The pony express that feeds on electric oats is controversial, but also convincing.

Full RRP: $116,990 (current offer $97,800)

Powertrain: Dual electric motor, all-wheel-drive, 358kW/860Nm.

How big:  4743mm long; 1881mm wide; 1613mm tall.

We like: Massive wallop for the money; truly capacious and useful SUV; winds up petrolhead no end.

Not so much: Weird external door openers; Ford doesn’t provision a home charger.

RECENTLY Ford’s global boss rocked the boat in stating his brand will never make “a Mustang that’s not a Mustang”. 

Good news to petrolheads, but confusing as heck surely for all those who have brought into the Mustang that is unlike any other? The one on test here.

What Jim Farley was trying to relay was reassurance the two-door that’s been a backbone of Ford’s progress since the 1960s and risen to be the world’s best-selling coupe has life left in it. 

Fossil-fuelled life, to be exact. He’s especially firm the two-door will never be electric.

Some have read this and other comment from Farley as tacit in-hindsight confession about the electric future Mustang, the Mach-E, being unworthy of the 60-year-old badge. 

If true, that would be a curious admission. Farley played a key role in the electric sports utility’s development, and helped unveil it before becoming Ford CEO.

Still, it’s enough to revive scuttlebutt about how Mach-E was not originally meant to be known as a Mustang and that the iconic badge was added back in 2019 because Ford executives were impressed by the performance of early prototypes – and to help the Mach-E stand out from rivals.

With every Mach-E I’ve driven, including this GT on test, I’ve heard the same prejudices about what it ‘is’, and what it supposedly ‘isn’t’. Boring!

Obviously, the electric isn’t the same as the icon that everyone sees as the perfect boulevard cruising muscle car that will wake up the neighbours and is perfect for a rumble.

But honestly .… Ford owns the name and can do what it likes with it. I’m not unhappy that the V8 Mustang will live on. I am less sure about Farley’s idea about raising a family of petrol Mustangs; this including a four-door sedan and a performance petrol sports utility.  But again: Ford owns the badge. Their call.

Meantime, just because times are tough for the Mach-E - for all electric cars in fact - doesn’t mean the Blue Oval is about to pull the plug on the battery product. Sure, it’s pulled back Mach-E (and F-150 Lightning) production. But it’s also reduced output of the V8 Mustangs, too. 

Meantime, if you do buy into electric, this is a good time to spend. A week after I’d wrapped up driving it, Ford NZ enacted a hefty price cut on the Mach-E GT, to clear out a glut of 2023 stock.  A derivative that launched a year ago at $124,990 then reconfigured to $116,990 was from May 9 listing at $97,800, a drop of $19,190. Serious saving, right?

For that money, the Mach-E GT presents as a LOT of car, more than enough to forgive its cynical theft (and subsequent dilution) of a fabled badge. 

With Mach-E in general you’re getting a highly respectable product, with decent range, tech, far more family-friendly roominess than the coupe and even so style. 

In GT form, you get sharper handing and a very big dollop of whomping performance. Here’s something for V8 fans to chew on: In respect to standing start performance, the Mach-E eats anything from the factory stable alive, incoming Dark Horse included.

As for the breeding? Well, if they have to be kept apart, so be it. However, if  you hanker for speed yet are lumbered also with social responsibility … well, hey, I know which kind of Mustang better meets that remit. It’s not the one that awakens with a jurassic rumble and gulps dinosaur juice.

The Mach-E in the time I had it consistently reinforced as a convenient and cost-effective car. Far more flexible in respect to daily duties. And so cheap to run … almost a fortnight at the wheel cost me less than I put into a V8 GT after a weekend’s running.

But, of course, that’s the advantage of an electric car. The advantage of an electric Mustang, meantime, is that it doesn’t try to be 100 percent like a petrol one. That’s obvious from the looks, which adopt historic cues but, overall, are from a wholly different styling book.

I don’t mind how the Mach-E styles. It’s fat, to a point, yes, but not so much that you’d call it corpulent. The one challenge in going to a GT is that it achieves just a handful of minor design tweaks to distinguish it from the lesser derivatives. The basic silhouette is more or less unchanged.

Otherwise, the main differences can be found at the front, where there's a grey grille panel in place of the normal Mach-E's moustache arrangement. That's joined by new aerodynamic air inlets low down on the bumper and body-coloured trim around the wheel arches and sills. You also get some intricate 20-inch machined alloy wheels, behind which you'll find the red callipers of the Brembo braking system - and you get a little GT badge in place of the horse emblem on the boot lid. Buy it in the test car’s Grabber Blue and it’s a gun.

As minor as those styling elements might seem, the car does gain some visual strength. I wouldn’t; disagree, all the same, that the interior didn’t get more features to mark the GT out from the standard car. 

