On the one hand, racing efforts, and on the other hand, the electric cars that reduce Ford’s fleet emissions are behind the fact that the automaker wants to produce the eight-cylinder Mustang forever.
“What other car in the world races on six continents on any given weekend? And that’s because we have a V8,” thundered Jim Farley, CEO of Ford Motor Company, on Wednesday at the launch of the 2024 racing season for the Ford Performance division. In Charlotte, North Carolina, the automaker held a big event to mark the occasion.
Ford’s racing ambitions are quite big. The seventh-generation Mustangs will compete in a number of series around the world, including the famous NASCAR, the Australian Supercar Championship, the NHRA-sponsored American quarter-mile sprints, as well as a number of endurance events, where they will drive in the GT3 and GT4 classes. And all this with an eight-cylinder engine under the hood.
Thanks largely to the racing efforts of the automaker, it will also power road cars, whether it will have a classic cross crankshaft, like the five-liter Coyote, or a flat one, like a special “five-two” Voodoo or some other engine. Farley’s vision takes the form of a racing car program, from which innovations would flow to road cars.
The second big reason the mustang can keep the V8 is the electric Mach-E. This, together with the F-150 Lightning, allows the automaker to balance the CO2 emissions of cars with combustion eight cylinders.
The celebration of the V8 engine under the hood of the Mustang right now is quite possibly not an end in itself. The Chevrolet Camaro has been discontinued, the Dodge Charger is switching from combustion engines to electric drive – and even if it gets a conventional engine, it will almost certainly be an in-line six-cylinder, not a classic V8 -, there is no sight or sound of a new generation challenger, and the Chevrolet Corvette with its with a different concept and significantly higher price, it is not a mustang competitor.
“We have EcoBoost, we have Dark Horse and we will continue to invest. And if we’re going to be the only one on the planet to make an affordable V8 sports car for the entire world, so be it.” Farley concluded.
This year, the iconic pony car will celebrate its 60th anniversary; the world saw it for the first time on April 17, 1964. Since then, as the only one of the pony/muscle car trio, it has been produced continuously and still with the same concept; both the camaro and the challenger had a number of breaks in production.
2024-01-21 16:52:00
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