After my grandparents passed away, I went with my father to tidy up the old man's house and found a lot of yellowed black and white photos and a few pieces of stationery with words written on them. Holding these rough and fragile pieces of paper in my hands, I realized that I was touching history.
When I got married, I took out a bottle of good wine that had been stored for decades, and the moment the cork was opened, the whole room was filled with an intoxicating aroma, which was the smell of food from the past. I knew that at that moment I smelled history.
When I pressed the start button of the Ford Mustang Dark Horse, with the sweep of the pointer, the 5.0L V8 beast under the front hood was awakened and let out a deep moan before hunting. For a moment, I was glad I could still hear history.
Quantum can ignore the principle of locality to achieve long-distance entanglement interactions, but history cannot. To experience history, history must come to you in person. But alas, most of history has been ruthlessly left behind in the footsteps of mankind, and they have been completely abandoned, leaving only memories and lead prints on books.
So when I heard the roar of the large-displacement naturally aspirated V8 engine, I did feel a near-forgotten excitement. This thick voice with history is like the fiercest rant for today's electric vehicles.
I know that heroes are often accompanied by frustration and loneliness, but at the same time, heroes are also kissed by epics......
You can marvel at the wildness of the Dark Horse, but you can also ride it
The Ford Mustang has gone through 60 glorious years, and there is no shortage of classic high-performance models such as the 1965 Shelby GT350, the 1969 Mustang Mach 1, the 2001 Mustang Bullitt, and of course, the Mustang Dark Horse, although it is also 21 years old, it is still a newcomer to the Chinese market.
The soul of this car is the new fourth-generation 5.0L Coyote V8 naturally aspirated engine, which can burst out with a maximum power of 372kW and a peak torque of 566Nm. This power may seem nothing compared to many of today's electric performance cars, but when you step on the accelerator deeply and hear the rich and beautiful sound of the large-displacement self-priming engine, you will feel that the horse you are driving is "alive", it is communicating with you, it is angry, it is irritable, it is not satisfied, it is longing......
The correct way to open the Ford Mustang Dark Horse is to use the key to start the engine remotely and listen to its roar. You can use the remote control to boost its engine from 2000rpm to 5000rpm. Yes, it starts roaring before you even open the door.
This engine is known as the strongest V8 engine produced by Ford, and adopts a dual-throttle body intake design, with a dual air intake design of the front grille, which can ensure sufficient air intake and improve engine efficiency. In addition, the engine's crankshaft, piston connecting rods, camshaft and other components have been strengthened. Of course, the cylinder block is made of aluminum alloy.
Dizzy, nervous, excited, that's what I feel when I drive it in the field to accelerate, drift, go around the pile. It is not easy to fully control it, its short temper needs us to adapt, just like a good horse that recognizes its owner, we need to communicate with it, and a hurried test drive experience is completely insufficient.
With a strong power and a Torsen limited-slip differential on the rear axle, it's easy to get the Mustang Dark Horse off the ground. Both power drifting and handbrake drifting are available. In today's era of the popularization of electronic handbrakes, most people will use power to drift, the direction is about 90 degrees, one foot deep throttle, and the rapid transfer of the center of gravity makes the restlessness of the rear of the car immediately feel clearly. At the same time, the steering wheel controls the front wheels, while the throttle controls the rear wheels, and the differential distributes the torque, always maintaining the adhesion of the rear wheels to the ground. The balanced size is not easy to grasp, but I know that it is just a result of my lack of run-in with it.
Because when I switched to the electronic parking brake, it all seemed to be easier. One of the great joys of this generation of the Mustang Dark Horse is the industry's first drifting electronic parking brake. The system operates in a way that simulates a mechanical handbrake, but is three times more effective than a traditional mechanical handbrake, and was developed by Ford in collaboration with Vaughn Gittin Jr, drift master and founder of RTR. All I need to do is release the throttle when cornering, turn and pull the handbrake at the same time and start drifting. For newbies, this set of electronic parking brakes is definitely the core of its fun.
Warm tyres, ejection starts, and straight-line acceleration are all traditional performances for the Ford Mustang, and 0-100km/h acceleration is obviously not enjoyable for this engine. But what impressed me more was the very high linearity of the throttle and brake, and if you just stepped on the accelerator lightly, you would still have a very good smoothness. This is different from the two-stage throttle brake handling of our traditional American muscle cars, where I can control the throttle and brake more linearly and delicately in successive corners, with the Brembo braking system and Pirelli P ZERO tires are not vegetarian, the former brakes at high speeds, with a solid electromagnetic induction suspension system, the shift of the center of gravity of the body is not very large, even when I think the speed of entering the corner after the straight line acceleration is too high, there is no pushing, and the center of gravity of the body is always maintained in a relatively small range of changes. At the same time, the latter's strong grip made the body feel like it was glued to the ground, and with the precise and heavy steering, I felt that I was not brave enough to push its limits.
