2018 Ford Mustang GT Premium Reviewed

A five-horsepower correction shouldn’t matter much in a world of 700-horsepower crate engines, but when Driving Sports TV’s Ryan revisits his own numbers mid-review of the 2018 Ford Mustang GT Premium, it turns into a lesson in what actually separates this car from its closest rival. Between desert-road sound testing, a new ten-speed automatic smart enough to nail its own launches, and a Cobra Jet intake swap pulled straight from viewer mod lists, this GT Premium raises a real question: is 460 factory horsepower still the whole story?

Some road tests tell you what a car does. This one seems more interested in showing you what it sounds like doing it — and that distinction turns out to matter more than you’d think. Ryan of Driving Sports TV hauls a 2018 Ford Mustang GT out to the California desert, away from traffic and city noise ordinances, and starts flipping switches most reviewers barely mention: exhaust modes, launch control, line lock. Somewhere in the middle of the video he stops to correct himself on a horsepower claim from an earlier review. Why does a five-horsepower difference need its own on-camera correction?

A Desert, an Empty Road, and Every Button Ryan Could Find

Driving Sports TV built this review around isolation — literally. Host Ryan takes the 2018 Mustang GT Premium out to open desert roads specifically to capture what the car sounds like without ambient noise interference, then works through the toy box Ford built into the S550 refresh: Quiet Mode for stealthy early starts, Track Mode’s unfiltered exhaust snarl, launch control for repeatable straight-line runs, and line lock, which holds the front brakes while the rear tires spin freely for a burnout. He also walks back an error from an earlier Driving Sports TV video, clarifying on camera that the 2018 GT actually carries a five-horsepower edge over the contemporary Camaro SS, not the twenty-horsepower gap he’d previously claimed. That kind of on-camera correction is rare in car-review content, and it is part of why commenters trust the channel’s numbers over flashier competitors who never revisit their claims.

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Why the 2018 Refresh Mattered More Than a Facelift

The 2018 model year was not a cosmetic update tacked onto an aging platform — it was the point where Ford finally let the S550 Mustang GT catch up to what enthusiasts had been asking for since 2015. Gone was the previous six-speed-only, naturally-breathing Coyote setup as the sole configuration; in came a reworked front fascia, an optional 12-inch digital instrument cluster, adaptive MagneRide dampers borrowed from the Shelby GT350 parts bin, and for the first time, a genuine ten-speed automatic co-developed with GM that could out-shift most manual drivers in a straight line. Premium trim, the version Ryan tests here, bundled navigation, the B&O sound system, and heated/cooled seats onto a car that could still run mid-12s at the strip. It was the year the Mustang GT stopped feeling like a budget muscle car with a fast engine and started feeling genuinely engineered.

The Gen 3 Coyote, By the Numbers

Under the hood sits the third-generation 5.0-liter Coyote V8, revised for 2018 with a higher 12:1 compression ratio, dual fuel-injection (port and direct), and revised heads that pushed factory output to 460 horsepower at 7,000 rpm and 420 lb-ft of torque at 4,600 rpm — figures that required 93-octane fuel to hit on the nose, something Ryan notes when discussing the car’s factory tune. Buyers could still row their own with the standard six-speed manual, or opt into the new ten-speed automatic tested here, which unlocks launch control and a Drag Mode strategy that manages wheel slip and shift timing automatically. Ford also widened the standard wheels to 19 inches and stiffened the GT’s spring rates versus the pre-refresh car. On paper it is a modest jump from 2017’s 435 horsepower, but in a straight line and on a skidpad, the difference is more noticeable than the spec sheet suggests.

The Automatic That Changed Minds

One recurring theme in the comments is how good the ten-speed automatic actually is, not just how fast. A viewer who rented a 2018 GT for a week — a self-described manual-only enthusiast — singled out Drag Mode as seriously impressive, noting it managed launches better than they expected any torque-converter automatic to manage them. That matters for resale and cross-shopping, because the 2018 GT’s closest direct rival, the Chevrolet Camaro SS, was still manual-focused in its marketing even as automatic take rates climbed industry-wide. Commenters also directly pit the Mustang against a Dodge Challenger 6.2L Scat Pack, which outguns the GT by roughly 25 horsepower on paper. Yet the consensus lands on the Mustang as the better overall package: lighter curb weight, standard line lock, arguably meaner exhaust note, sharper handling, and a sticker price commenters peg at $8,000 to $10,000 CAD less than a comparably equipped Scat Pack.

Driving Sports TV’s Own Brand of Credibility

Driving Sports TV has built its audience on exactly the kind of granular, feature-by-feature walkthroughs this review delivers, and Ryan’s on-camera self-correction about the horsepower gap versus the Camaro is a small but telling example of why. Rather than let an inaccurate number from a prior upload stand uncorrected, the channel addresses it directly inside a new video, which is not a universal practice among car-review creators chasing view counts. The channel’s format — real roads, minimal production polish, dry humor about test conditions — leans toward viewers who already know spec sheets and want confirmation from someone driving the car rather than reading a press release. That approach is part of why a review of a mainstream trim like the GT Premium, rather than a limited-run Shelby, was able to pull in over 1.4 million views: it treats a volume-selling muscle car with the same rigor usually reserved for halo models.

The Mods Owners Actually Make

Comments on the video sketch out a fairly consistent modification path for 2018 GT owners chasing more than the factory 460 horsepower. One owner details swapping in the intake manifold and throttle body from the Shelby GT500-adjacent Cobra Jet parts bin, paired with a Roush cold-air intake and a custom tune calibrated for 91-octane pump gas rather than the factory’s 93-octane baseline. That combination is a known path in the Mustang community for adding meaningful power without touching the bottom end, and it says something about how much headroom Ford left in the Gen 3 Coyote’s factory calibration. Other commenters focus on smaller, cheaper changes: several mention disabling the factory shift chime almost immediately after delivery, with one joking theirs was silenced within thirteen seconds of driving off the lot, and multiple viewers note that Quiet Mode exists mainly so the car’s actual character — Track Mode’s exhaust note — can stay switched off until it matters.

A Trim Detail That Became a Time Capsule

There’s also a small, almost throwaway detail buried in the comments that captures how quickly automotive technology dates itself: one buyer specifically ordered their 2018 GT in silver because it was reportedly the last model year Ford still offered a factory CD player, a feature already treated as a curiosity by 2018 and gone entirely soon after. That kind of footnote matters because the S550-generation Mustang, built from 2015 through 2023, treated 2018 as its hinge point — the year infotainment, safety tech, and drivetrain options all jumped forward at once, while some genuinely old-school touches like the disc changer lingered on for one final year before disappearing. Premium trim buyers in 2018 were straddling two eras of the same car: a fundamentally analog muscle-car experience wrapped around a digital cluster and a ten-speed gearbox smart enough to manage its own launches.

What 1.4 Million Views Says About This Trim

Nearly 1.4 million views on a review of a mainstream GT trim — not a Shelby, not a limited edition — says something about where the 2018 Mustang sits in enthusiast memory now. It arrived at what looks, in hindsight, like the last stretch of naturally-aspirated V8 muscle cars sold at real volume before turbocharged four-cylinders, hybrid assist, and eventual discontinuation reshaped the segment; the Camaro nameplate went dark in 2024 and the Challenger paused for an EV transition that still hasn’t fully materialized. A well-kept 2018 GT Premium, especially one with the ten-speed and MagneRide, is increasingly treated as the sensible entry point into modern muscle car ownership: usable daily, quick enough to embarrass more expensive cars at a stoplight, and still simple enough for the mod community documented in these very comments to keep improving for another decade.

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