Ford Mustang GT

No more four-cylinder EcoBoost engines; the latest Mustang GT is V8 only - and it might just be all the Mustang you really need

- YOUSUF ASHRAF

DRIVING A FORD MUSTANG ALONG THE French Riviera isn't as romantic as it sounds. Not because there's anything especially wrong with the car or the roads, rather that neither was made with the other in mind. On the right there's a foot-high stone wall separating me from a long, painful tumble into the (admittedly stunning) scenery, and on the left the big 'Stang is bulging out of its lane as the local Berlingo vans and battered Peugeot hatchbacks whizz past within a whisker of the driver's door mirror. The windows are down, the shades are on and I should be enjoying myself, but I'm having to dial the speed right back. Nailing the point home, a Renault Modus driver lunges past through a gap I've left at the inside of a hairpin; he has one hand on the wheel while making a gesture with the other. He must have been tailing me for a while, but I was concentrating too hard to notice.

With versions like the track-prepped Dark Horse and the unhinged GTD road-racer, Ford clearly wants us to take the latest, S650generation Mustang seriously, but it's equally keen to stress that this - the new Mustang GT - is absolutely, positively not a track car. It does without the Dark Horse's beefed-up transmission, more focused damper tuning improved cooling package and uprated 447bhp V8, cutting the price from £67,995 to £55,725 to make this by far the most affordable Mustang, one that's best-suited for the road. We first drove the new Mustang in Dark Horse form in the US last year (evo 314), when deputy editor James Taylor concluded that it was 'as charismatic a road car as ever'. Here we'll find out if that remains true for the GT on the more ragged, technical roads that Europe has to offer.