A simple, all-pervading feeling of joy, because the driving-for-pleasure season is now properly under way and the weather is playing ball.
Today was Ford’s Mustang Day, so we headed for Caffeine & Machine, the Warwickshire drop-in centre for coffee-drinking car-lovers, conveyed smoothly up the Fosse Way by a Ford Mustang Mach-E GT (the go- faster version of the Blue Oval’s first fully electric model) that I had borrowed for the occasion. Take an interesting car, find an attractive destination populated by people you like and it’s hard not to have a good time.
The news from the wider world may be dire – what with wars, shortages, inflation, price hikes and non-stop political chicanery – but several-dozen V8 Mustangers (who had probably turned down the heating and given up milk in their coffee to afford the petrol) made it to C&M to enjoy a drink and a damned good yarn about cars.
I’m an admirer of nearly everything about the Mach-E except its poorly developed suspension but was able to trade my ‘crashy’ dark grey GT for a more tolerable ‘bouncy’ red standard model on the way home. Elephant in room: how could Ford’s global bigwigs have built so many of these otherwise excellent cars while failing to notice their obvious – and reputation-sapping – flaw?
Monday
A swift hour’s trip south to Thruxton Circuit in Hampshire to attend TOCA’s season-opening reception for this year’s (Autocar-sponsored) British Touring Car Championship, which has introduced hybrid powertrains. Each car now has a 48V electric-boost motor inside its gearbox, with the associated battery, cooling system and motor controls packaged nearby in a crash-proof box.
I grabbed a word with ever-progressive BTCC boss Alan Gow, who is proud to have perfected a hybrid system against some serious headwinds and predicts other saloon race series will soon go the same way.
The extra electric motor, which can be deployed by drivers for a maximum of 15 seconds a lap, makes cars a bit quicker overall but also replaces the old success-ballast system by reducing the deployment time available to the most successful drivers. There’s no racing in the world that’s closer than BTCC racing – as evidenced by news that ITV1 will screen several races this year, in addition to the usual day-long ITV4 coverage. Gow expects torrid competition to continue, but it will still be interesting to see how this new power-shot affects things.
Join the debate
Add your comment
I imagine you would be welcome at a Mustang meet in almost any car other than that terrible use of the name that you took. The V8 is so important to the experience that Ford even dropped the 4 pot here. And thats not the worst of it. Mutangs are surely partly about style, not being an SUV. Ford might well have got the suspension all wrong, but thats the least of what is wrong with that car. And was it really required to add the 'Mustangs use a lot of fuel' jibe. Even the V8s will get 30 mpg on a run, hardly poor for the size and performance is it?