roads with 4989-pounds of batteries and motors and giant screens and other things. More to the point, it’s 1076 pounds more than Ford’s claimed weight for the 5.0-liter Coyote V8-powered 2022 Mustang Mach 1 coupe.
The standard Mach 1 runs 255/40R19 front and 275/40R19 rear tires. The Mach-E GT Performance runs 245/45R20 tires at all four corners. Putting aside considerations like rear- vs. all-wheel drive and differences in tire construction (and that one of these is a coupe with a small trunk and the other an SUV with a small frunk), that means the Mach 1 has 1060 millimeters of nominal tread face contacting the road surface while the Mach-E has 980 millimeters. More pointedly, each millimeter of Mach 1 tread width is carrying an average of 3.69-pounds while the same calculation for the Mach-E works out to 5.09-pounds per millimeter.
Isn’t mixing American and metric measurements fun?
If for no other reason, this radical disparity in heft and footprint indicates how differently the Mach-E GT drives compared to today’s more-or-less conventional GTs like the Mach 1.
Still, whooshing through the three tunnels that announce the beginning of the best parts of 33, the Mach-E GT is entertaining. Yes, there’s no vivid engine sound reverbing off the tunnels’ walls, but there is a sense of pneumatic pressure pushing the porcine SUV through the tubes. And the gusher of consistent torque–634 lb-ft of undiluted hump–has the beast feeling rocket-propelled during its initial climb up from Ojai onto the Santa Ynez Mountains and into the Los Padres National Forest.
Even the best internal combustion engines need concentrated effort to remain operating in the meat of their torque curves. An electric like the Mach-E GT doesn’t need that attention. Instead, the driver needs to consider how to balance cornering speed with regenerative braking and four-piston front Brembo binder use. Even with its four driven wheels, the Mach-E GT isn’t eager to dive into corners under heavy braking. It rewards conservative approaches into corners with hard throttle coming out of the apexes. It’s a rewarding driving challenge if done well. But it’s curiously undramatic and no, it’s nowhere near as much fun as keeping a Mustang GT—or Mach 1 or Honda Civic Si for that matter—boiling along.
As the Mach-E approached the highest point of the trip, Pine Mountain Summit at 5160 feet, the effortlessness of the ascent is astounding. With electric vehicles, the horsepower rating (480 here) is practically meaningless. It’s the torque that is satisfying and it’s the torque that overcomes the substantial mass. Even on an electric vehcile like the Mach-E GT, tuned for driving pleasure, however, there’s always a sense that computers are mediating the interaction between driver and machine. It’s a feeling of remoteness that isn’t easily overcome.
Cornering is always flat, the Mach-E’s weight distribution feels even front-to-rear, and the two motors driving the four wheels are always attuned to each other’s behavior. Still, the steering is speaking Urdu and the chassis is striving to communicate in Michigander. It’s not quite a cohesive, singular driving experience. It’s not quite a grand tourer, even if there’s plenty of room inside to haul a lot of touring stuff in grand comfort.
In loop from my home in Santa Barbara down to Ojai, across to the Cuyama Valley on the 33, then across the 166 to Santa Maria and a rip down the 101 back home, the Mach-E made it on a single charge. Barely. That’s a 222-mile trip on a Ford-claimed range of 260 miles. Considering that during the spirited drive no effort was made to nurse out additional distance from the 91 usable kilowatt-hours from the battery pack, that’s not bad. But range anxiety is more of a thing when the car starts screaming it needs a charge after it’s been thrashed chasing giggles.
Ford claims the Mach-E GT Performance will knock itself to 60 mph from a dead stop in 3.5-seconds. Our agricultural brothers at Car and Driver measured a Mach-E GT Performance doing that trick in 3.7-seconds with the quarter-mile going past in 12.7-seconds at 101 mph. That’s swift… particularly for a machine C/D’s weighed in at 5001-pounds.
Grand Touring is a hazy and subjective term. So far, no electric quite lives up to it in this subjective opinion. But the electrification evolution is an ongoing thing with no guarantees where it’s going. It’s early in this evolution too. How they drive and thrive in grand touring situations will change.
Roads like 33, however, aren’t changing. And enjoying them is still the essence of automotive enthusiasm. No one knows exactly what electric vehicles are capable of being. Being great on 33 should be the aspiration of every manufacturer.
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