Driven: The £135k Ford Mustang with an 800hp punch

Of course, you can have as many or as few of these modifications as you like.

One of them is surprisingly sensible for what is overall quite a silly car. On the normal Mustang, you can have heating within the standard seats but not the optional (and more comfortable) Recaros. As part of the retrim, Clive Sutton adds heating to the latter, which works with the standard button. Clive Skoda might describe it as simply clever.

Aside from the very loud exhaust, the first thing you notice when driving the CS800DH is that the powertrain is impeccably behaved. I suppose it’s to be expected, given this is an official Ford Performance kit, but there’s no strange running or uneven power delivery and it retains the progressive long-travel throttle pedal. In normal driving, this just feels like a Dark Horse.

Have the guts to actually press the pedal all the way, though, and it’s madly fast, with a ferocious rush at the top end of the rev range. Second gear tops out at 75mph and somehow still feels too short for you to really experience the power. It pulls almost as hard in third, so it ideally wants a track or a German autobahn to be fully uncorked.

I’m sure an upper-end Porsche Taycan or similar electric car is actually faster, but the thunderous exhaust, power delivery and having to think about changing gear somehow all make it more real.

Considering the 5.0-litre ‘Coyote’ V8 has a whacking big twin-screw blower sitting on top of it, it’s surprising – and a little bit disappointing – that there’s almost none of the expected supercharger whine. You can just about hear it working at low revs, but it’s mostly exhaust and some boosty air noises that reach your ears.

I drove a standard Dark Horse not long before and noted that it generated hilariously  little traction from its 275-section rear Pirellis – amusing in the right circumstances but maybe not what you want with 788bhp. The CS800DH gets wider Michelins (275 up front and 295 at the rear), and in chilly but dry conditions it actually managed to put its power down remarkably well. Obviously it’s possible to light up the rears, but only when you want to (and turn the traction control off).

There is a downside, though, which is that the wide tyres rub on the arch liners when the suspension is compressed, either under hard cornering or over bumps. Maybe the plastic just needs shaving down a bit, maybe the lowering springs are to blame, but it’s a rookie error for a professional tuner.

Otherwise the ride and handling don’t feel all that different from the standard Dark Horse, partly because the magnetorheological dampers are unchanged. It’s not the sharpest or most tied-down sports car, but there’s enough grip and control for you to have a good time.