Say what you want about the Mustang Mach-E
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00:00Come and have a look at this. This is the Ford Mustang Mach-E Rally. Now, I'm sure by
00:20this point you're all familiar with the Mustang Mach-E, and you're probably also familiar
00:25with all the rhetoric that surrounds it, right? The greatest hits being, it's an EV, how could
00:30they have called it a Mustang? And it's an SUV, how could they have called it a Mustang?
00:35I'm just going to park all of that to one side for today, because quite frankly, I'm
00:40tired of this discussion. Look, they did it, they did it for a reason. We spoke to Jim
00:44Farley as recently as last week, and he said, if you want to have Godzilla engines, if you
00:49want to have Coyote engines, if you want high displacement V8 combustion engines, you've
00:55got to have cars like this in the fleet. So, it's a Mustang, they've called it a Mustang,
01:00billions of dollars probably went into its development and its marketing, and here it
01:03is. So, I'm not going to focus on any of that hate, what I'm going to focus on is, has Ford
01:08done enough with this Rally Edition to correct the narrative? So, let's start with how it
01:13looks. And I think it actually looks pretty cool. I think this ride height adjustment,
01:17it's a little bit higher, that kind of helps to even the car out a little bit. What else?
01:22The front here, the grille, they've matted that up, which is fine. And they've added
01:27these two, what Ford claim to be rally-inspired fog lights. For me, I would have liked to
01:33have seen a little bit more commitment, right? It would have been good if those were like
01:35this big. You kind of need to feel RS200 worthy if you're going to call out that car in the
01:41marketing material. Anyway, so front is fine. Moving around the side, I do like this. So,
01:48these are Michelin Cross Climate 2s, right? So, it is an all-season tyre. Let's not forget
01:52these tyres have a lot to do, right? Because you're calling this car a rally, therefore
01:56it does have to be pretty good on the dust and the dirt, but it's also an EV, right?
02:01So, you've got range to think about, you've got NVH, noise, vibratious and harshness,
02:05you've got all that stuff to think about. And I think what they've done is a bit of
02:08a masterstroke because, yeah, it's an all-season tyre, but it looks, and I'm just talking about
02:13looks, it looks applicable for the surface that we're on, right? It looks applicable
02:19for a car that's called rally. So, good work with that one, Ford. Also, good work with
02:24these wheels, which are stunning. And I think we know this is as close as you can get to
02:28a classic Oz Racing wheel without ending up in court. And I do like the decals on the
02:33wheels, but I don't like the decals on the door. They would be coming off the moment
02:37I stepped off the lot if I were to buy one. And then at the back here, lovely, nice big
02:41spoiler, which I think does actually set the rear end off. Again, it brings a bit of
02:45balance. Overall, pretty good, Ford. Top marks. Well, maybe not top. Pretty good marks.
02:51So, I suppose the question we've got to ask is, has Ford done enough with the Rally, and
02:56I'm not just talking about the way it looks, but crucially the way it drives, to turn some
03:01of those haters into believers? I also hate that there are no door handles, but I'm not
03:09filming this again because it's hot, so you're just going to have to live with that. We're
03:15a tribal bunch, us car people, and Ford really put the cat amongst the pigeons when they
03:21decided to call this lifted crossover SUV electric vehicle a Mustang. It didn't go over
03:29well. But if Ford is synonymous with one thing, really, in my opinion as a European, it's
03:34rally racing. And with the Focus RS out of production, this is kind of as close to a
03:42street-ready, not a homologation car, but kind of a homologation car in spirit, Rally
03:48Ford car. So, let's see how it is. On the interior, I'm into Mach-E. More textures than
03:56your average Milanese pasta shop. You've got one form of textured plastic here, another
04:01pattern here, then we've got this Bang & Olufsen speaker that runs around the whole front of the
04:07car, which looks pretty nice, but another texture. Then we've got a different pattern
04:11here, kind of triangles in space. Then we've got some kind of felted, it's not Alcantara
04:20suede, but it's something like that. Then we've got some soft-touch leatherette. There's a lot
04:24going on, is what I'm saying, basically. In terms of stuff that's specific to the Rally,
04:29well, it's these little white accent marks here, here, here, which I guess is the same
04:35Oxford white as on the wheels. Onto more pressing matters, same three drive modes as before,
04:42those being the wonderfully named Whisper, Engage and Unbridle. We're in unbridle mode,
04:48of course. We're going to turn one pedal driving off. We're going to leave propulsion sound on,
04:52because it sounds fun. This is really the headliner, though, right? We've got Rally
04:57Sport mode. I'm going to turn that on. We're in Rally Sport. We're going to throw it into drive.
