Driven: The £135k Ford Mustang with an 800hp punch

In the modern context, you probably wouldn’t describe the Ford Mustang as ‘sanitised’. Roaring naturally aspirated V8, manual gearbox, rear-wheel drive: as mass-produced cars go, this is about as old-school as it gets. But the latest versions actually handle and, while certainly not underpowered, they’re not stupidly overpowered either. Which is all good for gathering stars in an Autocar road test, but some people are after something that’s a bit mad; something that might not be objectively better but will blow the cobwebs out. Eight hundred or so horsepower ought to do it. London-based dealer, importer and modifier Clive Sutton has been fiddling with Mustangs for years and giving them absurd amounts of power, and so it has with the latest Mustang Dark Horse. The headline mod is the addition of a 3.0-litre Whipple supercharger. If that figure doesn’t mean a great deal to you, consider that the ones on hot Jaguars tended to be less than 2.0 litres. This is actually an official Ford Performance kit, so it comes with a three-year/36,000-mile warranty. Clive Sutton also adds a Borla exhaust system, a short shifter for the manual gearbox, a set of lowering springs and wider wheels and tyres. There are a bunch of cosmetic changes as well, including carbonfibre splitters, a big wing and Mustang GTD-inspired front wings. It’s not a subtle car, this, and while it’s not to my personal taste, it’s quite well done. Even less subtle is the interior retrim. No Smurfs were harmed in the making of it, I’m assured, and the blue Alcantara does liven up the Mustang’s cabin, which can be quite dark in standard form. The lurid colour will be divisive, but the quality is spot on. Of course, you can have as many or as few of these modifications as you like. One of them is surprisingly sensible for what is overall quite a silly car. On the normal Mustang, you can have heating within the standard seats but not the optional (and more comfortable) Recaros. As part of the retrim, Clive Sutton adds heating to the latter, which works with the standard button. Clive Skoda might describe it as simply clever. Aside from the very loud exhaust, the first thing you notice when driving the CS800DH is that the powertrain is impeccably behaved. I suppose it’s to be expected, given this is an official Ford Performance kit, but there’s no strange running or uneven power delivery and it retains the progressive long-travel throttle pedal. In normal driving, this just feels like a Dark Horse. Have the guts to actually press the pedal all the way, though, and it’s madly fast, with a ferocious rush at the top end of the rev range. Second gear tops out at 75mph and somehow still feels too short for you to really experience the power. It pulls almost as hard in third, so it ideally wants a track or a German autobahn to be fully uncorked. I’m sure an upper-end Porsche Taycan or similar electric car is actually faster, but the thunderous exhaust, power delivery and having to think about changing gear somehow all make it more real. Considering the 5.0-litre ‘Coyote’ V8 has a whacking big twin-screw blower sitting on top of it, it’s surprising – and a little bit disappointing – that there’s almost none of the expected supercharger whine. You can just about hear it working at low revs, but it’s mostly exhaust and some boosty air noises that reach your ears. I drove a standard Dark Horse not long before and noted that it generated hilariously little traction from its 275-section rear Pirellis – amusing in the right circumstances but maybe not what you want with 788bhp. The CS800DH gets wider Michelins (275 up front and 295 at the rear), and in chilly but dry conditions it actually managed to put its power down remarkably well. Obviously it’s possible to light up the rears, but only when you want to (and turn the traction control off). There is a downside, though, which is that the wide tyres rub on the arch liners when the suspension is compressed, either under hard cornering or over bumps. Maybe the plastic just needs shaving down a bit, maybe the lowering springs are to blame, but it’s a rookie error for a professional tuner. Otherwise the ride and handling don’t feel all that different from the standard Dark Horse, partly because the magnetorheological dampers are unchanged. It’s not the sharpest or most tied-down sports car, but there’s enough grip and control for you to have a good time. Whether or not this is an improvement over the standard Mustang isn’t really the point. The Mustang, much like the Nissan Skyline or Toyota GR Yaris, has always been the kind of car that you can enjoy as is or use as a starting point to make your own. It’s great to see that the latest generation is no different. Price £135,000 Engine V8, 5038cc, supercharged, petrol Power 788bhp at 6700rpm Torque 642lb ft at 4750rpm Gearbox 6-spd manual, RWD, e-LSD Kerb weight 1250kg 0-62mph 3.9sec (est) Top speed 185mph (est) Economy 20mpg (est) Rivals Ford Mustang Shelby GT500, Litchfield BMW M4, Chevrolet Corvette Z06