As is, the only major addition made is the front seat upgrade. Finished in a mixture of leather and 'suedecloth', they're a more heavily bolstered type than the standard chairs, designed to offer more support and to hold you in place when you're cornering with brio. They do a good job and are more comfortable than you might imagine.

Otherwise, though, it’s Mach-E 101. The same enormous central touchscreen that controls almost everything, the same digital instrument display that shows you 'ground speed', navigation instructions and battery information. It's all powered by Ford's Sync 4 infotainment system, which is slick and pleasing to look at. But there’s no a lot to shout out about this being the really quick one.

On the other hand, what might help sell the GT is that, in being alike, it offers the same pluses in practicality. A Mach-E is an extremely commodious car for five occupants and offers the same appealing boot space; not just an identical 420-litre boot but also the under bonnet 'frunk' which offers an extra 100 litres of capacity.

Of course, that’s all just icing. It’s true flavour is the additional performance. It has that in spades. This and the regular AWD have two electric motors, one on each axle. But the GT’s are more highly tuned, for a maximum 363kW and a gargantuan 860Nm of torque. 

Agreed, power and torque from an electric can feel a whole lot different than it does from a combustion engine, but this thing has neck-stretching kick-off and warp speed acceleration from pretty much any point of throttle press. It wallops! You can be glad it has on-board computers to decide how much power is required from each motor, hence determining the front-to-rear split. 

How much it gives, and how readily, is dependent on the driving mode you select.As per other Mach-Es,  the GT gets three primary modes: Whisper, Active and Untamed. Whisper is about refinement and stability, Untamed lends a sharper throttle response and heavier steering, and asks more of the rear motor. Active mode is a kind of halfway house.

With GT, however, there’s also an Untamed Plus mode. That essentially gives you all the benefits of the Untamed settings, as well as calibrating the electrical system to offer more consistent power delivery during repeated use of full throttle.

Conceivably, it asks for a racetrack to present best account of itself in this setting; assuredly, it is much more fiery in response and feral in how it chases the road. The traction and stability control systems ideal back significantly, making them less intrusive.

The ideal is to help a driver feel more at one with the car, but how well you think that is accomplished will depend on past experience. If it’s been with other electric cars, then you will feel the GT is a sharper, handier thing. If it has been with other Mustangs, then the lesson is objectively going to be much different. 

Not because the Mach-E GT is less accomplished. quite the contrary. For grip and turn-in, I’d put it up there with the extremely pleasing Mach 1 special I drove two years ago. However, it does not have the same flowing feel as a petrol model, in part part because the power delivery with electric is so much more instantaneous and explosive, in part because the Mach-E is very much taller and has more weight to cope with.

What cannot be contested is that the Mach-E GT lacks for pace. In a straight line, it is a rocket.  Flat out, Ford says it will accelerate from 0-100kmh in 3.7 seconds. It needs to be in Untamed Plus to be most rediculous, but even in Whisper mode if you hammer it, it will seem astoundingly rapid.

As much as it is larger and porkier, the GT is also a genuinely fun car to drive on a challenging road. The brakes are as stunningly effectively as you hope, given their provenance, but beyond that this car is dynamically well-sorted. The performance suspension keeps body lean well in check through corners, the steering has solid precision and is well-weighted and there's always plenty of grip. For an SUV weighing 2.2 tonnes, it is remarkably athletic.

What also makes it liveable is that the 'MagneRide' adaptive suspension works well; sure, there will be times when you can still tell this is a heavy car riding on 20-inch wheels and low-profile 245/45 Pirelli P-Zero tyres, but while firm - and a touch rumbly on coarse chip - it is overall nicely refined. That bodes well for it’s aptitude for long-distance driving; which is where almost all V8 Mustangs I have driven have proven wearisome.

Like many electrics, the Mach-E allows for a 'one-pedal' setting. I’d use it advisedly, as it which makes the accelerator feel stodgy and then slows the car dramatically the moment you ease off the power. 

The benefit of it eking a few more kilometres of range from the battery pack isn’t so pressing here, because the GT gets a generous-sized battery; a 98.7kWh extended-range unit lending 88kWh of usable capacity. Were WLTP conditions replicated, you’d get 500 kilometres’ range before you need to plug in. In the real world, expect to punch up 350-400kms. Not quite as good as some competitors, but a darn sight better than a V8. The battery also supports charge rates up to 150kW so you can replenish fairly quickly as well.

Overall impression? Patently, the Mach-E is not a Mustang in the classic sense, but it deserves to be part of the herd; the GT’s stampeding performance makes it all the worthy. 

Setting that aside, and considering it purely in its electric aptitudes, then it stands out as being a particularly solid effort. In terms of battery bang for buck, it delivers excellent value, no more so while you can harness this stallion for less than $100k.