2010 Ford Mustang Convertible V6 Review

2010 Ford Mustang Convertible V6 Review It’s about as iconic as production cars get, the Ford Mustang. And from the beginning, Ford has always made sure there is a pure and affordable version. But that is that just a nice way of saying it’s a bit of a let down. We’ve got one of those cars, a convertible yes but the V6, the more garden variety. Let’s check the tech. Our Mustang carries a color that reaches back to the old days. They called it sunset gold metallic now. But it’s basically the same hue that was humorously named Freudian guilt when it was first available by special order in 1969. Psychotherapy was a kind of a new thing back then. Now our car is a premium but it doesn’t have the head unit with the navigation, the big LCD, that’s the one big upgrade we’re missing. However, the premium cars do have the shaker audio system. They call it the shaker five hundred and five hundred watts. Those big horn seat speakers and the doors that have never set right with me but it’s a systems on the sounds more muscular than it does finesse. That said that the premium cars also have sync. So, sync plus shaker five hundred, it gives you a pretty head unit. Your sources can be any number of things. I’ve got a Zune connected via USB here on the console. That’s a rarity, only sync really does that well. And as you can see, I’ve got a full text display right there. Again, via a cable, not wirelessly but it works like an iPod and very few other cars support a Zune or other player that’s detailed with. We also have serious satellite radio including six months of activation. You’ve got a six disk in dash CD changer, with also mp3 disk ability. AM and FM radio, no HD radio here on the Mustang. If you got the head unit that has the navigation system with serious travel link and all that stuff. You’d also have a hard drive in there and ten gigabytes of that would be available for you to put music on but not here. And of course because of sync, this USB jack here is not just good for players like this but also for thumb drives and you can also do Bluetooth of A2DP streaming like of my BlackBerry here. And you got good old standard aux jack in there as well. Now again, keeping this car on the affordable theme, let’s say we avoid the navigation head unit just as an exercise. You can still get a rear view camera in this guy. It’s an ala carte option and it takes a portion of the rear view mirror. Its a little display but you can do it. Now one of the less necessary but still crowd pleasing features that’s part of premium is this thing that they called Ford My Color. You can change the color of the gauges bands. You can change the color of the halo around the gauges and you can change or turn on or off the ambient lighting down on the foot wells. Unfortunately, the colors to me are all gaudy as hell except for white. Now there’s one that matches the blue here also. And the bigger issue I have is, when you change the colors on the IP, you don’t change any colors here on the center stack which kind of makes for a lot of mismatch. The base transmission of the 5-speed manual. I think I’d really look into that of the Mustang. However we’ve got the automatic and its real traditional automatic. It’s 5-speed which is modernish but it really clings to high gears. It doesn’t shift down really quickly. There is no sport mode. You’ve just got drive or three, two, one much don’t really do much except for decelerating down the hills. This is one of the more sleepy automatic you’ll find on the market today. Like most modern Fords, the cabin materials are a cut above and they make this car feel more pricy than it is when you’re sitting inside of it. And Fords interior styling team has done a great job of evoking the early Mustang dashboard without being slavishly retro. There’s a let down lurking under the hood of this car, again it’s a V6. It’s a four liter V6 with a paltry 210 horsepower and 240 foot pounds of torque. That is not a great output from an engine of this architecture and displacement. Mileage is pretty good and you get to 18/26 if you get the manual transmission, just 16/24 with the automatic. That’s usually the other way around and that’s a pretty significant difference. And part of the reason I’m down on this engine is because Ford’s just about to roll out a new V6 that is smaller, a 3.7 and vastly more powerful, 305 horsepower compared to 210. It’s like night and day. Just don’t buy one of these unless the dealer gives it to you. Wait for the new motor. Now the top on a V6 convertible Mustang, well any convertible Mustang is a pretty rudimentary affair, cloth top as you can see when it goes on the switch here and we can put it down. It’s a simple canvas affair that I swear is mounted on the same frame they used in my ‘69 XL. I mean, this is old school technology but it definitely works. It goes down fairly quickly. And notice it goes into a well that it’s basically wearing detaches. There are no fancy doors or covers that are moving around robotically like on some convertibles and certainly retractable these days. It’s a little bit up in the air here when it’s down and a little bit of obstruction to your rear view mirror. But more than that, it’s kind of a sloppy mess when it sitting here. But again, it’s inexpensive. And one good thing about it is it doesn’t take up any trunk space. On the road in this car, we’re reminded of what automatic transmission use to feel like. Not very sharp, lots of torque converter slip and slash at times. It’s not a terrible experience but that in different gear box and just 210 horsepower, that’s a formula for easygoing cruising, nothing more ambitious. But more than one of us noted there’s some essential Mustang-ness that helps this car be more than the simple sum of its parts. With the top down, from 70’s rock playing and the sun over your head, these cars are okay. You buy a V6 Mustang because you want a Mustang. Not some aggregation of its features. Let’s price this Mustang V6 convertible about a $30,000.00 proposition but get the premium about $3000.00 more to get sync, shake your five hundred audio, leather interior, power driver seat, a variety of other niceties. Then 3000 more on top of that for the electronics package that would be the navigation system which we don’t have, 10 gigabyte of your own music storage and that’s also going to bring along with it the dual zone automatic temperature control. Automatic transmission’s a thousand dollars, find a way to live without it. In fact, find a way to wait on this car until the new V6 comes out. That should be night and day difference.