Mustang GT’s “awesome” V8 safe, says Ford

The future of the immensely popular Mustang GT V8 is not threatened by the launch of a petrol-electrical hybrid version of the iconic pony car due in 2020.

That’s despite Ford boasting 12 months ago when it announced the hybrid -- which is expected to combine electric power with the Mustang’s 2.3-litre Ecoboost turbo-petrol four-cylinder -- that it would deliver “V8 power and even more low-end torque”.

Instead, says one of the Mustang’s top global engineers, Tom Barnes, there is no identified stop-point for the Coyote V8 engine, which has been uprated as part of the 2018 update that goes on sale in Australia later this year.

“There’s no end date,” the Mustang vehicle engineering manager told motoring.com.au in an exclusive interview at the Detroit auto show this week. “I don’t know of any end date.

“Right now is a pretty good time for gas-engined [petrol-powered] muscle-cars. There are a lot of them around -- it is pretty amazing. There is still a lot of demand for them, even if it’s not hundreds of thousands of units.

“There are still a lot of people who love the sound, the feel, the performance of a V8.

“We will just have to see what happens. Between customer demand, between legal ramifications, we’ll see where it goes.”

Australia is one of the top export markets for the Mustang and V8 versions dominate the sales mix, so local fans will be delighted with Barnes’ reassurances.

He explained that ever-tightening economy and emissions legislation was a motivator for the Mustang hybrid, which will initially be sold only in the North American market. It is part of an $11 billion Ford spend on electrification.

“Obviously, emission regulations are changing around the world. It is putting pressure on larger gas-engined cars, which is part of the reason we are coming out with a hybrid.

“The idea is to give everyone both great performance and fuel economy.”

Barnes, who describes his role within Mustang model development as starting “upfront” and continuing all the way through to production, said the hybrid Mustang was still at the stage where fundamental questions were being resolved.

“Because we have other offerings, other hybrids, in our portfolio we can look and see what they do and how they do it and start to see if we could tune things differently and things like that [in Mustang],” Barnes said.

“It’s not done. We are looking at different things it could be and it could be a lot of different things.

“We want to have good performance to be fun, but also to have good efficiency and be responsible so people feel ‘I am smart, I am making this choice’.”

Clearly the hybrid system poses technical challenges for the Mustang. Packaging will be tight in the rear-driver and the extra weight will detract from performance.

Auto industry speculation suggests the system will house an electric motor in the automatic transmission and lithium-ion batteries in the boot, meaning the loss of the spare tyre and some cargo space.

But Barnes was enthusiastic about the capacity for the system to inject another personality into the Mustang line-up alongside the I4 and V8.

In fact, Barnes said that modern technology meant the hybrid could have multiple personalities.

“It will have different personalities probably. We have selectable driving modes right now [in Mustang] which kinda gives different personalities to the car.

“I think that will be continued in the hybrid and you might have a broader range or something like that. Don’t know, these are just thoughts I have.”

Thanks to a small bump in capacity and the addition of direct-injection to existing port-injection, the 2018 Mustang V8’s engine power and torque rises from 306kW/530Nm to 343kW/569Nm respectively.

The addition of a 10-speed automatic transmission helps boost acceleration and fuel economy. Ford claims a sub-4.0sec 0-60mph (97km/h) acceleration time and a 1mpg fuel consumption reduction. The current GT, teamed with a six-speed auto, reaches 100km/h in about 5.0sec.

“I will tell you this: the ’18 V8 gas engine is an awesome engine,” said Barnes. “It’s a really great engine … and we will see what happens in the future.

“We keep our options open like you’ve got to do. In your market it’s 80 per cent V8s. That market is demanding V8s right now, there’s no doubt about it.”