THE TRUTH! My Real Thoughts about the Mustang Dark Horse

The good and the bad after 7,300 miles with my new Ford Mustang Dark Horse. Hi guys, I'm Shmee, hello and welcome back to the channel. Will you join me today here at Apex Motor Club, a private circuit here in Arizona, where very shortly I'm going to be taking this Mustang out for its first outing ever on track. And needless to say, I cannot wait. But before that, I'd also like to talk a bit about my experience with the car so far. An update, if you will, after over 7,000 miles. Some of the positives and some of the things that are not so good. Some of the negatives and downsides from my experiences with it so far. It is a beautiful day here, but pretty windy today. However, you might remember this car is not on its first set of tyres. When we were at Hennessy in Texas on the way across the country, I got a little bit lively with it, shredded up the original Pirelli Trofeo RSs and needed to replace them pretty much overnight. Hence, we found a set of Michelin Cup 2s, a tyre that I have on a lot of my other cars, including on my Shelby GT500. 315 at the back, 305 at the front. We then got another puncture and needed yet another one. It's been a bit of a disaster the last year with tyres, but these should be up to the task today in the Arizona sunshine. Today, though, we're here at Apex Motor Club, just south of Phoenix, Arizona. These are the private member garages. The clubhouse is soon to be built over the other side, and over here is part of the circuit, the first phase that's been built, that I'm about to go and drive. The second phase is coming as well over towards the other side, but this is a fully inclusive service. They are looking after everything, tyre pressures, cooling the brakes, the whole works. So, the Mustang Dark Horse, it is the track-focused car. This particular car has the Dark Horse package with the upgraded suspension. It's something I probably should have done sooner. Today, we're going to get it out and go have some fun. Funny thing about this, it is the first time that this trunk or boot has ever been completely empty. From the day I got it, there's always been stuff in the car, but I've had to empty it out, of course, before taking it out for a drive. I still haven't yet arranged a new plate for Dark Horse, a new tag, that will come. Of course, this car is fully protected with Ceramic Pro's Kvatcher paint protection film, along now with the window tint, the ceramic IR that we added. And I have to say, being out here in Arizona in the sunshine, the difference it makes to the temperature inside and the feel of the materials is huge. I am a big fan of that, and it's probably not going to be the last time that I do it. Now, before we really get on with the things that I like and don't like, per se, with this car, I do want to start it up. Sounds good, doesn't it? Because we have the six-speed Tremec. This is, of course, the manual. For drag racing, you'd want the 10-speed auto, but for this kind of driving, this gearbox feels amazing. Very short throw on it, like the Mach 1 or the Mach 1 for Americans of the previous generation Mustang, this being the S650, upgraded from the S550, but still with many things that have crossed over. Now, we're going to be going through the different driving modes. When you select through here, as you can see, it changes your settings, so go up to sport, or you can go all the way up into track mode as well, should you prefer. And, well, I mean, yeah, listen to it. Actually, let me put it in track just so you can hear this for a second, although we'll hear plenty of it in anger in a moment. It's a proper engine sound. I absolutely love it. So, let me run through some of the good things before we get this started up properly, ready to go on out. In fact, in here, by the way, I should show you very quickly, we've got the track apps, which we will be using. So, we've got things like the lap timer, which I can test and just have a little play with, get used to all of these settings and what it offers us here. The auxiliary gauges, love that kind of stuff, and all the extra information. So, let me hop back out for a moment. The things that I like about this car, and there are lots of them. Obviously, I'm a Mustang guy. I'm a bit of a Ford guy. Lots of Fords in the garage at home. Enjoyed my Shelby GT500 a lot that I then imported and have in the UK. So, this was kind of a natural progression. The flagship of the new range and, crucially, new marketing and branding, Dark Horse, introduced for the first time with this model. And I've got to say the cool factor, if I can say it like that, of this car is really high. High to the extent that the other day, when I was with my friend Devon Foster with the Pininfarina Battista and Cody, who was driving Tyler of Phoenix's Lexus LFA, and I was driving this. So, think about that. Pininfarina Battista, Lexus LFA and Mustang Dark Horse. Somebody rolls into the car park and is literally like, oh my gosh, is that a new Dark Horse? And that has happened so many times on our tours across the country, being in different places. They've clearly done a great job of introducing this brand and marketing the brand. And that does make it very fun to own. That does make it quite enjoyable, just because car guys, car