The Ford Mustang GT is a great highway cruiser, well, more of a battle cruiser really, but it can move around cities fairly comfortably as well
Ford took their own sweet time to launch a Mustang in a right-hand drive version. A really long time. Fifty-two years and six generations. But when they launched a right-hand drive model, they didn’t take very long to launch the car in India. And once they brought their most iconic car to India, they decided that it deserved to see a bit of this vast country. So for the last month or so, Ford India has been taking a Mustang GT around the Golden Quadrilateral and giving several motoring journalists such as myself, 300-400 km long stretches to gallop down a highway.
Ford India had penned me down for a stretch during the third - south-to-east leg of the trip. This leg deviated a bit from the classic quadrilateral route by going via Hyderabad, but given a choice of several legs I chose the leg between Visakhapatam and Bhubaneswar. This stretch of road down national highway 16 while not exactly on the coast did allow for access to several beaches on the Bay of Bengal. India’s eastern coastline is the more neglected coastline for tourists, and after this drive and seeing some of the wonderful beaches in Andhra and Odisha, for the life of me I cannot figure out why, because the beaches we saw at Bheemli outside Visakhapatnam and Gopalpur-On-Sea in Odisha had stunning stretches of sand and surf.
But I wasn’t in this wonderful part of India to get my feet wet in the Bay of Bengal, which was a pity. However, the reason I was here more than made up for that disappointment as I was going to be driving the Mustang GT. I had driven this car soon at its launch event at the Buddh International Circuit, and despite misgivings about an American muscle car on a racetrack, this is a highly capable sportscar. It may lack the agility of a modern European sportscar, but the Mustang GT can go plenty fast and it was surprisingly good around the bends because Ford has developed a whole new independent rear suspension for this car. This isn’t European, but this is no red-neck American musclecar, this is an American muscle-car married into New England aristocracy.
But then again, with a five-litrer V8 motor under that long snout which mashed petrol and air to give four hundred brake horsepower, this is a car designed to go fast (that said, the Indian variant is slightly detuned down from 435 horsepower on the American-spec Mustang GT). And while it has been civilised, it is a bit tail heavy, and because Indian highways often demand rapid changes of direction as you try and sneak in between two trucks, this is not a car you should ever drive with just one hand on the steering. In fact, if there is one thing the Mustang can adopt, it could be the high-grip suede finish on Mercedes-AMG steerings. A couple of times, while fitting in between twenty-ton Tatas, there was the sensation that the tail wanted to go out, but thanks to the electronic aids and a light right foot, nothing ever got out of hand.
For the most part, NH16 is a relatively straight road with several wide-sweeping turns, with only a couple of ghat stretches thrown in. Thus the Mustang GT was in its natural habitat, with ‘Sports+’ drive mode selected which kept the revs up coupled with ‘Sports’ steering, which made the steering a bit heavier. You could at times floor the accelerator. It isn’t just the sheer acceleration that stuns you when you do that, it is the wall of noise from the huge V8 engine. Again, the noise isn’t like the high-pitched noise from an European sportscar, this is a throaty baritone, you can feel the power in front of you.
But the best thing about a road trip in a nice car is not just the car, it is the road itself. And what a road! National Highway 16 between these two growing cities is in immaculate condition, it is a four-lane road throughout, mainly with a asphalt top with a short stretch of concrete. There are quite a few toll booths which, sadly are quite slow, although it did give me an opportunity to catch up on social media while waiting. But some of the best sights on this road are actually slightly off the highway.
Beginning with the INS Kursura museum on the Ramakrishna Mission beach in Visakhapatnam. Commissioned in 1969, this Kalvari-class boat was India’s fourth-ever submarine and served the Indian Navy for 31 years and is unique as the only submarine museum in this part of the world. Unfortunately, our early start meant that we could not visit the ship, but we carried on down the coast road, avoiding the main highway as we approached the small fishing village of Bheemli a half-hour outside Vizag. The roads to this village with its beautiful beach offered stunning vistas of the Bay of Bengal from the ghats, the red, iron-rich earth of the Deccan merging with the blue of the sea with strips of yellow sand and green palm trees in between.
After Bheemli, we joined the highway and despite the massive jam of trucks at the Andhra-Odisha border which was an advertisement for why this country needs the Goods and Services Tax (GST) we soon reached the town of Bhramapur where we took a right turn to Gopalpur-On-Sea. This is one of the most beautiful beaches in India, as tourism to the eastern coast is several orders of magnitude lesser than that to the west coast, Gopalpur does not feel like a tourist trap. And unlike Konark-Puri, there is no immediate religious or archaeological reason to visit either, just a wonderful stretch of sand. There is only one major five-star hotel, the lovely Mayfair resort, which was formerly an Oberoi property, and the property retains that colonial charm. The small centre is only three hours away from Bhubaneswar, and really, this is a beach you must visit.
Back on the highway, passing through some village markets where the day’s catch and dried fish were being sold, the road to Bhubaneswar was relatively unremarkable. Well, other than the few idiots who tried to make dangerous maneuvers to overtake the car. Yet, the drive passed smoothly and as the sun set and Odisha’s capital beckoned, traffic settled down into its chaotic rhythm as in most Indian cities. The Ford Mustang GT is a great highway cruiser, well, more of a battlecruiser really, but it can move around cities fairly comfortably as well.
After a whole day spent driving this American icon, you realised that it did not feel very out of place in India. Sure, it returned just 6.5 km per litre, but that is more due to the constant acceleration and braking, when I drove the car gently, it easily averaged 8.5 km per litre.
Befitting a car wearing a ‘GT’ (Grand Tourer) badge, it was comfortable, the music system sounded great although this particular car lacked navigation. Newer cars, however, will have navigation pre-installed. So while it costs Rs 65 lakh (ex-showroom) if you do end up buying one of these things, don’t keep it in a garage and drive it inside a city, take it on the open road. like the Mustang itself, this car demands the open road.