Just like the one I'm waiting on too! Guess there will be a lot of Rapid Red GTs in the wild.
Thanks for your review. I so look forward to our GT. Hopefully early next year.Hi all! As I finally received my MachE, I can actually contribute my experience rather than just live vicariously through you all!!
Prologue:
Last Wednesday I received an email from Ford my Rapid Red GT was on it’s way to the dealer, by noon I had a text from my sales person at Interstate Ford here in Colorado (fantastic dealer experience…myself/family buy all our Fords from there) that my car arrived late Tuesday and I can come by Wednesday evening for pickup! Easy/fast closing with no problems with xplan pricing, Ford Options (with rebate), etc. The only hiccup was the pre-loaded profile I sent to the car never worked (sales person said it popped up when they were moving the car to the charger earlier in the day, but it never came back…guess I should have pushed it just before I turned the car on…if anyone knows how to reset and force a profile pre-load to work…let me know…I searched and found nothing). Drove it home Wednesday night and on Thursday morning promptly drove it to The Man Cave in Westminster CO for some front PPF, Ceramic and L/R front window tint (met another MachE owner dropping car off at the same time!). Friday afternoon I was driving an amazingly shiny and well protected GT around.
Took family for a ride and even let my teenager take it for a spin (highly supervised so he made very good choices ?). As he is a teenage self-proclaimed car person, I received kudos for the best color choice and he was very impressed with the car. He said it was perfectly OK to have a Pony logo on it!.
Anyone who I let drive (family) and take for a ride (friends) can’t wipe the grin off their face or refrain from colorful metaphors the first time you punch it up to 60+. I have been in a Model S once so experienced performance electric linear acceleration, but never as a driver. I still grin like a kid every time I punch it (hit the gas? Hit the go? pedal it? Still trying to figure out the natural substitute for “hit the gas” in my first EV…first world problem). My only stop light fun was on a double left getting onto the highway. A full sized SUV was on the inner left turn and thought he would easily muscle the lead car position for the merge to the highway. Not much effort needed to correct his thinking on that, even coming from a fairly slow turn on the outside of the double left.
I had already weeks ago planned to drive from N. Denver suburbs up to Cheyenne Wyo on Saturday to visit someone, so I was very stoked to be able to do a short road trip in my GT (around 230 miles as I had to make a stop in Greeley Colorado on my way up to Wyoming). Tapped “charge to 100%” in FordPass app and she was at 100% when I was ready to leave on Saturday.
Road Trip!:
The first segment: My wife wanted to drive, so she did the first 50 mile leg. Was fun to experience as a passenger and help her learn the ropes. She used the adaptive cruise a lot and liked it (our other car has it so it was familiar). She was giddy every time she punched it and would likely get in much trouble if she drove every day. We did charge for free on a Level 2 charger where I was dropping her off so got a few free miles for 30 minutes.
The second segment: My turn to drive! I drove up HWY 85 up to Cheyenne WY. Very nice 2-4 lane road with lots of speed limit changes. Used the smart adaptive cruise once I got speed-limit recognition working and set a tolerance I liked. The road goes through some small towns so speed changes a lot from 65 down to 35 as you roll through. The car seamlessly adjusted for the changes. I wished it would start the deceleration about 5 seconds before you pass the speed limit sign so you were closer to the new speed limit as you pass sign. Cops do like to catch you right as the limit changes in these small towns.
I could gush for hours, but overall the car handles extremely well. Love the feel, handling, and comfort. It is not luxury ride but that is not what I expected. No regrets waiting for the GT trim/capabilities (and zero regrets for not splurging for PE). The wheels are better in person and am all in on liking them now (had several complements on the wheels though wheels are very personal preference I know). This is a very well-built vehicle and I see myself being happy for years to come. Dabbled between unbridled and engaged on the trip. Engaged seems best for casual driving/commuting. I can see as I hone my feel for the acceleration as I will get highly dependent on the instant acceleration as I drive (not always speeding but to get to desired speed quickly) much like a motorcycle if you can relate to that.
The third segment: This segment was extra fun for a lot of reasons, so let me break down some of my experience driving down I-25 from Cheyenne back to Denver.
BlueCruise Experience
I-25 is a BlueCruise highway, so it kicked in (mostly) on my way home. It is a bit unsettling and awkward to not have your hands on the wheel. Since you are watching the road anyway (and the car IS watching you watch the road), unless you are doing something like fiddling with the touch screen, it just feels natural to keep your hands on the wheel.
But I do have more concerns on the BlueCruise than I would have wished I had. When it worked, it worked as advertised, but here is where I will be critical:
Verdict for now: Will dabble in BC when in good conditions and hope for improvements with updates.
