2024 Ford Mustang Debuts: “Pure American muscle”
By Laura Burstein2022-09-15T00:15:00
The last ICE-powered version of the iconic pony car, the Ford Mustang, gets a crisp, edgy design and more tech to attract younger buyers
When Ford designers started work on the 7th generation of the iconic Mustang, they didn’t yet know they’d be tweaking a classic recipe. “When we ask our designers around the world to start sketching on Mustang, we don’t have to give them a design brief,” says Chris Walter, Mustang design manager. “They already know what Mustang is. It’s that long hood, that beautiful silhouette, the short deck and strong rear haunches.” Walter and the rest of the design team knew they wanted this generation — what is purported to be the last ICE Mustang — to be special, but they didn’t quite know how.
“We knew we wanted Mustang to be ‘sexy’ and ‘edgy,’” Walter remembers. “We had a design that was nice, but we were looking back at those words and also trying to push for innovation for a new customer.” With their hearts not quite set on the initial theme, designers developed a second model, which, Walter says, “really pushed the design to the edgy side.”