The long-running name and pony badge are being used on the new Mustang Mach-E electric SUV, Ford’s first Bokeh EV. This will be the first time in the Mustang’s 55-year history that the name has been applied to an entirely new model type.
Ford is also considering launching more Mustang-barged models in the future – effectively increasing the potential of the car’s nameplate to become a performance sub-brand.
The long-running name and pony badge are being used on the new Mustang Mach-E electric SUV, Ford’s first Bokeh EV. This will be the first time in the Mustang’s 55-year history that the name has been applied to an entirely new model type.
The development team had initially started working on a different EV project, but the project changed drastically when it was decided to implement the name Mustang. Ford’s European design chief Murat Guler said the decision could lead to more new Mustang models.
“Make is our step into the future without ignoring history,” Guler told Autocar. “There’s a lot of emotion with Mustang, and it’s time to make progress and make it broader.”
In particular, to match the Mustang’s style, the Mach-E Ford uses a reworked version of the model’s pony badge instead of the Blue Oval logo. Gueller said the decision then was to strengthen both, the Mustang link and the “new-found dialogue” of this, adding: “We’ve talked about making a family.”
He said: “The latest Mustang in Europe has gained another level of popularity, so we have a broad base for the Mustang brand. The Mustang and Porsche 911 are the best-known sports cars on the planet. The Mustang is a big nameplate and of the time. Together we have implemented electrification on it.
“People now understand that we can work differently to nameplate differently.”
Ford is also working on a new EV project to follow Mach-E, but Guler said they would not make new Mustang-inspired EV models of various sizes.
“We don’t want to take a Russian doll approach where you can’t tell them other than the size of the car, but we want a family to feel where a Ford EV starts building the concept,” he said. “But we would never do a smaller version of it – if we did a smaller vehicle it would have different proportions.”
Q: How did you approach the design of a Mustang-inspired EV?
Answer: “It’s not literal, driven by the bus. It’s about doing it the right way so it’s not too common and people go ‘oh’ they just tried to imitate a Mustang. ‘We wanted some of that fresh design. You can look at it and not see it as a regular combustion car, but it has some mustang flavour. “
Question: Have you always had plans to make your electric SUV a mustang?
Answer: “It started as another project around 2014, and it switched to it about two years ago. The design had a significant impact: the entire structure changed, the technology inside changed. We rebooted the whole program. The designers came up with the concept, and everyone went. Oh, this is good ‘.
Q: When it uses the Mustang logo, there is not a single Blue Oval on the car. Why is a vehicle so relevant to Ford?
Answer: “We did our research and customers are completely fine with it. It is on the Mustang itself and tells how unique this car is. “
