Rental Review—2024 Ford Mustang EcoBoost Convertible: Strangely Smitten

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– Posted on June 25, 2025

 

I’ve yet to miss a connecting flight or appointment at my destination, but this was cutting it close.  Thunderstorm cells rolling over Denver were wreaking havoc on air traffic, and when widebodies with 350 people apiece are running very late to Honolulu and Europe, your little beer can CRJ-700 to Little Rock is not the priority.  First a one-hour delay. Then another.  And hey, why not, have a third.  My final destination was an hour outside Little Rock and that car rental counter closes at midnight.  The plane touched down at 11:30 and trundled towards the terminal where the jet bridge took its sweet time deploying.  C’mon, c’mon….

I’m not sure if the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport is a direct insult to Washington’s biggest power couple or just a charming homage.  What I do know is that it’s tiny and our plane was the only source of activity, so I had the distinct impression I should bypass the not-yet-turning luggage carousel and head straight for that rental counter.  I was relieved to see it still staffed.

Two people had reached the counter before me, a woman already signing paperwork and a man being read his options: Corolla or Sentra.  There’s a quandary for you.  What will he do?  Corolla.  Looks like I’d be getting the Sentra, then.  Being on the company dime, I’d ordered from the same cheap part of the menu.

“Sir, I’m afraid there isn’t much left this time of night”, the clerk said to me.  “There’s a Sentra or a Mustang.”

I blinked stupidly for a second. I wasn’t expecting that.

“Uh, Mustang”, I said.

“I coulda gotten that one but I told him I didn’t want nuthin’ sporty!” piped up the lady signing her paperwork.

I blinked again.  “That’s OK, I’ll sacrifice for you this time” I replied as I took the car key and headed back to the luggage carousel to find it spinning with only my suitcase now on it.  Perfect timing.  As with math equations, there was a correct order of operations to follow.

 

It wasn’t hard to find the Mustang adjacent to the three remaining Sentras in the parking garage.  I then saw the ragtop.  Rental roulette really paid out tonight.

I orient myself in this very unfamiliar car and manage to start the engine and lower the roof.  As it quietly burbles and murmurs at idle, I watch a few tired-looking professional types emerge from the rental office. Comrades from my plane!  But they were foolish, the poor bastards. They waited at the carousel for their luggage and now they have Sentra keys.  Order of operations, people.

I sweep out of the garage and toward the interstate as the humid and fragrant Southern air envelopes the open cabin.  At the empty onramp I roll into the throttle and confirm suspicions that it’s not a GT—I know the surge and fart of a heavily turbocharged four cylinder well enough by now.  But it cooks.  The back end squirms a bit and eighty-five arrives pronto.  EcoBoost!  I’m exhausted but the onrush of night air is invigorating and intoxicating.  I start coming back to life.  Travel stress? What travel stress?  It’s just you and the wind and the dark and the empty blacktop, pardner.  Will this steed do more than 85?  I cackle like a madman and disappear.  All concerns proximal and distant melt away, left far behind on the deserted interstate of a moonless night.

 

Few rental cars will get the chance to make such a sterling first impression, but over the next week of normal use, the Mustang didn’t lose all that much luster.  In fact, it did a passable job of approximating the S5 Cabriolet experience for $25,000 less.  The chassis is capable, the ride is comfortable, the structure feels solid, the interior is nicer than expected, and it is fast enough to back up its looks.

This is a midrange Mustang, an EcoBoost Premium with the 200A equipment package that provides heated and cooled power seats with decent vinyl, a heated steering wheel, an OK stereo, and a full sweep screen with Android Auto and a bunch of settings and customizations that I had no patience for.  Forty-six grand, if you’re interested.  Forty-one for the hardtop with the same equipment.

 

Would you believe this was my first time behind the wheel of a pony car?  I’m accustomed to more upright seating positions, so the low hip point and high beltline made me feel like the Little Old Lady from Pasadena, even though I’m nearly six feet tall.  The hood looms up in the field of vision and seems to extend 50 feet ahead.  The interior materials and build quality were better than I expected. Everything above glovebox and armrest level is nicely padded and felt solid.  Everything below that is pure crap, but you don’t interact with it much.  The 201A equipment group improves some of that.

Free of any muscle car nostalgia and opinions on what the cockpit should look like, I found the controversial big screen a fairly pleasant implementation of the technology.  The gauges are legible and configurable, the graphics are crisp, the brightness levels are very mellow and nonintrusive at night, and it is integrated into the dashboard about as well as can be expected.  The climate and audio interfaces are nested in the touchscreen and are very irritating to use.

 

This rental did not have the performance package with the adjustable dampers, upgraded brakes, and shorter 3.55:1 drive ratio for even quicker acceleration.  I’m not sure it needs any of that.

Front end response is quicker than I expected for a car this big, and it changes direction nimbly with little roll.  The Mustang is a good back road car despite its mass and width.  It isn’t as sharp as my Fiesta ST, but its path accuracy and steering response make it easy to place at reasonable speeds, and good body control keeps it from bobbing about too much mid-turn.  The fixed suspension tune of this trim starts to feel stiff on really rotten pavement, but otherwise offers a good balance of comfort and control.  Brakes are strong and linear.  Tire noise is low.  The fabric top permits wind noise at highway speeds, but I imagine the hardtop is a quiet interstate cruiser.

