Up Close: 2010 Ford Mustang
Ford’s been trying to build buzz about the 2010 Mustang by distributing teaser shots of the muscle car, but we got to see it in person on the eve of the Los Angeles auto show last night. If you’ve already seen some full shots of the car, you might be thinking to yourself: “That’s the new Mustang? It looks a lot like the current one.” Indeed it does, but the 2010 version, which hits dealerships in spring 2009 with a starting price of $21,845, receives numerous tweaks inside and out.
Interestingly, the changes to the 2010 Mustang’s exterior make it lose some of its retro feel, giving it a more modern look. The grille on the new car looks scrunched compared to the old one — kind of like someone sat on the hood — and the bumper has been restyled, too. The restyling is even more noticeable around back, where the new LED taillights have a more interesting design than the rectangular ones on the current car.
There are welcome changes in the cabin that give the Mustang a more premium feel. The restyled dashboard gains soft-touch materials, and there’s a whole new arrangement of buttons in the middle of the dash for the audio and air-conditioning systems. The old controls worked just fine, but these new ones have a more modern appearance. Manual-transmission models can also have a large ball shifter — a nice touch.
While the changes to the exterior and interior of the Mustang are all well and good (and probably worth waiting for if you’re on the fence about whether to get a 2009 model or wait for the 2010, as the new one also adds an electronic stability system), Ford missed two big opportunities to better position this car to take on the upcoming Chevrolet Camaro: It didn’t give the Mustang an independent rear suspension (it still uses a live axle like before), and it didn’t significantly increase the V-8’s horsepower (it gains 15 hp for a total of 315 hp). During the debut, Ford said another Mustang announcement would happen at the Detroit auto show in January, so maybe the automaker has a Cobra version up its sleeves that will address these issues.
