Ford Mustang to get dragstrip mode

Cop that, political correctness police! The 2018 Ford Mustang will be sold in Australia with its new dragstrip mode enabled.

Now we just need to convince the nanny-staters at Ford Australia to enable Mustang’s line-locker!

Drag strip mode should mean 0-100km/h acceleration times of less than four seconds for the pumped-up 343kW/570Nm V8 Mustang GT, which goes on sale in August.

The new mode minimises disengagement time in the new 10-speed auto, sending more torque down the pipe more of the time.

In addition, cars that have optional MagneRide dampers will in drag strip mode apply more vertical force to the rear axle for improved grip from the car’s Michelin Pilot Sport 4S rubber.

While there had been reports that dragstrip mode would be disabled for Australia, Mustang chief engineer Carl Widmann debunked that in an interview at last week’s Geneva motor show.

“Drag strip is in it,” confirmed Widmann. “We didn’t turn it off.”

“It’s just the selection of a mode. In essence all it does is give you a different trans shift logic.

“It will give you the full inertia effect of the shift, so in essence instead of slowing down the inertia in the one-two [shift], you’ll feel in the car it actually picks up a little bit.

“It’s not that crazy from our perspective.”

However, Widmann also confirmed that Ford Australia will continue to disable the Mustang’s line-locker – or burnout – mode.

Ford Australia boss Graeme Whickman has said deleting line-locker was acting in the spirit of local anti-hoon laws under which a driver can have his/her car confiscated for performing a burn-out.

Australia is the only market in the world in which the Mustang is sold without the line-locker. The car is still fully capable of doing burnouts without the feature, which disables the rear brakes.

“I think there’s a guy you can pull your car into [in Australia] and get the line lock flicked back on,” said Widmann.

Meanwhile, Widmann says Ford’s first petrol-electric hybrid Mustang was a chance to be sold here if Ford Australia wanted it.

“Absolutely, I would always say the markets have a vote on what they want supplied.”

But he insisted he didn’t know yet whether that vehicle could be built in right-hand drive. The hybrid is due for release in North America in 2020.

And while the new Mustang Bullitt limited-edition is confirmed for Australia, he played down any prospect of the limited-edition Mustang GT 350 and 500 models developed by Ford Performance showing up in Australia.

“From what the current one [350] is, it’s going to be cost prohibitive to bring over [in RHD] and the 500 -- we’ve announced it but that’s about it. There’s nothing on it.”