2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse 0-60 Time: Sufficient for the Price?

By: Max F. Arellano / March 24, 2024

Overview

The 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse 0-60 Time is 4.0 seconds with a 6-speed manual transmission, and 3.7 seconds with a 10-speed automatic.

This makes it the fastest car in the 2024 Mustang lineup, with the manual variant outperforming the GT by .2 second, and the Ecoboost Mustang by half a second. However, the increase in performance does come at a considerable cost, with the Dark Horse costing $14,000 more than the GT, and over $25,000 more than the Ecoboost.

Is this increased cost justified? Well, let's take a look at what the Dark Horse has to offer.

       

The Dark Horse uses the most powerful 5.0-liter engine that Ford has built - essentially a modified version of the GT's engine - that produces 500 horsepower and 418 lb-ft torque.

It also uses the same transmission that the Mach 1 and Shelby GT350 used, the Tremec TR-3160, which is known to allow for smoother shifting.

Design-wise, you could say that it's more aggressive looking than the other Mustangs in the lineup, with larger grille openings and a rear spoiler.

An exclusive Blue Ember paint is available for the Dark Horse, along with just about every other option you've historically seen on Mustangs, plus a new shade of yellow.

Anyway, let's get back to performance.

Dark Horse 0-60 Time Analysis

With Motortrend glazing the Dark Horse pretty hard in their review, we have to ask ourselves, is the Dark Horse's 0-60 time that great considering its price tag?

You might be able to make that case for the automatic variant, as new cars under $65,000 that breach the 4-second barrier are pretty rare. With the manual transmission Dark Horse however, it becomes much harder. As previously mentioned, the GT is much cheaper and hardly slower. Meanwhile, the GT's rival, the Camaro 1SS, is actually faster than the manual Dark Horse with a 4.0 second 0-60 time while costing just $43,000.

Verdict

While the Mustang Dark Horse 0-60 time in the manual-transmission-equipped variant is certainly fast, the substantial increase in price over the GT makes it a hard sell, if straight-line performance is your main concern.