Ford CEO Jim Farley spoke about the future of its iconic car, the Mustang, at the recent Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne last weekend. Having been around for 60 years, Farley confirmed that the mighty muscle car is here to stay.
Several V8-powered cars with an automatic transmission have already been discontinued in America. Cars such as the Chevy Camaro SS and ZL1, along with Dodge’s Hemi-powered V8 Charger and Challenger, have reached the end of the road, making the Mustang a lone warrior in the segment that comes with a 5.0-liter V8 motor.
Fortunately for petrolheads, Farley has confirmed the V8 Mustang with the manual transmission is not going anywhere, hinting that Ford will go to great lengths to ensure it continues to offer its legendary car. Speaking to the Australian media, he said:
“Out of our cold, dead hands will we not have a manual Mustang.”
He added:
“I really believe Ford best serves the working people and enthusiast drivers. And that’s increasingly off-road as well as on-road, and I like to say we don’t have any boring cars at Ford.”
Notably, only the GT and Dark Horse variants of the Ford Mustang will sport different types of six-speed manual gearboxes for the V8 engine. The EcoBoost variant also had its engine mated to a manual transmission, but only until 2023.
Farley made another point that offers more relief to petrolheads. He has ruled out an all-electric variant of the Mustang, but a hybrid variant is not out of the picture yet. This, despite the progress Ford has made with electric cars in the last decade. It looks like he intends to keep the Mustang as raw and original as possible. The Ford CEO said:
“We’ve been testing and we really do believe partial electric powertrains work well for performance drivers. One thing I can promise, however, is that we will never make an all-electric Mustang. I look at other users of pure-electric power such as Formula E, and even companies like Rimac, and I just don’t think that would be right for Mustang. Great for other Fords – look at the worldwide success of Transit – but not for Mustang.”