people want to talk about this car, which is what we're all kind of doing this for, right? It's part of the fun of the whole thing. So, that is number one. Number two is one that I've spoken about extensively and that is, of course, the lump that you have in the front of this car. The Coyote V8, the five litre V8 with the six-speed manual. There are not a lot of cars that have naturally aspirated V8 or naturally aspirated engines full stop and manual gearboxes. This is a small evolution of the previous motor, it's 500 horsepower, it's not boatloads. But if you want an NA engine in a manual car, you've got the Toyota GR86, you've got the Mustangs, you've got the 911s like the ST and the GT3 Touring, and you've got the Gordon Murray cars. And that's about it. A four-cylinder, an eight-cylinder, a six-cylinder and a 12-cylinder. Very cool and I love driving this for those reasons. There aren't many experiences offering that anymore on the road. The third thing that I really enjoy about it is actually if we come through to the inside of the car and the general seating position inside here. I do have a big negative to talk about in connection with this in a second, but when you're sat inside here, the seating position, the steering wheel, the Recaro sport seats, the shifter, they're all right. They're all where they should be. They're all set up really, really nicely. It just feels good. It just feels like the place you want to be to go drive out there. So I need to get my helmet on, get the car fully set up and go drive here at Apex Motor Club. Righty then, lids on. So, first time tracking the Dark Horse. Needless to say, I have been looking forward to this because it's basically what this car is for, right? It's the more dynamic version of the new gen Mustang. So we are in. I might actually just lower my seat ever so slightly. We're currently in sport mode, which feels like a good way to get started. So let me head out. We'll do tire pressures as we go. Make sure they're all looking good. One is higher than the others. And then it's going to be time to put the foot down, hear a whole lot of this Coyote V8 and have a whole lot of fun in the process. All right then, up to the pit exit. We've got the green light. Away we go. So I have got to put it in track mode. We are heading out onto track. This thing sounds so ridiculous. So bear with me a little bit. This is my first time ever driving here at Apex Motor Club. I actually met the team last year when I was here for the Arizona Car Week. But this time around, we've managed to make it happen. Listen to this as we go up through the revs to the red line. There is a time and a place to enjoy the power of a car. And this is certainly it. I mean, listen to that. I'm at 120 miles an hour. I've broken earlier than I need to. We've got auto rev matching on in here at the moment. And the way that it goes down through the gears is just awesome. Now, in terms of manual track day experiences in the Shimimobiles, I've had outings in my Lotus Amira. I've had outings in both of my Cayman GT4s that I've owned, the GT8, the Focus RSs. But I can tell you instantly, this feels amazing. This feels absolutely at home. And of course, the Dark Horse handling package is a big part of that. The sound, like I say, to have this engine note in 2024. This is mega. I'm learning a bit the track as I go here. They've got various configurations, as you can tell from where I'm driving right now. And in the future, the way it's going to open up as well to the second phase part of all of this. But the idea with it being this members club arrangement is that there's an app you can add that you're going to be attending for the day. Put your name down. You're going to know who's going to be there, how busy it's going to be as well. This is super cool. They have a mega setup. Gosh, the way they get so much grip from this car by throwing tyre tread at the problem at the front end is obviously there's a lot of weight up at the front end. Through the gears down the back straight, there is a bus stop type chicane that they can throw in here as well. We're over 130 miles an hour down there. I love that sound. How cool is that? It's so good. Pretty briskly without being scrappy over the circuit, just going to try keeping it in third here. Use some more of the torque, maybe second. I don't know. Learning as I go. So we head around the start complex. There's so much to learn with the way the track goes there. It's time for a cool down lap. I think it's time to let the Mustang have a breather. So I'm going to pop the hazards on. This is a beast. That's just my warm up session. This is an absolute beast. Let me stop the session on here because there are a whole load of settings and different things. Obviously, tyre pressures have risen quite dramatically. It's a clockwise circuit, so the left side are significantly higher than the right. Rev matching is great. And if you want to turn it off and just do it yourself, it's literally a button on the screen like that. And then it's all over to you to do it, which I would say is significantly more fun. But obviously, for track performance, unless you're a heel and toe genius, you probably want to let the car do it for you. Make your life that little bit easier. We're definitely drinking some fuel. We use