05:01Hands on the wheel. Nobody's around us. All right.
05:09Okay. Oh, wow. Oh, fantastic. Genuinely, this is my first time doing this. Oh, jackrabbit.
05:19Okay. 50 miles an hour in a heartbeat. Wow, the traction. Oh, there's the slide. Okay.
05:26This is impressive, everybody. This is not a marketing gimmick. The Mach-E Rally feels
05:35spectacular. It's just the brakes. Okay. Pretty good. A little bit of... Yeah, fine. Okay.
05:45Very, very easy to get that rear end out. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.
05:51Whoa. That genuinely, genuinely shocked and surprised me. Let's try a little corner.
05:59What have we got here? Okay. This is absolute buckets of fun. Instantly, my range has dropped
06:10from 240 miles to 202 miles, which is hilarious. Traction control. I mean, it's nothing short of
06:19miraculous. This is a big car. This is a heavy car, obviously, right? I don't feel like that.
06:24Not right now. This is very impressive. This Rally Sport mode clearly has had a lot of engineering
06:37development time gone into it because, I mean, it's a different car. It feels like a different
06:44car. I don't want to be blasé about this. I'm doing 55 miles an hour and, you know, I could be
06:51sipping a cup of tea that's full to the brim. This is really impressive. The chassis setup,
06:59the tuning of the Rally Sport mode and the way that that's interacting with the suspension.
07:06It's really good.
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07:42And these are just the perfect roads for a vehicle like this, aren't they? Get a little slide going on
07:48and you can feel the traction control is still there in Rally Sport mode, so it's not
07:54full-on, you're on your own mode, which I think is quite a good thing when, you know, let's be real,
08:00this isn't a hardened race car, right? Underbody protection is not going to be as strong as you'd
08:06like it to be if you were going to be fully whipping this thing around with no traction
08:10control, likely ending up over there somewhere. So with those things in mind, you know, it seems to
08:16me that Ford have struck a really nice balance in terms of giving me the toolbox, the toy chest,
08:28to have some fun, but it's going to take more than a bit of bad luck for me to get into serious
08:34trouble, which is impressive. I like that. Obviously when you put it in Rally Sport mode,
08:37it does turn the regenerative braking way down. Having said that, there is still a sort of slight
08:44feeling of some engine braking. I like one-pedal driving in the city and on the highway and stuff,
08:48but I will say that for this, you kind of want it to feel and perform
08:54like a combustion engine car, like the car that we're used to, right? We've all got pretty limited
08:59experience, I would say, still at this point in ragging EVs off-road, so it's good to have that
09:06feeling of familiarity, that native, sort of, take your foot off the accelerator, you get a
09:12little bit, oof, that was the bump stop, so you get a little bit of kind of decel, but nothing too much.
09:18You don't want to be grinding to a halt, because that's going to compromise the way that you and
09:23the car are working together as you try and sort of negotiate some of these corners off-axis. So
09:29that's good. I like that. The tyre's got loads of grip. Similarly, the tyre, in conjunction with
09:37that Rally Sport mode, seemingly is doing a pretty good job of letting me have some fun.
09:44Pretty cool.
09:48It's worth saying that some of the things that are impressing me so much about this
09:54Mach-E Rally are things that aren't exclusive to the Rally edition of the Mach-E, and that are
10:00indeed 2024 model year updates, and that chiefly is the inclusion of the larger, better, more powerful,
10:09lighter, and cheaper new rear motor. So that's very good, and if you're in a 2024 model year
10:17Mustang with a rear motor, then you're gonna benefit from that. Now, in terms of power, as we know,
10:26Mustang Mach-E GT performance owners can opt to pay $995 to unlock an extra 100 torque, 100 pound
10:37feet of torque, through the performance upgrade. This has that as standard, but otherwise it's the
10:43same power. I really can't get over these MagneRide dampers. The ride is nothing short
10:48of spectacular. That is, I mean, it's a real triumph. The tyres, the dampers, MagneRide stuff,
10:55and the way that the Rally Sport mode is letting me just let the back end step out slightly.
11:04That's impressive. That is really good. That's actually very, very good. This is a lot of fun.
11:14Ride height obviously increased over the regular Mach-E to good effect. It doesn't look too high
11:20and goofy, but it sort of looks appropriately sat, you know. It looks good. I don't know
11:26if I've thought that about Mach-E before. I do quite like some of the Mach-E design choices.
