2029 Ford Mustang Mach-4 Sedan: Everything We Know About the Next Member of the Mustang Family
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This will surely NEVER be in the DFB stable
There have been rumours for decades about a 4-door Mustang, but these latest ones seem to be getting louder. Also, when Jim Farley was in Australia earlier this year, he apparently made a couple of expensive decisions around certain future products. The current rumour suggests a return to a Ranchero/Falcon Ute type of vehicle. So perhaps this will relate back to the Mustang 4-door.
“So this really is an important trip, maybe perhaps among the most important for me as a CEO. We should leave here with a really concrete, specific idea of what our product plan should be for the next 10 years - for the globe, not just Australia.”
The global CEO of Ford recently visited Australia to work out what the Blue Oval should do to remain competitive in one of the world’s most overcrowded markets.
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The problem I see is they will need to either spend a lot of money adapting the existing Mustang floor pan or end up creating an all-new architecture. The bones of the current Mustang revolve around a platform that is actually quite old now, even if they have modernized it along the way. The floor pan will be their biggest hurdle. Let me explain that........
That long hood and stubby tail proportion that MAKES the Mustang a Mustang will be hard to work around without creating something ugly. The seating layout of the coupe have the front seats mounted almost over the rear axle. To create a meaningful rear seat with 2 extra doors will require another floor pan, which is extremely expensive to execute on a unibody chassis as it changes pretty much everything that bolts to and around it.
So, do they invest in an aged architecture just to make another body style, then have it look awkward and locked out of future powertrains. Or do they pony up (pun intended) the cash and
finally create a truly new modular RWD platform that can be scaled into a variety of models. They were actually meant to do that for S650 by using the then-new RWD Explorer platform. The Mustang fans thought that meant a SUV platform for the Mustang, but in reality, it was about bringing Mustang in line with other Ford products to make it more profitable by sharing the really expensive to engineer parts like electrical systems, firewall to front suspension pickups. But they went cheap and re-used the ancient S550 bones.
I think if Ford is going to do this, they need to do it properly and stop the band-aid engineering. Anyone remember when Ford decided sedans weren't worth investment and killed them all off, even though some of them sold well? And as an Aussie, I'm still a little bitter over them shutting down the only part of the Ford empire that had experience in RWD sedans. And now they want a RWD sedan? I'm not the only one in the Australian Ford community that feels like that, many won't go near a 4-door Mustang for those reasons. And if it did come here, the target audience will be BMW, Audi and Mercedes, not past or present Ford buyers. Want proof of that? A Mustang GT fastback is at least a $95,000 purchase here, which takes it away traditional Ford buyers.
Sorry if that comes off as negative, but I've watched Ford regress over the last decade, to the point where they are being crushed by competition coming out of China, Thailand, and Korea. And they just let it happen.
On a positive side, I see Ford will pump $715 million into Essex Engine Plant in Windsor, Ontario, which makes the Coyote V8 for use in Mustang and F-150. That's a huge sum of money for what is considered a dirty powertrain. Clearly Ford see it as an important part of their business.
The plant which produces the 5.0-litre ‘Coyote’ V8 engine for the Ford Mustang and F-150 is set to be upgraded.
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