more than a quarter of a tank in a fairly short stint to get this started. Oh, adrenaline is pumping. So I've got more things to tell you about this car. Let's head round, make our way back into the pits. A quick pause after the first stint before going out again. I want to tell you some of the what I'm going to call neutral balance things about the Dark Horse, because there's one thing I preemptively critiqued this car for before collecting it, which was perhaps a little unfair, which is to do, quite frankly, with fuel economy, but more specifically range. Now with this, don't get me wrong, if you just drive it around a town centre, city centre, or if you're doing this type of driving out on track, you drink fuel or gas, obviously. But if you're cruising, if you're on a very long distance, gentle drive, as we've done a lot of with it, you can get about 300 miles from a tank. Yes, you're putting back in about 14 gallons in the region of 50 something litres, 55 odd litres. So it's not the best in the world, but it's also not particularly bad. And you can get a lot more range than you could with the Shelby GT500, because that was atrocious. And I kind of assumed in advance this would be the same. But at the end of the day, it's all down to how you use the power, right? If you're flooring a 760 horsepower car everywhere, or in this case, 500 horsepower car everywhere, you're going to be using a whole lot more. The next thing, it's a Mustang. It's not exactly a small car. Mustangs are pretty big. They are now available in the United Kingdom, but on our roads, they're big things, especially if you have a left-hand drive one. The upshot of that is that you have a lot of space. You do have a lot of space in the boot, which means if you want to do a big road trip, you can lug loads of stuff around. It is a car with back seats, albeit, I'm not going to lie, behind the front seats, not the most space in the world. A tall person is definitely struggling with their head on the roof for a long journey, and knee space is there, but not in the best way. So you can take people, but I wouldn't necessarily do it for long journeys. In terms of driver comfort, as I mentioned earlier, the seats are great. Everything is set up really nicely, so for touring, it's exactly where I hoped it was going to be, and one of the reasons I decided to buy yet another Mustang was because I knew it would do this kind of thing really well. The occasional track day, some nice driving roads, long-distance legs, not necessarily worrying about it too much, and if you need something, there are Ford dealers everywhere. Tyres perhaps a little bit difficult because it's a brand new model, so they weren't so readily available at the time, but basically speaking, on a journey across the country, you drive past Ford dealers non-stop, literally non-stop, and then you get somewhere like this, right? Track out here, that GT3 RS making a lot of noise in the background, tons of cool cars about. Here with a friend driving in the Radical today, which obviously would run rings and just bully the Mustang left, right and centre, but the whole service, the fact that guys look after the tyres, it's probably about to get very loud because this E36, is it E30? E36 is going past, which has an E46 M3 motor in it. Loud, that thing when it gets out there is very, very loud. Anyway, I think this calls for a second stint. Let me get my helmet back on, let's go back out, and then I'm going to tell you about the things that I don't like so much about the Dark Horse. It is time to go again. This time around, I'm going to pop on the auxiliary gauges because G-forces and that type of information is always fun. We're going to go back into track mode. All right, let's take gear. Good to go. I've got the thumbs up. Out we head, there are some very loud cars on track at the moment, but we will pull up to the line. Just even that first shift up into second, you're immediately just thinking this is a cool car, the noise that it makes, and the steering feels really good. I think I can confidently state that I'm preferring driving this here today than driving my Amira at the Nürburgring, which is not what I would have expected because I love the Nürburgring, but the Amira just didn't fill me with the confidence that I maybe expected from it. As you can tell, I love those downshifts. It sounds so good. Yes, there's a weight to it, so it's a bit of a workout to throw the steering in through some of these corners, but the Dark Horse has more aero, more of a splitter at the front, more of a wing at the back than the regular Mustang GT, and of course, officially speaking, 20 horsepower or so more. In reality, not sure how much difference there actually is. It's really quite a workout in here. It's a heavy thing to drive, but that gives you that satisfaction and feeling as well as we head round here. There's just so much grip out of it. I'm really impressed with the amount of grip. I'm really impressed as we come flying round here into T1. Absolutely harrowing round. I love it. Not really enough space there to get up into third gear. Keep it in second, unwind on the straight, now we take third. This is what this car is for. To anybody wondering why I ordered the Dark Horse package, why I put Cup 2s on it rather than PS4Ss, now you