The 2021 Mustang Mach 1 Is Doomed - Review

[Music] you could say the mustang mach 1 is a classic muscle car but that's not really giving it a fair shake and speaking of shake there's no shaker hood for this 2021 revival you see the days when detroit made cars that only went in a straight line are long gone but this still has the first commandment from the detroit bible of fast [Music] v8 cars a manual transmission it's a decades-old formula and a deep part of american car culture but today things are a little bit different and the mach 1 does sit pretty high up on the totem pole but the world has evolved a little bit and now there might be some dark clouds on the horizon a quicker way to get to that horizon is with a 5 liter v8 now the mach 1 it only has the coyote engine so why is it so expensive and what does this thing like to live with on a day-to-day basis we're gonna find out the regular mustang gt premium that starts at about forty thousand dollars this mach one starts at about fifty three thousand dollars but this one is configured up to almost 68 and then you've got the mustang gt500 now that is about a hundred thousand dollars with options maybe more so this sits in the middle between the gt and the gt500 the mach 1 is a very track focused vehicle you get the performance package and then you've also got the magneride suspension it's the most recent one it's an adaptive suspension setup in the front you've got 19.9 inch tires 10 inch in the rear and the brakes these are six piston brembos with 15 inch rotors so you've got the coyote engine which in this configuration is 480 horsepower so it makes 20 more horsepower than the regular gt and then taken from the gt350 we've got the intake manifold and the throttle body and most importantly this gets a six-speed manual transmission but not the get drag from the normal gt this gets a tremec 3160 which comes out of the gt350 now this has auto rev matching and no lift shifting so when you're in the drag strip you don't even need to take your foot off the gas now this transmission should have enhanced durability but you can also get the 10 speed automatic transmission not my personal choice it's very good but if you're going to go road racing guys just get the manual just get the manual it's really good [Music] so this has the 3 500 handling package and with that you get these incredible looking wheels they're actually two pounds lighter than the regular wheels and they're one inch wider you get 11 in the back 10.5 in the front and they are wrapped with michelin sport cup 2 tires super sticky you get the rear spoiler with a gurney flap the chassis tuning is different you've also got this really cool extra lower splitter it is quite low like every car that has some mods to go to the track this air dam while functional on a day-to-day basis is pretty low and it tends to scrape the ground especially when you're coming out of driveways or you're going over speed bumps even what makes this a track car is that it comes with adjustable top mounts on the struts so the under tray extends 20 inches farther back for additional airflow smooth things out and the belly pan has some special cooling wraps to cool the brakes a little bit better and the list just goes on and on and on now the gt350 and 350r had the amazing 5.2 liter flat plane crank engine revved out to 8 250 rpm they're gone so let's pour one out for the voodoo engine let's also pour one out for the gt350 and 350r they're gone rip now if you think those are some dark clouds we've also got some more dark clouds on the horizon especially for this car we're going to talk about that in a minute so we're here in the canyons today to explore what the mach 1 drives like and we got to start off with this engine this of course is the coyote engine i gotta say i really really like this engine i know it's been around for a long time and this particular trim it makes 480 horsepower 420 pound feet of torque and it's a honey it really does like to rev it revs out all the way to 7 500 rpm and it makes the maximum power at 7 000 and it just sounds really really good the front end of this is unique to the mach 1. you've got this two-piece upper grille here and then you've got these blackout they look like i guess these would have been fog lamps or something like that they look like air induction pieces but they are blacked out got a lot of airflow up here you got airflow here going into the radiator and down here below the turn signals you have this grill opening here which is also unique to this car the headlights this cluster here part of it is from the gt500 and then you got this molding around the wheel wells as well one of the big differences between this car and the regular mustang gt is this tremec transmission the shifter is so good it's definitely one of the best i've used in a long time it's very precise it's got a real solid indent it's really satisfying to shift it's supposed to be more durable too than the other transmission that they have in the regular gt the differential outback is cooled and pedal placement the pedal box is very good ford did a great job with this car it is very easy to heal and tow this car when you want to