 

Laugh at a four-cylinder Mustang if you will, but the 2.3-liter EcoBoost is powerful.   If you just mildly brake-torque it at a stoplight, it’s scalded-pig time all the way to freeway speeds.  Turbo lag is minimal.  The engine churns through the midrange and lands fully in boost in the next gear after a crisp upshift.  The 350 lb-ft of torque is a big number and you can feel it.  MotorTrend clocked it at 4.9 seconds 0 to 60, and that’s without the 3.55 rear, which will lop another half-second off the time.  Pentastar Chargers seem to be a popular item among the young and aggressive crowd here, and this four-cylinder Mustang will pull car lengths on them by a mere 40 mph.  Even a 5.7-liter Hemi V8 won’t catch it until somewhere around the quarter mile…which essentially means it isn’t catching it.  Hemi street performance out of a 4-cylinder base Mustang?

 

I came to really enjoy driving this car.  There are internet video reviewers who didn’t.  They wanted to autocross it, power drift it, bang it off the rev limiter, and thump away at paddle shifters at twice the posted speed limit.  Silly.  That’s track behavior, and they should just get the GT.

This isn’t a track. This is better.  I drove several hours of narrow rural central Arkansas two lane and was smitten with both the car and the scenery.  Gently winding roads sheltered by the patchwork shade of overhanging trees and birdsong everywhere.  Undulating open fields with miles of horizon cut by islands of trees.  The pavement is rippled and patched; you’ll appreciate the compliant ride.  The roads are narrow with no shoulder; you’ll appreciate the accurate steering when the rare 18 wheeler comes your way.  It’s not serpentine but there are turns and you don’t have to slow down for them because the Mustang can definitely corner.  You can let the turbos pull you through and then haul you far over the limit on the next straight, before the rapidly increasing rush of air reminds you to slow back down before you get yourself into a heap of trouble, boy.

I’m having a good time.  This is a great car for this environment. I’ve got more power than I can use.  I’ve got more cornering ability than the road requires. I’ve got a suspension that communicates but doesn’t beat me up.  I’ve got more scenery than I can take in while still eyeing the road.  I’m getting 35 miles per gallon even with occasional corner exit blasts.  Really, what are you going to do with a GT and its 150 extra horsepower out here?  Get pulled over by the only sheriff in the county who decided to stake out this particular nothing-road on this particular nothing-weekday, that’s what.  You can’t attack these corners any more aggressively, and the power difference won’t show up until you’ve revved out and hit truly reckless speeds.

 

This car is not perfect.  The steering is accurate and appropriately quick, but completely numb and provides no information about what the front end is doing in a turn.  You don’t need to be driving like a maniac to notice this, and it left me wanting.  Ford knows how to make a good EPS. They just didn’t do it here.

The second issue is the subjective behavior of the engine and 10-speed automatic.  There is a vexing inconsistency in power delivery, shift logic, and engine tone.  In Sport mode with a moderate to heavy foot, the powertrain is snappy, responsive, and fairly predictable, whether from a stop or a roll, and the exhaust tone has enough character to cover the typical four-cylinder thrash.  But in too many other situations, the shift logic and throttle mapping are difficult to predict. The power delivery then becomes lumpy, the engine surging in and out of boost with gear changes, the exhaust note burping and undulating in response.  This is not an inherently smooth and refined engine, and this behavior calls attention to that.

After a few days, I had learned my way around some of this powertrain’s weird behavior by modifying my driving, but the rest I simply had to accept.  Over the course of 700 miles of lighter in-town use, 75 mph freeway, the two-lanes, and putting a few Chargers in their place, it returned 27 mpg.  That makes up for a bit of eccentricity.

 

Speaking of eccentricity, Ford has a real pony fetish with this car. Rather than leaning predictably into ranching and cowboying as with the F-150, Ford went cute with the Mustang.  As I approached the car the first night, I saw a bright white Mustang icon appear on the ground beneath the mirror.  Ford names this feature (and I’m serious here) the “Pony Puddle Lamp”.  Ford must have had a specific masculine image in mind when it conjured up the term “Pony Puddle”, but all I can think of is a fat little horse peeing itself.

There’s also a blackout trim package called “Nite Pony”.  Perhaps this was named by people who didn’t raise a girl within the last 30 years, because it sounds like a My Little Pony character—one getting ready to go have a big night on the town.  Nite Pony gonna get crazy!  Maybe a little too crazy.  Maybe lose control and make an embarrassing Pony Puddle.

 

None of this is printed anywhere on the car itself, so it doesn’t matter.  I think Ford did well with the Mustang.  As an entry point for the model, the EcoBoost is far from embarrassing.  It provides a lot of acceleration, chassis capability, and interior refinement for a reasonable price.  With the Performance Package, it steps into sports car territory. With the Premium Package, it’s a viable entry-level personal luxury coupe, of which so few remain.  The fetching Vapor Blue Metallic with Emberglo interior is a rare and striking combination.  I could go for that, and a quiet rural road extending to the horizon.