know it was for when I would come to somewhere like this to be able to really enjoy what the Dark Horse is all about. To bring it to the track, to have some fun, to throw it around in anger, to enjoy the motorsport connections. There is, of course, the Dark Horse race car, the Mustang taking part in all sorts of race series, the new GTD, which we'll have to talk about down the line. This is mad. 7,000 rpm, you feel it rumbling through you. I absolutely love it. Getting more in tune with the car now, more connected to what it's doing, what it wants from me. Not necessarily 100% on the brakes, it's a road car at the end of the day, and I don't want to totally kill them, but the first track outing for the American Schmiemewiel in style here at Apex Motor Club in Arizona, this is what it's about. That was really, really fast through that section. I think it's time to cool it down a notch again. We've done 1.26 lateral G, 1.28 braking G. Not bad figures for a good old Mustang. Crazy to think the history behind these cars, right? The motorsports over the years, the motorsports in the future, everything it's about, and it just combines so many things I love into one. This for my first outing with it is a proper way to start. For sure, this car will do a couple of track days over my ownership. I expect to have it for a couple of years. It will stay out here in the United States. I've said that before. It is the American Schmiemewiel. I've already got plans for my next trip and where I'm going to be taking it next on a bit of a road trip again. I think by the time this is one year old, it might have quite a few miles under its belt, but that's what it's for. These cars are built to drive, whether it's this, whether it's a little Miata, whether it's a hypercar, they're all built to be driven, to be enjoyed. And the thing I love the most as well, to kind of share this experience and to try and translate what I'm feeling and my emotions in it for you guys to come along as well and understand a bit more about it. What's it like? Okay, yes, I'm not setting lap records today, but that's not what it's about at all. It's about having a good time, enjoying the car, and crucially, safely bringing it back home at the end. And I tell you what, a place like this, in a car like this, with the service that they have here at Apex Motor Club? Yeah, yeah, I am not complaining. It was pouring with rain last night. Bring a Brit to Arizona, and that seems to happen for some reason. But today, it's dried up, it's a bit wet off the sides, and it's turned into something pretty magnificent. The whole new track that will be out there is going to be really cool as well. Hey, if I keep spending time here in Arizona, I might have to inquire about that one because the future looks very bright as we come back towards the garages that are here in the main pit lane side, with some very high tyre pressures on the left side, the front left especially, because of the weight of the engine up front, right? And the forces on the front left corner with this particular track configuration. Yeah, all righty, let's go pull this in up here, and, uh, yeah, have a breather for a minute. Now that we're back in the pit lane area, the engine's running, hence the beeps, let's talk about the thing you probably all want to know. What do I not like about this car? Because I know a few people will jump to the price and say that it's too expensive. I actually don't think it is. My car came in at a little over seventy thousand dollars. I don't think that's crazy. Obviously, there's some sales tax and registration and stuff on top, but ultimately what you get in the current world, and remember we've had a couple of years of pretty high inflation, it's a lot of car for the money for me, so that's not an issue. One thing that has frustrated me, which you have certainly seen and I have alluded to, is the tyre problem. Because of it being brand new, because of it officially coming with a brand new tyre, the Trofeo RS, and a new size and fitment, means that basically they haven't been readily available and they have been very expensive, and part of that actually is the European side of me. Tyres are cheaper in Europe than they are here in the US. I guess they're generally manufactured over that side of the world, I don't necessarily know, but there's definitely a price discrepancy between the two. So for me, the excessive number of tyres I've bought for this car has certainly been something I have noticed in terms of time and difficulty. The other things, one's personal, one is I've mentioned, let me talk about the personal one first, which is in the car. Now don't get me wrong, I love these Recaro sport seats, the upgrade seat. They have this blue stitching, they've got the blue inlays, they're really supportive. Yes, they don't have the heated element which you'd have with the standard seats, and obviously they're manual seats, but the problem I have with it is a very personal thing that would impact anybody else of about my size, right? Average height, average overall, and that is that when I step in, I don't know if I can demonstrate this on video, when I step in here I can't easily fit between the steering wheel and the bolster because of the way it fits. Every time I basically have to bash the bolster in the