placement is perfect it does roll my foot over flip the throttle a little bit and you can just get down to the next gear just like that very very satisfying everything feels really harmonious with the shifter here so this is a big big big improvement over the regular gt this color is unique it's called jet fighter gray and this is part of the appearance package which includes these stripes this interesting look on the hood the interior is pretty much typical mustang so you got a combination of things in here you got some nice materials you got this kind of cool brushed aluminum dash but then you get like something like the turn signal that maybe not that big a deal but it doesn't feel that positive how much would it take to make this feel just a little bit more of a solid click it's just not that satisfying behind the steering wheel you've got these little stitching pieces that kind of extend into the wheel again it's not a big thing but it's a small thing that just reminds you that they could have spent a few more dollars on it so there's plenty of hard plastics in here you do have some nice materials but the argument for the mustang has always been that you're not paying for the interior you're paying for the performance but there's a problem with that ford makes the mock e in the interior and that is almost lexus like maybe it's a little bit better than a toyota it's definitely a big step up from this and if you've seen the lincoln products they can make some really nice interiors too so i'm still having a hard time with spending all this money on the performance which i really appreciate and you still get an interior that is kind of a little bit chintzy [Music] so we've got some different drive modes in this car there's actually quite a few it's very configurable so you've got the normal mode then you've got sport plus or sport you've got mud and snow you've even got a drag strip mode and then you've got track mode and with these different modes you've got different levels of adjustability with the suspension so this has got the most recent version of the magneride suspension so these are active dampers and they can dynamically adjust to the road conditions many many times per second and what magneride is it's magnetic basically you've got little tiny particles in the fluid little probably little iron particles and then when you add a charge to them the the viscosity of the fluid in the shocks can get stiffer or it can get thinner just just like that and this works really really well on this car suspension is definitely a high point now it's a pretty stiff car to drive i'm not going to lie but it's not punishing this is something that you can drive every single day right now i've got it in normal mode we're on a pretty bumpy back road here i feel like i don't really need anything more than normal on this road and it soaks up the bumps very very effectively now when you put it into let's say sport mode a couple things happen now so the dashboard changes and it lets me know it's ready for performances ready for action the tack goes across the dash and now you hear the engine fourth gear engine is a lot louder so you've got different modes for the exhaust too and it's all configurable any way that you want to do it there's something called my mode you can adjust the suspension damping you can adjust launch control and also the steering so this is a track focused vehicle of course and if you're going to go to the drag strip you probably do want to get the automatic transmission but this does have drag strip mode in it so let's see how effective launch control is with this manual transmission this vehicle has the optional recaro seats they're in leather they have a lot of bolstering they're very comfortable but more importantly they're very grippy when you're going around corners now these are manual adjust but if you're gonna get a car like this come on get the manual and get the seats too there's different levels of steering in here that i can get by flipping a switch and in my opinion this is an electric steering system epas ford calls it it's really good there's a lot of feel in the steering system compared with some other manufacturers like i don't like what bmw has been doing with their steering systems this is much better because it's actually a smaller motor in here than something like the bmws which is a real high torque motor so this gives less assist and it actually gives a lot more feedback to the steering wheel and in a car like this when you're at the track or on a road like this you really want to feel what the front of the car is doing and i'm getting a lot of feedback it's very very communicative people in these videos always do the back seat test to see how much headroom there is let's check it out so here ford has done a big improvement by removing the back seat i've still got actually i don't really have much headroom here this is an option to do the rear seat delete supposed to bring the weight down this is still a pretty heavy car though i wonder how much weight they're saving with the rear seat delete now this has massive massive pilot sport cup two tires on here they're 305 in the front 315 in the rear and they