11:35I like that you can get that bronze package on the wheels and things like that, but otherwise,
11:39it just kind of is a middling SUV crossover thing, isn't it? It's sort of nondescript,
11:45doesn't have enough Mustang about it to be cool and sexy, but this one, and maybe it's this colour
11:50scheme, the blue, the white wheels, it looks like a Tamiya race car. It doesn't look like a rally
11:54car, but it certainly kind of feels like one. Well, not like a true rally car, but it's really
12:00good. Big car, heavy car. Obviously, it's all wheel drive, so it's not as tail happy as it could
12:08be, but software has been really well integrated, I would say, into physicalities of this car. The
12:15drivetrain, the motors, brakes, remarkably good, actually. Sort of quite hard to unsettle it,
12:24even if I whack the wheel left and right under, look, 60 miles an hour, 50, 40, I'm doing this.
12:29It's actually tracking pretty straight and it's scrubbing a tonne of speed up, and we're in
12:34some really loose gravel and dust and stuff. It's very impressive. Steering does feel nice,
12:41I've got to say. It's obviously a little bit wafty, but that's, you know, as much as anything
12:45is because of the surface we're on. Ah, stretch of tarmac here, a bit of asphalt, so we can round
12:51this review out with a little bit of asphalt driving, just to maintain the appearance of
12:57being well-rounded journalists. Yeah, I mean, look at that. It is pin sharp on the road,
13:03and it is smooth, and it's still in rally sport mode. I can turn that off now, and there we are.
13:10Fuck.
13:20Good on the road, better on the gravel, excellent on the soft stuff, really nice.
13:30Let's take the opportunity to get off again.
13:34I mean, it would be nice, I guess, if the slip angle was adjustable, because like then,
13:44for example, I really wanted to get the back end out, the area was right for it, the conditions
13:50are right. It'd be nice if I could sort of dial that into like a rear-wheel drive mode or 90-10
13:56or something on the power split. That would be cool, that level of customisation, but you have
14:02to imagine that's also, you know, it's the work of a software update, right, so maybe down the line
14:08we could do something. But look at me, I'm in an electric SUV, probably weighs the better part of
14:14£5,000, £4,000 something, gotta be. I'm doing 60 miles an hour, I'm on a, you know, fairly smooth,
14:22but very loose surface, and I'm talking to you at regular volume, I'm not scared for my life,
14:29and look, at the moment's notice, you can just unsettle it and just have some raucous fun.
14:35It's all things to all people, this car, because I've commuted in it and it was great.
14:40You've got to give it to Ford, the Mustang Mach-E is a good EV, a good commuter car,
14:45a good highway car. I can also blast along at 60 miles an hour on surfaces like this,
14:50and it's completely uneventful. The power is progressive, I think as soon as the wheels
14:56realise that, you know, one of them has traction, it's happy to give you a bit more.
15:02Nice! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell you what, you could get very, very, very good at driving this car.
15:11I think my only criticism of the dynamics is really what's conspicuous by its absence,
15:19and that is that ability to shut off maybe the power to the front wheels,
15:24or, you know, at least sort of alter it and just get a bit more rear. It's sort of,
15:28you know, it is an all-wheel drive car. At the end of the day, there are moments where,
15:32like there, you kind of find yourself understeering off into nowhere because you're coming a bit hot
15:36and you want the rear to rotate around a bit more, but it won't do so without also giving
15:40some power to the front. It's not nothing, and it's not a disaster, but it'd be pretty cool.
15:47There you go. That was a nice one. It likes a little throttle off oversteer, I suppose.
15:53Makes sense. I think it weighs as much as a locomotive.
16:00This is great. That's my range. So, 25 minutes of, you know, pretty constant hooning at sort of 60-ish
16:09miles per hour. We've done, we've dropped down from, I'd say, about 87% battery to 68% battery.
16:19Range now 154. This, where you want it to be, you can make it fun, you can make it cool,
16:26you can make it, you know, silly, and that is, you know, to my sort of thesis question earlier,
16:33right, and it's kind of what it's all about. Enthusiasts decried the Mustang name being
16:42sullied by being plastered on an electric SUV, and I would hazard a guess this is why they didn't
16:48call this the Mach-E Mustang RS, because then you would have angered another, potentially angered
16:54another set of die-hard Ford nameplate fans, right, the RS crowd, the rally sport crowd.
17:02But, actually, I think that would have been fine. I think you could have called this an RS. In fact,
17:07why didn't they? Because it is good. I've driven the Focus RS. I've driven the Fiesta ST. I've got
17:13to say, obviously, you can't compare this to the likes of a rally spec Ford, Fiesta, but
17:22it's not nothing, this car. It's not failing. It's not wallowing around. It's not uninspiring.
17:28It's actually, I mean, it's damn good. It is damn good, this thing.