steering wheel to get in, and it is starting to leave some marks, and it is a little bit annoying. It's a really random thing, I don't have that in the GT500, which I'm sure has the same base seat. Obviously I have to have the seat in a position where I can fully extend my leg for the clutch, and the steering wheel's just in my comfortable position. You could arguably put it a little bit higher, of course there's the adjustment for that, but then it's a little bit tedious to drive with, so I like having it down. It's a small thing, but it's something that every time I get in and out of the car I'm kind of like trapped, trying to squeeze and work out how to manoeuvre myself out here without banging on it. Anyway, enough of that one, the other one I want to touch on, yeah, the other one, the dashboard, the dials. I'm not sure with the light right now how much of this you can see. The screens are really, really cool. This is in track mode, you know, so you get this horizontal rev counter which looks very, very nice. You can go through the animations, which are great, you know, when you go into these, look at this, sport mode, you've got the track mode, makes it look like you're on a racetrack, drag strip mode, doing a burnout to warm up the tyres before the tree lights drop, or obviously you can go the other way, normal and custom, and set it up yourself. And I do like driving in, generally in sport, which just seems like a nice balance, but this screen, this central screen, is firstly boiling up top. The feeling on the very top of that screen is really, really, really hot, like up here, which is not good, but crucially it crashes far too often, and it's far too laggy. When you step in the car, and obviously because it's got wireless CarPlay, or wireless Android Auto, and Apple CarPlay, it tries to connect, but it's connecting while it's still thinking about everything else, which means that it just takes a bit of time. So I tend to pop my phone down here on the charging pad, and this is looking for my phone, and it's looking for my partner's phone, and it's trying to boot everything up, and it just gets lost, and then sometimes randomly, and it actually did it today on the way here to Apex, it just crashes, it just crashes and reboots, just doesn't know where it is. I hope there's going to be updates for that in the future, it's probably because I have a brand new model, and one of the first of them, so it's basically not refined, and it could just be to do with how hot it gets. I suppose the solution to that would be to tint the windscreen, but that's not strictly legal. However, I haven't yet told you this, I'm going to need a new windscreen. As you can see, we've got a little bit of spidering going on from a stone chip that hit me here on the way into Arizona, and that seems to happen to me a lot as well, but I just decided for the time being I'm not dealing with it, we'll just let that be, and figure it out a little bit down the line, because it's too stressful. So I love this system, I like how you have the Mustang mode, and you have this as well, this is actually quite helpful, one press of that, because I've configured it, is for the quiet exhaust, and then it's super, it's like really quiet. It's actually amazing how much difference that makes, or if you go here, you can just change the modes, and obviously back into track mode, massive difference, but I don't like that it crashes, it causes me great frustration to be honest. That's a small thing, I do like things like this, having the number R900 for my dark horse over there on the dashboard, but like I say, stepping back out of this thing means dealing with this again, and squeezing through. I guess it's been long enough, we can turn that off for the time being, and I just, here, I catch it, and it annoys me. Small thing, but given I drive it a lot, and obviously something I notice a lot as a result. That's pretty much it though, I don't really have much else to, I'm going to say complain about, I'm not complaining, it's a great car, I'm very lucky to own this on a different continent to where I live, and to be able to drive the car here. Yeah, it was a bit of a headache dealing with registration, insurance, and everything like that, as you can probably imagine, but at the end of the day, it's a Mustang, kind of does Mustang things, it's basically what you expect it to be, and works how you expect it to work, and I enjoyed driving it an awful lot for all of this, so I imagine, like I said, we're going to do a couple thousand more miles on the next tour out here in a few months, we're going to do a couple thousand miles with it potentially in the summer, and then later in the year, it all continues, it all goes on from there. What a cool day, hey? Love being here, love finally driving this in anger. We've pulled back round to the front, it is the end of the day, the sun has been out in force today, but don't let that deceive you, because it's actually been quite cold by Arizona standards, it's about 15 degrees Celsius, is that like 50 something Fahrenheit? Something like that. Anyway, we are now on 7,333 miles here, a third of the way to 8,000, there aren't going to be so many more with this trip, in fact, I don't really think I have many more things planned with the Dark Horse. At some