provide way more grip than you're ever really going to use going through a canyon like this they are very very effective they have so much so much grip sort of endless levels of grip here it's going to be pretty difficult to get into a lot of trouble with these tires in fact they're so grippy that if you're coming out of a corner even in second gear with traction control off you're not going to get a lot of wheel spin one thing about this platform that ford has done a really good job especially in the gt500 is the way it puts power down coming out of corners it's very effective there's no drama you've got no wheel spin and the fact that this engine is of course naturally aspirated it's very progressive it doesn't make a lot of torque really likes to rev it's very easy to handle and balance on corner exit so the switch gear for the hvac system and the different performance modes these feel really nice but they kind of look a little bit cheap everything is just starting to feel a little bit dated in this interior so let's talk about a couple of the downsides of this vehicle so in my opinion one of them is weight this is a fairly hefty car with the manual transmission it weighs almost 3 900 pounds and with the automatic the 10 speed you're getting up around 39 13 i think so it's a pretty heavy car and you can definitely feel it now i just came back from the gr86 launch event we're dealing with cars there that weigh 2 800 pounds it's a full 1100 pounds difference and i know it's not the same classic car but dynamically a lighter car is just better in my opinion and so this is you know this is kind of a brute this is not a ballerina in the corners this is more of a bulldog you kind of it kind of like muscles it way through just with raw mechanical grip it's not like it's a bad thing it is just different than driving a lightweight car the other big downside is if you're going to the track with a car like this it's going to be expensive because more weight more power it means you're going to go through brakes you're going to go through tires you're going to go through gas consumables it's going to be kind of an expensive car to track [Music] so yeah maybe you're not getting the interior here you are getting the performance but the performance is great the ford engineers have really put together a cohesive package they've been at this for a long time with the mustang and it all kind of comes together here but not everything about the mach 1 is sunshine and roses it does have one very significant flaw a potential death blow the fatal flaw is not something designed on a computer or made in a factory the fatal flaw is the internal combustion engine itself the world is moving pretty quickly to hybrids and electrics perhaps a little bit more quickly than we thought but you know i still like to go to the track and i work in my own cars so i've been using lexavon tools i think they're pretty good for the money pretty high quality i've got a link in the description down below i've also got some videos on how to use a torque wrench if that's useful to you the mustang maki fully electric the ford f-150 lightning fully electric the maverick it's a hybrid there's even a hybrid f-150 so ford is leaning pretty heavily on hybrids for the next couple of years ford is investing something like 29 billion dollars into electric vehicles autonomous vehicles and infrastructure such as manufacturing and even building out the cloud so they can roll out updates over the air vw and other oems have invested heavily into evs as well ford says they plan to have 40 percent of their sales evs by 2030 and in the eu they are voting on a bill right now which would eliminate the sale of internal combustion engines completely by 2035 and this is not just some passing trend this is a sea change affecting the entire industry globally so the mach 1 is possibly the last of its generation i've had this vehicle for a week and i absolutely love this vehicle it's extremely well engineered it's very easy to live with on a daily basis it is a lot of fun in the canyons it's extremely well balanced the brakes are good the tremec transmission is really fantastic it's definitely a throwback there's a lot i like about this car the suspension is firm but it definitely won't beat you up it's very livable on a day-to-day basis the coyote engine is fantastic it's so engaging it wants to make you row through the gears up and down just to hear it and the active exhaust makes it just a little bit better and thankfully they have a quiet mode so you can start it up in the morning and not piss off your neighbors at 68 000 it is pretty expensive so it's a little bit of a hard bargain ford is driving but you do get a lot more than the regular mustang gt if you're like me and you value a v8 manual you should go and pick one of these up because who knows how much longer they're gonna be around my name is eric thanks for watching

Channel: RevMatchTV

Views: 124,387

Keywords: revmatchtv, ford mustang, 2021 mach 1, 2021 mach 1 review, ford dealer, purchase mustang, mustang lease, ford mustang mach 1 price

Id: 4mZI7Kp5ggU

Length: 17min 54sec (1074 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021