First up, appearance. Gen six was a winner out of the blocks, a nicely balanced design hung on alluring curves and proportions that look great no matter what paint colour or wheels you threw at them: proof of styling successful. The revised car supplants the comparatively bluff nose with a lower, reshaped bonnet that’s lost its so-called ‘power bulge’ but gained some questionable air vents. There’s a 60mm broader grille with inverted lower intake, plus countersunk ‘eagle eye’ all-LED headlights. In the flesh, the nose job looks great from some angles (side on), less so from others (front on).
The remodeling in the rear is subtler: techier-looking LED taillights, a diffuser-effect lower fascia, quad exhaust tips and, optionally, an ugly tacked-on wing. Less muscle car, more motorsport effect, then, but from the rear this is a tougher looking beast. The new halo Orange Fury paintwork looks good rather than stunning, and the optional forged wheel design fitted to our test cars are polite and unassuming.
One big lunge forward with revised Mustang package is the all-digital 12-inch instrumentation. It offers three core modes – Normal, Sport and Track – and dizzying array of geeky personalisation options. The basic display apes Audi’s twin-barrel Virtual Cockpit format, although it swaps the detailed slickness (such as in-screen sat-nav map display) for a suitably-retro software design well suited to the muscle car theme.
Some optional display formats, such as the ‘tacho bar’ that sweeps left-to-right in tandem with engine rpm, are a bit naff. And the numeric rev-counter – a continually scrolling jumble of numbers – effect is utterly pointless and needlessly distracting.
The new optional Recaro seats – more racerisms – are form fitting and offer reasonable comfort, but the standard units are a bit of a letdown, both in shape and quality of finish. The retro-homage steering wheel does suffer from terrible button-itis, though the upgraded leather rim is quite a treat. Elsewhere, the modest 8.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system has been upgraded to Sync3 software with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, while a reversing camera and sat-nav are both standard.
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