Jim Farley Touts ‘Affordable’ V8-Powered Ford Mustang, Bids Competition Farewell
It’s something of a victory lap for the Ford Mustang, which essentially has no direct competition left to do battle with.
While its future has been somewhat is doubt at least once or twice over the past 60 years, the all-new 2024 Ford Mustang instead helped usher in yet another era for the iconic pony car. Despite many rumors to the contrary, the S650 isn’t available with things like all-wheel-drive or a hybrid system, nor some sort of all-electric variant – however, one can still get a V8-powered, manual transmission-equipped, rear-wheel-drive Ford Mustang, as has always been the case. As we’ve heard time and time again from CEO Jim Farley, that will apparently continue to the be case for the foreseeable future as well, a notion he reiterated while speaking at Ford Performance’s 2024 motorsports season preview last week.
“Mustang is going to celebrate its 60th anniversary coming up here,” Farley said. “A lot of our competitors have left. They’ve come and gone. We never did that. We’ve always been there with Mustang. Sixty years, and it’s changed over time. We have EcoBoost, we have the Dark Horse now, and we’re going to continue to invest. And if we’re the only one on the planet making a V8 affordable sports car for everyone in the world, so be it.”
These comments are obviously a slight dig at the competition, but also something of a celebratory deflation that the Ford Mustang does, in fact, now own this particular market. The sixth-generation Chevy Camaro just went out of production a few weeks ago, which was also the case with the Dodge Charger and Challenger. At the moment, we don’t know exactly what the future holds for the Camaro or the Challenger, but Dodge did just tease a new Charger earlier this month.
However, the new Charger is expected to be offered not only in all-electric form, but also with an ICE powertrain – slated to be Stellantis’ relatively new twin-turbocharged Hurricane 3.0-liter inline-six – not a V8. Indeed, the V8 has gone the way of the dinosaur in recent years, for the most part, but that isn’t the case with the Ford Mustang. Thus, Farley has certainly earned the right to brag here, and he went on to note that Ford is on the cusp of launching a bevy of V8-powered Mustang racers on the world this year – a move that now, in retrospect, looks more like a global victory lap than anything else.
Photos: Ford
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