2010 Mustang: A better breed of steed

Review |

What interests me about the 2010 Ford Mustang might not interest you. I could stay up all night reading about taller tire sidewalls and their effect on suspension settings. You? Maybe not so much. I'm positively Nelly over the car's stiffer chassis — hubbah! — and cold-air induction. You, on the other hand, might have more important things to think about.

Maybe you're a wee bit distracted on account of the economy tiptoeing on the bubbling brimstone edge of ruin. Ah, well, that brings us back to the Mustang, doesn't it? If Ford can reform a chintzy mess that was the Mustang, anything is possible.

Only two years ago, I couldn't have hated the Mustang more if one had run over my tongue. The car was cheap and plasticky inside and unsorted underneath.

The 2010 Mustang, while far from perfect, is summarily a more serious and charismatic car, with vastly better interior fittings, a keen updating of the boomer-centric sheet metal and (most important for me) a masterful revision of the ride-and-handling characteristics. These cars used to pitch, roll, over-rotate and flop around. This is the first decent-handling Mustang I've ever driven.

Here's the deal: Even if you care nothing about cars, you should take heart that Ford — big, old, thick with vested privilege — has managed so much reform in so short a time. As we ponder the depressing macrocosm, the Mustang's take-away message might be: Yes we can.

A bit of Mustang-ography: Born in 1964 ½ from the loins of Lee Iacocca, Mustang is the second-longest-running sports-car nameplate in the U.S., after Corvette (1953). For cost reasons, the original Mustang was built off the old Falcon platform, and somehow the tradition of sticking this supposedly sporty car onto the shoddiest, most obsolete rear-drive platform in Ford's larder lasted for decades.

The current generation of Mustang came out in 2004, looking super-cool in design-schooled "retro-futurist" sheet metal penned by Sid Ramnarace. Alas, the same historical problem plagued it: a badly compromised chassis. Long after the market abandoned live-rear-axle geometry — except in trucks — the Mustang kept it because it was cheap, beefy and compact. For most buyers of the base V6-powered car, the live axle was a nonissue because those nostalgia buyers weren't taxing the car much.

However, when inevitably Ford developed its Shelby GT500 and GT500KR versions — supercharged cars with 500-plus horsepower — things got messy real quick. The power and torque of these engines overwhelmed the chassis. In December 2006, I called the GT500 "one of the creepiest handling modern muscle cars it's ever been my terrifying pleasure to drive." I was being kind.

Ideally, Ford would have completely redesigned the Mustang for 2010. After all, this car is going up against a very respectable Dodge Challenger and the new Chevrolet Camaro. I imagine when the program costs were laid out in front of Ford execs — half a billion dollars or so for a clean-screen redesign versus $100 million for a heavy revision — the decision was made for them.

Inside, outside

What we have here, then, is a small masterpiece of fixing only what needs fixing. First, the saddle work: Lots of new, rich-feeling materials have been poured into the cabin, including, on the GT I drove, great stitch-pleated leather seats and door gussets. The instrument panel has been remodeled, now with two Crisco-can-size apertures for the white-faced speedo and tach. And a textured aluminum fascia pulls the dash together.

Meanwhile, the between-the-seat console has been cleaned up and the hand brake gets a proper leather-like boot. In up-level models, the Mustang can be ordered with a huge, 8-inch navigation screen in the center stack.

The exterior re-skin, meanwhile, seems to pour a bottle of hot-and-ornery on Ramnarace's design. The lines are sharper, the contours sleeker and more contemporary.

The hood bulges with the effort to contain the engine. A signature design bit is the new, sequentially firing three-bar LED tail lamps, reminiscent of Aquarian-era Thunderbirds.

Behind the wheel

But the main thing is the handling equation. I drove the '09 and '10 GTs around a large auto-cross course, and the cars felt like they were from different planets.

The '09 was exactly as I remembered: pitchy, floppy and roll-happy, with lots of nose push and a tendency to multiply rebound energy corner-to-corner.

The stroke of genius in the '10 car is the taller, slightly more elastic 50-series Pirelli tires, which first appeared on the Bullitt Mustang last year.

This fraction of additional tire softness allowed the engineers to stiffen and batten down the rest of the suspension — shocks, springs, anti-roll bars — without making the car a miserable paint-shaker to drive. The result is recalibrated magic: great transitional manners, great turn-in, snubbed-down body control, a delicious competence. Axle tramp has gone buh-bye.

There's lots more to this car, like the special acoustic piping connecting the cabin to the engine compartment, the better to hear the 4.6-liter, 315-hp V8's snotty cackle.

There's a three-stage stability control system — Ford calls it AdvanceTrac — which lets you slide the car around like mad before finally stepping in to save your keister.

What you might find fascinating, though, is that the all-American Mustang, and Motown that produced it, isn't quite as washed up as we've been led to believe.

dan.neil@latimes.com