It's a game of my courage and its strength, and it's a pity that it's always me who loses.
So when I switched from the track to the standard, my nerves relaxed. The MagneRide active electromagnetic induction suspension system electromagnetically controls the density of the shock fluid, and this change is noticeable. In track mode, it is like two short, thick sticks that hold the car body firmly, and in daily driving in standard mode, it can be flexed and extended, providing a good comfort experience when crossing speed bumps, as if it had a double personality.
One of the great benefits of a large-displacement self-priming engine is that it can be adapted to this style of comfort. The linearity of the power delivery and the low noise at low revs are indispensable in normal driving, and the SelectShift 10-speed automatic manual transmission is of course indispensable, as is its clever judgment of different driving modes and the timing of gear changes, especially when slowing down on the track. In normal driving, the gear changes are very smooth.
It's a wild and gentle car, a car that's unforgettable to drive, and one that is evocative in the age of electrification. Its charm lies in the constant communication between you and it, which allows us to feel the history and temperature of 60 years.
Born on the track, and very smart
One glance reveals that the Ford Mustang Dark Horse has pure track genes in it. The characteristics of the American muscle car are obvious, but the Dark Horse's body uses a lot of details to highlight its high-performance identity.
First of all, there are a lot of blackened elements that make this car present a cold sexiness, which makes people stay away from it. The Mustang galloping horse logo is also available in black, standing in the middle of a hexagonal black grille. The wheels, rear wings, bilateral quad exhausts, etc., as long as you see them, are almost all black. This makes the blue brake calipers stand out even more. Unlike the red or yellow calipers that many performance cars like to use, the cool color of blue is more in tune with the cool temperament of the Dark Horse.
To highlight the unique identity of the Ford Mustang Dark Horse, the front fenders feature Dark Horse's exclusive "Horse Head" badge on both sides, staring at you with an aggressive stare at you. This car is like the Dark Knight's mount, where the lines between good and evil can be blurred.
The interior creates a strong mechanical flavor, especially the electronic drift handbrake, which is designed to be the same as the traditional mechanical handbrake. The central control area retains a lot of physical buttons, which is also a return to tradition. Among them, the most important Track Apps, the five track app functions can also be opened with one click in this area. This feature brings together the performance car's main control systems, including the acceleration timer, track timer, braking performance, drift electronic parking brake and front tyre warmer lock.
The latter two features were used in this venue experience. In track mode, you need to turn on the drift electronic handbrake to be able to use the handbrake to make drift attempts. The opening of the front wheel warm-up lock is more complicated, usually this function is grayed out and cannot be activated, and the handbrake needs to be manually lowered to turn it on, after which the tire can be warmed up according to a series of prompts on the dashboard. The warm-up process lasts up to 15 seconds, during which time the car catapults to the start by simply pressing the "OK" button on the right side of the steering wheel.
The dashboard of this car uses a full LCD instrument, in fact, the central control adopts a more technological dual-screen design, 12.4-inch digital instrument cluster and 13.2-inch central control screen are combined to create an intelligent cockpit that looks both performance and intelligence. This in-car system is based on the 3D Unreal Engine (Unreal Engine 3D) commonly used in modern e-sports games, and the official introduction says that the cockpit design is inspired by the digital cockpit of fighter jets, but I feel that it is no different from the current popular dual-screen design, and the reason why it presents a different temperament is mainly because it combines this popularity with the traditional sense of mechanics.
The specs weren't the focus of this test drive, but the smart configuration of the Ford Mustang Dark Horse wasn't shabby. It is equipped with Ford's next-generation Co-Pilot 360™ intelligent driving assistance system, wireless charging, panoramic view and other features. The overall configuration performance is considered to be the current mainstream level.
Article Summary:
The moment the 5.0-liter V8 engine was started remotely, all of our guests were silent. For many of us, it may have been several years since we had heard this moving sound, and I think at that moment, everyone's inner feelings are different, but they must all have mixed feelings.
The Ford Mustang Dark Horse is destined to be a niche performance sports car, and this Maxima needs to be able to understand it, not please the masses.
It may seem that I am not a person who understands it, but it is undeniable that I had a happy day with it.
Interestingly, less than a week before the Dark Horse, Mercedes-Benz also launched a collector's edition of the Mercedes-Benz G500, also powered by a V8 engine, for anniversary reasons. Mercedes-Benz said that this is the last time that the Mercedes-Benz G500 will be equipped with a V8 engine, and a classic V8 era belonging to Mercedes-Benz has come to an end.
But history continues, with the red blood flowing through the black body of the Ford Mustang Dark Horse.
(Photo/text/photo: Pacific Automobile Huang Keyu)