Richard Hammond Reviewed the Ford Mustang Dark Horse — Then Went Out and Bought the Exact Same Car

Richard Hammond spent years reviewing everything from hypercars to homemade contraptions, but it’s a 500-horsepower Ford Mustang Dark Horse that pulled the most surprising reaction out of him yet. Built around a reworked 5.0-liter V8, a standard limited-slip diff, and a six-speed manual, the Dark Horse arrives just as its V8 rivals are disappearing from showrooms entirely. Watch to see what won him over.

Something about the way Richard Hammond talks about Ford Mustangs has always sounded like a man auditioning for a job he claims not to want anymore. He has driven six-figure hypercars on camera, he has driven cars that nearly killed him, and yet handing him the keys to Ford’s most track-focused pony car in years produced a reaction his own crew clearly weren’t expecting. Before the drive was even over, a car built to chase apexes rather than boulevards had done something rare to a presenter who has seen almost everything on four wheels — it made him nostalgic for the kind of review he insists he doesn’t miss doing.

What Ford Actually Bolted On

The Dark Horse sits above the standard Mustang GT in Ford’s current S650 lineup, built around a reworked version of the 5.0-liter Coyote V8 that Ford rates at a full 500 horsepower. That is not the highest naturally aspirated number a Mustang has ever worn — the flat-plane-crank Shelby GT350’s 5.2-liter Voodoo made 526 before it went out of production — but it is the strongest naturally aspirated V8 you can still walk into a Ford dealer and order. Buyers get a standard Torsen limited-slip differential, MagneRide adaptive dampers, and a choice between a six-speed manual with a Tremec-sourced gearbox or Ford’s 10-speed automatic, a rare pairing of old-school stick-shift character with modern chassis electronics. Recaro seats, a unique front splitter, and hood vents borrowed from the track-only Dark Horse R round out a package built explicitly to be driven hard rather than merely looked at.

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A Presenter Who’s Seen It All

Hammond built his reputation reviewing everything from million-dollar hypercars to homemade contraptions, and DRIVETRIBE — the venture he co-founded after leaving broadcast television — has given him room to do the kind of unscripted, hands-on testing that made his earlier career work. Viewers in the comments have noted exactly that shift, pointing out that this felt like “a proper car review” rather than a polished manufacturer puff piece, a distinction that matters more to muscle car audiences than production value ever will.

Why A Track Trim Still Feels Like Muscle

What keeps the Dark Horse from feeling like a clinical track special is that Ford refused to strip away the parts that make a Mustang a Mustang. It’s still rear-wheel drive, still available with three pedals, and still built around a naturally aspirated V8 rather than a turbocharged four-cylinder or a hybrid system. The chassis upgrades sharpen the car’s reflexes without erasing the visceral, slightly unruly character that has defined the model since 1964 — a balancing act that not every performance variant in this class manages to pull off.

The Numbers That Matter On A Back Road

Ford’s own figures put the Dark Horse in the low four-second range to 60 mph, with a limited-slip diff and wider rear tires helping put that power down out of corners rather than just in a straight line. Unique front subframe bracing, borrowed in spirit from the Mustang’s GT4 race program, stiffens the chassis enough that the car changes direction with noticeably less body roll than a standard GT, a detail that shows up more on a twisting road than on a spec sheet.

The Last One Standing

The timing matters as much as the hardware. Chevrolet ended Camaro production in early 2024, and Dodge has phased out the V8 Challenger in favor of an electric Charger concept, leaving the Dark Horse about as close to a lone survivor among affordable, naturally aspirated V8 pony cars as the segment has seen in decades. That context turns what might otherwise read as a routine trim upgrade into something closer to a going-away party for a specific kind of American performance car.

What The Comments Keep Coming Back To

Scroll through the reaction to this review and a theme repeats: viewers crediting Hammond for treating the car like an actual test rather than a sponsored walkthrough, several specifically wishing he’d go back to doing “proper” reviews full time. That response says as much about the current state of car content as it does about the Mustang itself — enthusiasts clearly still want someone willing to push a car hard and say what they actually think.

Inside The Cabin, Not Just Under The Hood

Ford didn’t stop at the drivetrain. The Dark Horse’s standard Recaro buckets are more heavily bolstered than anything in a regular GT, a Dark Horse-specific gauge cluster theme highlights the readings that matter to someone actually lapping the car, and the shifter on manual cars uses a shorter throw than the GT’s. None of it is flashy in photographs, but every change points toward the same goal: making the car disappear underneath a driver pushing it near its limits, rather than reminding them they’re in a showroom special.

Where It Sits Below The Halo Car

Ford still sells a more extreme GTD variant built with Multimatic, priced well into supercar territory and aimed at Nurburgring lap times rather than daily usability. The Dark Horse is deliberately positioned below that, as the version an enthusiast can actually order at a dealership and drive to work on Monday, which is precisely why it’s the trim most likely to define how this generation of Mustang is remembered by people who never set foot on a racetrack.

The Stick Shift That Almost Didn’t Happen

Manual transmissions have been vanishing from performance car order sheets across the industry, with take rates on most models dropping into the single digits. Ford bucked that trend deliberately with the Dark Horse, engineering the six-speed specifically around the car’s higher-output engine rather than treating it as a simple carryover option — a decision that reportedly came close to being cut on cost grounds during development before enthusiast feedback and the car’s lap-time targets kept it in the lineup.

Where This One Ends Up In A Collection

Limited annual production numbers, a genuinely track-capable chassis, and the fact that it may be remembered as one of the final naturally aspirated V8 pony cars before electrification reshapes the segment all point toward the Dark Horse aging into a genuine collector’s piece rather than just another special edition badge on a dealer lot.

What One Might Actually Cost You

Dealer markups on early Dark Horse allocations pushed transaction prices well above the roughly $60,000 sticker in the car’s first year on sale, mirroring the same allocation scramble that hit the previous generation’s Shelby GT500 when it launched. Used values have settled since then, but low-mileage manual cars in desirable colors still command a premium over automatic-equipped examples, a gap collectors expect to widen as manual take rates keep shrinking industry-wide.

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