Ford Transforms Mustang Mach-E For Pikes Peak Hill Climb: What The Electric High Performance Mustang EV Should Have Looked Like

Ford is prepping a Mustang Mach-E for the Pikes Peak timed run, and it is an impressive-looking vehicle. But every time I look at the Mach-E, it doesn’t look like a Mustang. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s when the muscle car was born, and, to me, the Mustang should look a lot like the original car (I was never a fan of the Fox Body Mustangs and appreciated it when Ford returned to the old design language).

The Mustang Mach-E is a nice vehicle, and currently, it is outselling the more traditional gas-powered Mustangs. So, after reading the article on Ford prepping a unique Mustang Mach-E for Pikes Peak, I thought I’d ask AI (Dall-E) what it thought the car should look like to promote the Mustang brand and its muscle car heritage.

Why Ford Should Use Classic Mustang Design Language

Almost every car company, including Ford, is currently in financial trouble. Chinese car companies are going vertical, and even Tesla continues to perform well with the Musk drag. This is because these car companies have lost touch with their buyers. Western car companies are moving to EVs, but they continue to hedge their bets with gas cars and can’t determine whether EVs should look different or be more closely related to their gas car cousins.

While I’d typically argue that an EV should look different than a gas car, when it comes to iconic designs like Mustangs and performance classes like Muscle cars, Dodge is closer to the ideal with its electric Dodge Charger than any other company, including Ford. However, feedback on this car suggests that even that car may not be close enough to what muscle car buyers are looking for.  

Part of this is positioning, but at least the all-new Electric Dodge Charger looks like it is a Charger, while the Mustang Mach-E looks nothing like you’d expect a Mustang to look like. This was also a problem with the Jaguar I-Pace; it was designed to optimize the EV component with a cab-forward award-winning design, and Jaguar did make EVs. However, Jaguar's more interesting cars were the E-Type, XK180, F-Type, XJ220, and C-X75. Now, I fell in love with the I-Pace and owned two of them, and I still miss those cars as they remain two of my favorites for all time. But if you compare them to Jaguar’s most desirable cars, they look different, and while Jaguar created a race series for them, racing an SUV on a racetrack doesn’t make much sense, given they are supposed to be off-road vehicles. They are Sports Utility Vehicles, not muscle or race cars. And EVs suck on racetracks because of the slow refueling (charge) times.

The new Jaguar Type 00 appears to go further in the wrong direction as an electric Halo Car than the I-Pace did. (It is almost as if these car companies aren’t even watching the market.)

Wrapping Up: A Better Mustang Performance EV

The picture above is what DALL-E thinks the Pikes Peak EV Mustang should look like to perform its role of getting muscle car people excited about a new Mustang EV. Pikes Peak is ideal for EVs because it is a short, timed race that should favor EV torque and power but not overly stress the batteries. Yes, it is a road course, and EVs are heavy, but they also have a very low center of gravity, and you can better manage power to each EV tire to maximize cornering and traction, offsetting that weight disadvantage. In addition, EVs don’t take a hit for altitude like gas cars do (yes, you can use blowers, but you still lose efficiency as air density decreases), and not only would the EVs be more performant on the course as I expect the Mustang Mach-E Ford has built will do, but one that looked like a Mustang would gather more interest and likely more favorable press allowing the effort to more strongly attract potential buyers to similarly configured Mustangs as Dealer showroom floor showcases that would bring people into dealerships. 

Look at the picture above and tell me if you think AI has created a better Pike’s Peak Mustang than Ford did.

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst at Torque News who covers automotive technology and battery development. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia and follow his articles on Forbes, X, and LinkedIn.