We Bought a 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse to Fill the Shelby-Shaped Hole in Our Heart

• The Dark Horse is the most powerful Mustang variant currently available.
• This is the fourth Mustang variant Edmunds has purchased.
• 500 horsepower is only the start.

Until a new Shelby-badged model arrives, the Dark Horse is the most potent roadgoing new Mustang available. Think of it as a more track-focused version of the Mustang GT. The 5.0-liter Coyote V8 that has powered the Mustang for more than a decade gets a bump in power. Connecting rods borrowed from the GT500, improved airflow and a few other tricks bring output to 500 horsepower and 418 lb-ft of torque, up 20 hp and 3 lb-ft over the Mustang GT.

A Tremec six-speed manual transmission with a transmission-oil cooler is standard on the Dark horse but — sigh — that's not what we went with. We opted for the $1,595 10-speed automatic transmission. There was some debate internally about which transmission to go with, but our instrumented testing has repeatedly shown that the automatic is the quicker option. We will be using the Dark Horse for some Edmunds U-Drags races, so getting the quickest available car won the debate.

The Dark Horse looks sharp, with dark accents across the front fascia, dark badging and a trunk-mounted spoiler. The grille has two large intakes, feeding air to help cool both the engine and brakes. Keeping temperatures in check was important given the Dark Horse's track-focused nature. The car includes an auxiliary engine oil cooler, a rear axle cooler, a lighter radiator and more powerful fans.

Brakes come by way of Brembo, with six-piston calipers up front and four-piston calipers in the rear. The 13.9-inch front rotors are larger than those on the Mustang GT. The rear sway bar has been beefed up, as has the suspension. The Dark Horse comes with Ford's MagneRide adaptive dampers, and power is sent to the rear wheels through a Torsen limited-slip differential. All Dark Horses ride on 19-inch wheels with Pirelli rubber.

Because we wanted the fastest possible version, we opted for the $5,495 Dark Horse Handling package. It includes a larger, lower front splitter and a Gurney flap for the rear wing, both of which are removable with a few screws. The springs are stiffer, the sway bars have been further enlarged, and the 19-inch wheels get Pirelli Trofeo RS tires, a more aggressive compound than the standard Dark Horse. The wheels are wider, too, with wider 305-section front and 315-section rear tires.

Rather than waiting for a 2025 model-year vehicle to arrive at a dealer, we found a 2024 Dark Horse Premium sitting on a lot in Orange County. It's a loaded model with $1,995 Recaro seats that are very similar to the chairs in our old GT500. All in, we got our car for $74,155; prices for the 2025 models are slightly higher. For reference, we paid $81,280 for our 2020 Shelby GT500. If we'd opted for the carbon-fiber wheels, the Dark Horse would have crested that figure by several thousand dollars.

Why did we get it?

It's not hard to see the Dark Horse's appeal. I'll refer back to my original point about Mustangs generally being awesome to have in the garage. This is called a One-Year Road Test, but we kept the old Shelby for much longer than that simply because it was fun to drive and we kept finding more things to do with it. Even with the abysmal fuel economy, it rarely stayed parked for long.

Yes, the Dark Horse isn't as powerful as the GT500, but we can fix that with a few modifications. Want to see how the Dark Horse performs with a Ford Performance supercharger bolted to the top? Check back in the not-too-distant future.