Ten-month wait for Ford Mustang in Australia, 90% V8

It keeps getting longer, the wait list for the Ford Mustang in Australia. Drive from Down Under reports that the waiting list for the pony car has stretched to September 2016, with the Blue Oval’s local rep receiving over 3,000 paid orders so far, out of 15,000 expressions of interest. And that’s before an official launch.

“We’re a smidge over 3,000 orders now, we’re getting a pretty regular trickle of interested people. We’ve had hundreds of people turning up at our road show events putting orders basically quicker than we can write them out. It has been incredible,” said Ford Australia chief Graeme Whickman.

Not only has the response been amazing, but the variant mix as well. Both the 2.3 litre EcoBoost and 5.0 litre V8 engines will be available in Australia, but 90% of bookings so far have been for the 435 hp Coyote V8. The balance is expected to slowly shift, though.

“We anticipated we’d see a heavy V8 mix at the beginning, we’re only seeing about 10 to 15% of EcoBoost but I see that will get bigger as we go on. None of that is a surprise to us. We’ll see the percentage of EcoNoost increase, the hidden gem will be the 2.3 litre – I think people will be surprised when they drive it,” Whickman told Drive.

Interestingly, the Mustang’s “burnout” function – also known as the electric line-lock feature, it works by locking the front brakes with the push of a button, letting only the rear wheels spin – has been disabled for Australia to comply with the country’s anti-hooning laws.

Produced in right-hand drive for the first time in half a century, the S550 Mustang is priced from $44,990 for the EcoBoost manual Fastback to $63,990 for a V8-powered automatic GT Convertible. Amazingly, the Mustang’s entry price is lower than those of the Subaru WRX STI and Renault Megane RS 265 in Australia.

It won’t be so in Malaysia, where the US-made Ford will be coming at the end of the year for a January 2016 debut. In June, it was reported that indicative pricing was between RM435,000 to RM450,000 for the EcoBoost and RM550,000 to RM565,000 for the V8, but the Malaysian ringgit has slid by some margin against the US dollar since then, and we won’t be surprised to see a higher final price.

Read our sixth-gen Ford Mustang review, which covers both 2.3 EcoBoost and 5.0 V8 variants.

Ford Mustang 5.0 GT Fastback in Publika, KL

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