chrisheltra

I must be the only guy here that knew what I wanted and got it. My car has nothing on it that I didnt want and there is nothing that its lacking that I would need. The only thing I would like to add to it is home link but I dont need it and it would be a very minimal addition.

jarradasay

The funny thing about this picture is that the bumper beam is at almost the exact same height.

Vermillion06

It reminds me of this:

rhumb

Same with this:


It isn't the bumper height that bothers me, it's all the mass piled atop of it.

jarradasay

agreed. What is driving the tall rear decks? trunk space? with the fold down seats I really dont need all that space. I am sure a few people use it, but i doubt there are too many people that wouldn't buy a mustang because it can't hold four golf bags, when it can't hold four golfers.

The exhaust is sitting higher as well, what is the need for the rear ground clearance?

Just wondering.

xlover

the impact point on the rear bumper (the actual beam that protects you) is higher in newer cars to pass safety regs. (protects against taller vehicles, plus it works to prevent other vehicles from riding up over it) you cant really compare the wild west car safety regs of the 60s and early 70s with a modern car. they are never going to look like that again. if you compared a new ferrari 430 and an old 308 you would see the same thing. gotta take everything in context comparatively to the modern car market.

bob

Those could be some things in combination with aero, rasing the rear deck helps smooth things out and reduces drag.

A classic example of this would be the GT40 Bread Wagon (the car that killed Ken Miles).

Does anybody have a 05-09 vs 10-11 comparison pic? I'd be interested to see if thier is a perceptible difference in the deck height of each version? I thought onew of the tricks used to get hips on the current body was to simply raise the rear deck a bit.

RedCandy5.0

One from the CS section.

PTRocks

I don't think that is what they did, as the entire roofline and windows did not change.

jarradasay

Wrong. Your thoughts were my thoughts originally, until I actually researched the body design. The bumper beam (the actual beam, black in the photo below) on the new mustang sits just behind the black plastic. Which is what is driving my questions. Compared to the photo of the 71 the bumper beams are nearly same height. So why the huge rear? I agree it is a general trend in industry, but why?

jarradasay

I hear this. But isn't the least drag the shape of a water droplet, ie tapers completely to a point in the rear. Which would mean lowering the rear, similar to what they did in 71-73.

Now they may be raising the rear for stability, to work as a wedge and provide some measure of downforce???

jarradasay

didnt the qtr windows change? I thought I read that.

RedCandy5.0

Another for Bob.

xlover

actually from your pic it looks like it is sitting right behind the license plate which is where i would expect it to be. actually i think that picture is very telling if you look at all the structure built up behind it so your rear passengers dont end up in the front seats if you get rear ended. seriously tho all the idle speculation without looking at the CAD drawings. clearly there are reasons behind why cars are designed the way they are today. i am sure it is not just to **** off a bunch of old schoolers wishing for the designs of the 70s

jarradasay

Not sure what you are looking at, but the beam sits just below the license plate. You can see the cut out for the lamp harness. The lisence plate is about three inches below the bottom of the deck lid, not eight. Also follow the body to bumper line on the qtr panel. This line lines up with the license plate and the beam is clearly below this line. If the beam were behind the plate it would make more sense going with the idea that the structure is designed to take the impact from a taller vehicle, but then the frame rails (core rail) would also have to be at that height.HMMM

xlover

ok congrats on the analysis, i guess i could just look under my car to verify where the bumper is but ill take your word for it but you only did half the work. if you believe the crash system/crumple zones theory is incorrect. why is it designed like it is?

seriously though, this site needs to work with ford to get some ppl from the mustang team maybe twice a year to answer questions like this. why and why nots from the enthusiast community.

jarradasay

Honestly, I have no idea. The only thing I can come up with is aesthetic design, or trunk volume. It is not just a function of the rear deck though. The whole vehicle is higher, the rear deck just accentuates it. The 2010 rear deck is virtually the exact height as the 2009, but the redesign accentuates the height. In ford's effort to make the car look smaller, I think they made it look narrower and shorter, but accidentally made it look taller.

My next question though is why all the rear end ground clearance? from road to exhaust tip or black trim?? maybe to ease backing into a driveway?

This would be really nice. I am pretty sure we have a few ford "insiders" here that do just that, but a stronger participation would be awesome!

bob

It probably has to do with the need for the green house on a car and minimizing dirty air rolling off the roof and down the back glass. Modern cars are designed to shove the air out of the way then reduce drag by smoothing things out as it passes over and towards the rear.

Down force probably isn't a big concern since most cars operating in the US don't go fast enough for it to be effective on a regular basis (and even at speeds where it might be effective, the roads tend to negate the need for it, ie; interstate highways - they are generally designed for speeds of 70+ MPH, but tend to be relatively flat and straight).

bob

a bi-annual Q&A would be really cool, but would need to be heavily filtered. The problem with having a Ford guy come onto the forums and answer various questions in thread is that it typically goes to crap once somebody decides to air thier Mustang nit-picks and problems (just look at the fact that Ford didn't offer airflow ratings for the new 5.0 and only said the heads flow about 4% better than the GT500 heads - which are also of a generally unknown quality so people would go onto a forum and say the are full of crap because thier buddy tested the heads with his homemade airflow bench on the hottest muggiest day of the year in direct sunlight in a steel shed painted black in his back yard) rather than asking inciteful or interesting questions.

Also due to future product, alot of questions usually get the "sorry, I can't comment on that" smackdown.

Brewman

If I missed someone else saying this I am sorry BUT, Along with the IRS lets get the car up to date and go with some Double A-Arm suspension up fron and lose the Shock tower design.