2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse: What's It Like to Live With?
We bought a 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse to put it through a one-year, 20,000-mile test.
| Miles Driven: | Average MPG: |
| 1,151 | 18.3 |
Latest Highlights
- We bought a Ford Mustang Dark Horse to fill the Shelby-sized hole in our heart
- This is the fourth Mustang variant Edmunds has purchased
- Will it live up to our high expectations?
What do you want to know about?
What We Got And Why
• Our test vehicle: 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse
• Base MSRP: $59,780 including destination
• MSRP as tested: $74,155
When I went back and checked through past vehicles from Edmunds' One-Year Road Test fleet, I saw that this was in fact the fourth Ford Mustang we've purchased (fifth if you count the Mustang Mach-E). Why do we Mustangs keep ending up in our garage? Take a peek back through some of our posts and you'll see positive adjectives like "awesome" and "fun" thrown around a lot. When the seventh-generation Mustang debuted, it wasn't hard to make a case for the new Dark Horse model to replace our dearly departed 2020 Shelby GT500.
What's the Dark Horse?
Until a new Shelby-badged model arrives, the Dark Horse is the most potent roadgoing new Mustang available. Think of it as a more track-focused version of the Mustang GT. The 5.0-liter Coyote V8 that has powered the Mustang for more than a decade gets a bump in power. Connecting rods borrowed from the GT500, improved airflow, and a few other tricks bring output to 500 horsepower and 418 lb-ft of torque, up 20 hp and 3 lb-ft over the Mustang GT.
A Tremec six-speed manual transmission with a transmission-oil cooler is standard on the Dark Horse but — sigh — that's not what we went with. We opted for the $1,595 10-speed automatic transmission. There was some debate internally about which transmission to go with, but our instrumented testing has repeatedly shown that the automatic is the quicker option. We will be using the Dark Horse for some Edmunds U-Drags races, so getting the quickest available car won the debate.
The Dark Horse looks sharp, with dark accents across the front fascia, dark badging and a trunk-mounted spoiler. The grille has two large intakes, feeding air to help cool both the engine and brakes. Keeping temperatures in check was important given the Dark Horse's track-focused nature. The car includes an auxiliary engine oil cooler, a rear axle cooler, a lighter radiator and more powerful fans.
Brakes come by way of Brembo, with six-piston calipers up front and four-piston calipers in the rear. The 13.9-inch front rotors are larger than those on the Mustang GT. The rear sway bar has been beefed up, as has the suspension. The Dark Horse comes with Ford's MagneRide adaptive dampers, and power is sent to the rear wheels through a Torsen limited-slip differential. All Dark Horses ride on 19-inch wheels with Pirelli rubber.
Because we wanted the fastest possible version, we opted for the $5,495 Dark Horse Handling package. It includes a larger, lower front splitter and a Gurney flap for the rear wing, both of which are removable with a few screws. The springs are stiffer, the sway bars have been further enlarged, and the 19-inch wheels get Pirelli Trofeo RS tires, a more aggressive compound than the standard Dark Horse. The wheels are wider, too, with wider 305-section front and 315-section rear tires.
Prices for the 2025 model start at $62,925 for the standard Dark Horse and $66,920 for Dark Horse Premium, but we found a 2024 with a slightly lower MSRP still sitting on a dealer lot in Orange County. It was a loaded Dark Horse Premium with $1,995 Recaro seats that are very similar to the seats on our old GT500. All in, we got our car for an MSRP of $74,155. For reference, we paid $81,280 for our 2020 Shelby GT500. If we'd opted for the carbon-fiber wheels, the Dark Horse would have crested that figure by several thousand dollars.
Why did we get It?
It's not hard to see the Dark Horse's appeal. I'll refer back to my original point about Mustangs generally being awesome to have in the garage. This is called a One-Year Road Test, but we kept the old Shelby for much longer than that simply because it was fun to drive and we kept finding more things to do with it. Even with the abysmal fuel economy, it rarely stayed parked for long.
Yes, the Dark Horse isn't as powerful as the GT500, but we can fix that with a few modifications. Want to see how the Dark Horse performs with a Ford Performance supercharger bolted to the top? Check back in the not-too-distant future.
Edmunds purchased this vehicle for the purpose of evaluation.