The Future of the Original Pony Car
With all the new rules and regulations stifling big displacement and larger motors, the future of the pony car is finally coming into view. With these tighter regulations coming down the pike for Ford and all other manufacturers, they are scrambling to come up with innovative designs for smaller engines that will still capture the public’s eye and make them spend their money. Ford has seen this coming for a while now, so they quickly put things like the Fiesta and Focus ST into production. Now with the launch of their brand-new Mustang, Ford wants to capitalize on their small-displacement development and try it out in this new engine bay.
It should have been called the SVO Mustang, but I digress.
With this EcoBoost Mustang, Ford is looking to grab some of the tuner crowd’s money and the attention of millennial buyers, and you know what? They should be. I mean, big-honkin’ displacement motors are wonderful — they send shivers down your spine when they fire up, and can make people wet themselves when you launch them — nevertheless, in today’s world, they are dinosaurs. With today’s technology, you can make just as much horsepower with small-displacement engines that you could with those monster V8s, and we should be embracing it. Not because it’s the green thing to do, or any of that hippie-dippy nonsense, but in the long-run, it’s cheaper and still results in quite a lot of power.
The aftermarket is saturated with tuning shops that build stuff for small-displacement engines: bigger turbos, intercoolers, forged internals. With all of these shops littered around the country and their tooling set up for small engines, this makes these aftermarket parts dirt-cheap. These little engines also become cheaper to run in the long run. With those great, big V8s, you are constantly filling the tank up because of thirst. These smaller engines with variable valve timing, stop-start, cylinder deactivation, and just the size of the engine in general, all return better MPGs. This, most importantly, in turn gives you more money in your pocket, which means more upgrades and more horsepower.
The Mustang EcoBoost (again, terrible name) is showing us the light. Long has many a non-car analyst proclaimed the death of the gearhead. That we are a dying breed, but I say this. We won’t go quietly into the night. We will go loudly power-sliding through the gates of hell with our turbos screaming for mercy! The future is here and has the sound of horsepower.