Ford Mustang Mach-E Rally review

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Ford gets in on the off-road sports car trend with a lifted version of the Mustang Mach-E GT

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Say what you will about Ford (and following the launch of the Capri and axing of the Fiesta, plenty have) but it’s still a company with a sense of humour. How else do you explain it still offering a V8 Mustang, a Ranger Raptor and now this: the Ford Mustang Mach-E Rally?

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DESIGN & STYLING

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02 Ford Mustang Mach E Rally 2025 review front driving

You could think of it as Ford’s take on the Porsche 911 Dakar or Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato. For some rough-road capability, the Ford Mustang Mach-E has been given a range of rally-themed addenda. It’s based on the Mach-E GT – the 480bhp, dual-motor high-performance version – but it has been given a 20mm suspension lift with reprogrammed magnetorheological dampers.

They’re joined by white rally-style wheels that are an inch smaller than the ones on the GT to give a taller sidewall on the all-season tyres. Skidplates protect the front and rear motors and there’s a Rally Sport drive mode that relaxes the stability control and makes the accelerator response more linear so that it’s easier to slide the car on loose surfaces.

We won't talk much about the interior here, because apart from the gloss white inserts on the seats and the steering wheel, it's the same as in the Mach-E GT. For the money you expect something more upmarket, with more supportive seats, but the tech works well.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

Ford has given the Rally some cosmetic touches as well, such as the Focus RS-inspired spoiler, the striping pack and gloss white accents in the interior.

Of course, the Mach-E Rally is not as serious as those £200,000 ruggedised supercars but it’s not meant to be. Instead, it’s a fun way to jazz up an electric SUV. In fact, it’s sold in the UK simply as a £2250 option pack on the GT.

RIDE & HANDLING

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16 Ford Mustang Mach E Rally 2025 review rear cornering stones

The problem with the off-road sports car idea is that finding public dirt roads is not easy in most of England, so just as important as the Rally’s performance off road is what it does on it, so let’s start with that.

The Mach-E GT always suffered from a restless ride with lots of bump-thump. Although softer suspension with more travel and taller sidewalls on the less performance-oriented tyres haven’t entirely eradicated the problem – there’s still an ever-present background rumble that you hear as much as feel – the changes have tempered it to an acceptable level for a performance car.

Our test car had BlueCruise, Ford’s hands-off cruise control. Rather than a revolutionary semi-autonomous system, it just feels like a very good adaptive cruise control system that’s quite clever in its distancing and lane positioning. But it doesn’t change lanes by itself and I’m not sure what else I’d do with my hands while driving.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

As with the normal GT, the Rally is extremely keen to rotate into and out of a corner, particularly when the roads are as cold and greasy as they were during our test. It’s certainly amusing, and the new Rally Sport mode does seem to make the car’s responses a little more linear, but it’s still flawed as a driver’s car. The brake pedal has a lot of dead travel and then grabs quite suddenly. The steering is weird too: in the more sedate modes it’s extremely light, while in Untamed mode it becomes quite heavy and gets that Ford-typical elasticated feeling but no more actual feedback to speak of.

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N has simply moved the game on for fun EVs. It has better body control and more options to make it do what you want it to. But you wouldn’t want to take the Hyundai off the Tarmac, which is something you can (and should) do with the Ford. It is unfazed by a bit of light fording and mud-plugging, and really comes alive on a loose surface. It can be made to slide very easily and feels essentially rear-wheel drive.

While a single-motor Mach-E would probably do big drifts as well, the Rally very cleverly blends in some front-wheel drive to stabilise the slide initially and to start pulling you out when it senses you want to straighten up. There’s still a sense of the software second-guessing you sometimes, but it’s less noticeable than when we drove the normal GT on a wet track.

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MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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01 Ford Mustang Mach E Rally 2025 review lead front

Whether this capability is of much use to you will depend on where you live, of course. If you drive exclusively on the road, the Ioniq 5 N is easily the better performance EV. It’s £11,790 cheaper and the Mach-E in general is feeling its age, particularly as an EV. It has a very large battery, at 91kWh (usable capacity), but it averaged only 2.4mpkWh in normal driving on our test. Granted, temperatures were near freezing, but the Genesis Electrified G80 I drove on the same day managed 3.4mpkWh. An average of 2.4mpkWh gives the Ford a range of only 218 miles, and it charges at just 150kW (and well below that most of the time).

Since we first tested the Mach-E GT, Ford has made more of the 99kWh battery usable: 91kWh instead of 88kWh. Given the poor efficiency, it needs every kWh to still return reasonable range.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

VERDICT

Ford didn’t really have to make the Rally, but I’m glad it has because it brings some colour and niche interest to what could be an otherwise boring class of cars. It goes back to that sense of humour: this is a relatively low-risk thing for Ford to do, but it’s a nice halo car and it’s fun. As with the Dakar and Sterrato versions of the 911 and Huracán, the changes make a better road car and enable you to go play in the dirt or the snow if you want to.

Illya Verpraet

Illya Verpraet Road Tester Autocar
Title: Road Tester

As a road tester, Illya drives everything from superminis to supercars, and writes reviews and comparison tests, while also managing the magazine’s Drives section. Much of his time is spent wrangling the data logger and wielding the tape measure to gather the data for Autocar’s in-depth instrumented road tests.

He loves cars that are fun and usable on the road – whether piston-powered or electric – or just cars that are very fit for purpose. When not in test cars, he drives an R53-generation Mini Cooper S.