A Bolt from the Blue Oval

The year was 1907, and Detroit was hosting the first edition of its now-legendary annual auto show. Henry Ford, whose company was only four years old at that point, declared that his current project “would strike like forked lightning.” That project was the Model T, the car that soon accounted for nearly half of all the vehicles in the world thanks to the low prices afforded by the refined assembly line process that Ford implemented. It wasn’t the first mass-produced car – that was the Oldsmobile Curved Dash from 1901-1907 – but it’s the one that seemingly everyone remembers because compared to the 19,000 Curved Dashes, Ford sold roughly 15 million Model Ts. The 1920s must have been a heck of a time to be a Ford dealer!

Now Ford has unveiled another vehicle that promises to shock the automotive industry. Like the Model T, it isn’t the first of its kind, but it offers a kind of familiarity and a well-established brand of excitement that has it poised to write another Ford legend. That vehicle is the Mustang Mach-E electric crossover. The Mach-E represents the first new body style added to the Mustang lineup since 56 years ago when the original lineup of sports coupe, convertible and special edition models was first released. While many affordable electric vehicle makers have opted for conservative, uninspiring designs – looking at you, Mitsubishi, Nissan, and Chevrolet – Ford wanted to make sure shoppers are excited about their new EV by delivering it wrapped in the dramatically evocative styling of the iconic Mustang lineup.

The Mach-E is unlike any vehicle ever emblazoned with the galloping Mustang logo. Yet it embodies so much of what makes America’s signature pony car the revolutionary ride that it is, so answering the question, “Is this 4-door electric crossover really a Mustang?” requires more than a simple yes or no reply.

Obviously, It’s Not a Mustang!

It’s pretty easy to deride the Mach-E as a Mustang wannabe, a pretender, or even a marketing gimmick. It’s true that Ford’s electric crossover was originally conceived as a derivative of the Ford Focus and that the switch to a Mustang-based design was made to increase excitement over the new vehicle. On the surface, the Mach-E seems to be fundamentally anti-Mustang. With four doors and a crossover body style, it comfortably seats five passengers with storage space for each to bring a modest carry-on, compared to the usual two-door designs that are a tight squeeze for more than two passengers and handle little in the way of cargo. How could something so practical live up to Mustang’s requisite style and thrill?

The Mach-E’s all-electric powertrain also leaves a void where the roar of a V8 ought to be – literally and audibly. What would normally be the engine space under the hood is replaced with a waterproof drainable frunk, and what would otherwise be a deafening silence is filled with a simulated propulsion sound; it’s a nice quirk but no substitute for a fuel-burning chest-throbbing rumble. Despite offering up to 480 hp and 634 lb-ft of instantaneous torque – good enough for 0-60 mph times in the sub-4-second range – the Mach-E’s acceleration is smooth and composed. It’s virtually impossible to lose control of the Mach-E like an inexperienced driver easily could with a V8 Mustang GT or a monstrous Shelby model.

With available all-wheel drive and a traction control system that can’t be fully disabled, the Mach-E is too stable to fishtail around corners with reckless abandon either. A brand-new multilink rear suspension helps dampen all but the heaviest bumps with a single bounce, and that’s without the trademarked MagneRide damper system that adjusts 1,000 times per second to match road conditions (available on the GT Performance Edition). Simply put, the Mach-E is a comfortable, quick, and highly engaging crossover, but that doesn’t make it a sports car, so how could it fit in the Mustang lineup?

Then there’s the interior. The dash is dominated by a 15.5” touchscreen with a physical volume knob mounted directly on it, completely covering where you’d expect the controls and trio of circular climate vents to be in a typical ‘Stang. In place of a tall gear shifter and awkwardly lined-up cupholders is a shifter dial and a convenient side-by-side cupholder arrangement. The top part of the admittedly familiar double-brow dash is an integrated premium Bang and Olufsen sound system (optional), and instead of a classic gauge cluster, there’s a wide digital information screen with advanced graphics displaying all sorts of vehicle information. Then on the door, the armrest angles up near the front for easier access to the window and mirror controls, displaying just one more way that the Mach-E deviates from Mustang doctrine; if that’s what one could call the generally utilitarian and frugal Mustang interior.

How Could It Be Anything Other Than a Mustang?

Although it’s not a dead-ringer thanks to new proportions and a plastic panel where the usual grille opening would be, there’s no mistaking the Mach-E for anything but a Mustang. Similar hood lines and a familiar hunched swell over the rear wheel are good reminders of its heritage, but from the front and rear, it’s clear that this is a ‘Stang. The hexagonal grille and iconic logo speak clearly enough, but the signature tri-bar taillights send the message even more strongly – yes, it’s new and modern, but it’s absolutely a Mustang. It does for crossovers what the classic pony car does for coupes by drawing a clear line in the sand between what is normal and what is exciting.

Although the base model Mach-E Select, starting around $42,000, doesn’t offer a mind-boggling powertrain, neither does the entry-level gasoline Mustang. The Mach-E GT Performance, however, will throw down a 0-60 mph time that rivals the Porsche 911, and new Brembo Flexira calipers provide effortless stopping power despite the nearly-5000-pound curb weight. That’s a sentence that would apply to the Shelby GT500 without much editing, so how much more performance can you ask for from the Mach-E?

Not much, we would say. But Ford wasn’t willing to settle for that and spent countless hours using a dedicated simulator to tune the performance of the Mach-E so that it handles like a Mustang. How effective was that really? Well, Throttle House featured a review on Youtube with presenters Thomas and James in which Thomas expressed skepticism about how much to expect from their non-GT trim tester before he attempted to race it through a corner. His final verdict?

“I was wrong!”

The Spirit of the Open Road

This is a free country, so what the name “Mustang” means to you is up to your own interpretation. It would be ironic for one American to tell another what to think about a vehicle that is literally named after wild, uncontrollable horses. Whether or not the Mach-E is “really a Mustang” is up to you to decide, but honestly, who cares? We think the Mustang is about distilling the quintessential automotive experience and putting that out on the road. That’s a process that delivers an attractive vehicle, one you’re excited to climb into and sorry to walk away from because it’s unrestrained by conventional styling. It develops an exciting, muscular drive that is fun and engaging at any speed, delivering a thrill that leaves you longing for more when every journey reaches its inevitable end.

If you try to answer the question of whether the Mach-E should be called a Mustang with facts and figures based on the passenger capacity, the number of doors, or the decibel output of the powertrain, we’d say you’re doing it wrong. After all, the original 1964 Mustang is an all-time classic, and it had no predecessor to live up to at all – it was all-new, different from everything else, and exciting as hell. In a modern market where electric crossovers are cropping up around the world with uninspiring style and alien interiors, the Mach-E is doing it differently by building off something familiar to deliver something revolutionary, transcendent, and new. What could possibly be more “Mustang” than that?