point, it is going to need an oil change, it is going to need an engine service, first year standard procedure, a lot of people have said why haven't I done it already, and the long story short is because it has an automated system, it's variable servicing, and it tells you when it's due on the system, and it doesn't say it's due yet, and I suppose that's an update with this from the previous generation, certainly with the GT500, it asks you to do an oil change service before driving it really in anger, this thing, it's all computerized systems these days, you just do what it tells you to do, and you don't worry about it, and you follow the book, and obviously that keeps it in warranty, and keeps it all running properly, so it will get one not too far down the line, it'll get a new windscreen not too far down the line as well, maybe it's time to give it a little bit more power, I mean it's when you come somewhere like this that you feel like it could have a bit more, could have a bit more go, it wouldn't hurt if this thing had another 100 horsepower, maybe 200 horsepower, but then it's the fact that it's so balanced as a car right, the fact that it drives so well when you come to a location like this, and you get to really push it in anger, and enjoy it, that makes it a really fun package, and you don't want to ruin that, it's very easy to make things unbalanced to give it loads of power, but then you've also got to do the brakes, then maybe the suspension gets a little bit weaker, then maybe you need a little bit more downforce, this is like a never-ending process if you start upgrading a car, and I don't know what the long term future is with this, it's not a car that I intend to keep forever, I imagine at some point there is the possibility of a GTD, and when that does come, or when that does happen, maybe this would be traded in, and that would happen, I don't know if that would be here or in Europe, lots of questions, things to answer a little bit further down the line, but hard to believe it was already literally, what was it, four months ago, three months ago, how far have we had it, October, November, December, January, four months ago, I've owned this car for four months, time has flown by since I collected it from Pat Millican Ford in Detroit, we did that massive journey in less than two weeks, all the way down via Florida to the Ceramic Pro booth at SEMA in Las Vegas, from Vegas we went up to visit the Stradman in Utah, to Velocity Invitational, down to LA, back across again, back for the F1, then back over, then obviously brought it down to San Diego, drove across to Arizona for the car week out here, which has just been amazing, anyway, I think the point is pretty much there, there are things with this that could certainly be improved and refined, it kind of reminds me of when I did an update with my Amira, there are certainly things that could be stepped forwards, if time allowed, you know, updating the nav to not crash so much, just small little things around it here and there, but overall I think you get so much car for your money with the Mustang Dark Horse, these things are trading for a $10,000 premium dealer markup, something like that here over MSRP, understandably because it's a lot of car for the money, it's really cool and like I say, when you take it to places and you're driving it around, people recognize it and I've been amazed by that, I didn't realize the power of the marketing that so many people would know so quickly what Dark Horse is, what the Dark Horse is about, but they do, I'm very pleased I bought the Dark Horse handling package, that won't be available, so the car is now coming out in the UK, they've just announced that it will start at £66,000, for comparison, this cost me all in, including taxes, registration, sales tax, etc, £62,000, that's the base price, so I added around $10,000 of options to this, so if you added around £8,000 of options to the UK one, it would be £74,000 rather than £62,000, so I feel like I got a good deal buying it out here, that's just the way it is, I don't think the Dark Horse handling package is available at all in the UK though, so you can't get these wheels, you can't get the wider track, you can't get the add-on splitter and the bigger wing, you just get the normal ones for the Mustang GT, so it's a different setup, but it is right-hand drive, so they do offer it right-hand drive, maybe I should go and buy one in the UK as well and have an American left-hand drive and a European or UK right-hand drive, options, I don't, I hadn't really considered that, I hadn't considered that, that could be quite fun, hmm, ideas, anyway, it's been an amazing day here at Apex Motor Club, a big thanks to everyone, the full team for the hospitality, Jason, Gerry and everyone who's been helping with the cars, and to my friend Kent and Paulner who set everything up for us to come down and drive today as well, really enjoyed it, great place, if I come back out here or if I was going to be spending more time out here, I think I would struggle to resist getting signed up, having a lot of track time because it's an amazing, amazing setup, that's it for now though, thank you very much for watching guys, I hope you've enjoyed the video, that is it for this time and I'll see you again very soon, cheers!