- BlueCruise (BC) just shuts off from time to time without telling you why. It really needs to say why it is disengaging on the center cluster (your not watching road, hard curve, sensor problem, obscured camera, etc.). It would just keep randomly dropping back to hands-on smart adaptive for no apparent reason which was annoying.
- Has an uncomfortable a bias to the right side of the lane. More often than not it seems to let the car stay more to the right edge of the lane, not centered. This really bugged me in the left and center lanes, less so in the right lane. I don’t notice this on normal adaptive, but I may be manually offsetting. Will continue to monitor and make sure it is not an alignment drift issue the car is fighting (don’t think so as I don’t feel drift when on full manual steering).
- I hit the end of a rainstorm when almost to Denver, so the road conditions changed suddenly. It kept BC on as the rain started (I put hands on anyway ready to take action) and once it could not read lines on wet pavement it disengaged as one would hope.
- Did not do well when the left lane went from 2 lanes to 3 lanes: When my left lane broke into left and center lanes as it transitioned to a three-lane highway, the car jerked hard to the new middle lane once it decided which lane to pick up and I reflex-grabbed the wheel to make sure it was not getting crazy.
- Last item was one of those rare real-world situations. In 2-lane 45 MPH traffic on a 65 MPH section, the car was doing really well in BC in slowdown/speed up traffic (I was in left lane and BC made it easy just to chill until things opened up again). Uh-Oh: I saw coming up behind me a guy on a Harley going down the middle between the two lanes. I grabbed the wheel but let the car stay in BC to see what it would do. The car did not seem to sense the close fly-by on the right at all other than the blind-spot detector going on. The car was (per 2nd bullet) a little to the right of my lane and I expected the car to sense/see that something was coming up close on right rear and nudge the car more to the left side of my lane to help avoid any collision when hands free mode is on.
Charging Experience
Did my first Level 3 charge on a quick stop into Target on Electrify America (EA). Tried Plug & Charge first and it failed. Tried on two different stations. I had only done the Blue Oval network sign up on Friday I think, so assuming it takes time to bridge/load to Electrify America servers after the first setup. Will try again next road trip. I use the EA app though and it charged nicely for 15 minutes while I was in the store for 31% add.
One-Pedal (1P) Driving
I am trying it out 1P. Despite getting more curmudgeonly as I age, I am still open to new things/ways until I can judge for myself. Dabbled a little on this trip. I think I will like it for in town normal commute type driving. But I don't like it on the highway, as when you disengage the cruise it quickly starts decelerating and it is hard to get the pedal just right for the smooth transition. But I admit, as I start to get used to it, it feels more natural than I would have thought.
Epilogue:
Sorry for long post, but making up for not writing much for the last year or so (just a few replies here an there) as I am no EV expert, engineer or owned other performance cars. I hope this was interesting. Sorry no tests or draggy outputs (first 0-60 no rollout was around 4 seconds when I had the sales guy time it on the pre-close drive).
One last cautionary tale for new buyers: Follow the check lists you can find on this site as much as you can despite your excitement to close and get driving. I missed some paint bubbling on the back right fender that the shop caught when doing the ceramic coating. They also found some easy to miss paint damage from the travel-protection adhesive sheets being on the paint WAY too long as the car sat waiting for chips in Mexico (they could not get it off despite various effort…the adhesive damaged the paint). I expect to get a rear bumper replacement for the paint bubbling and adhesive damage, but it has to cleared through service Monday as a warranty item. So check that paint carefully, especially if the car was sitting for a long time after manufacturing waiting for chips. And yes, before someone posts about the picture, some new employee messed up and put on the front plate holder when I confirmed 10 different times they would not (their policy is not to do that on Mustangs overall). GM of the dealership agreed to replace the bumper.
Awesome write up! I picked up my Rapid Red MME GT from Phil at Interstate Ford the morning after you. He commented that he had to do a double take because we chose the same color GT and share the same name. What a small world! Definitely a fun car for sure.
Thanks and congrats!! I saw your car when I came in. Hoping they learned from mine and did not drill the plate holder!
I think that if you can "hang up" a mobile phone and "roll up" the windows in your car, you can still "hit the gas" even in an electric car.
Hola! Finally had a moment to take a picture for you. This was a thing I checked when I took delivery as it was on the cool checklist I got from this forum. The windshield/roof looked even and consistent. I remember seeing what bad looked like many months ago and this did not look like the bad fit. Hope my untrained eye was right...if not please straighten me out!
The "right side bias" I mentioned seemed to be a bit of the slow drift ping-pong you are thinking of. It would drift right and come back to center, repeat. My friend who got a new Rav4 with adaptive cruise said he noticed the same ping-pong effect in his car.
Very nice car, hope to see you around CO sometime! Glad Interstate treated you well, I had a good experience at SilTerHar, and I’ve heard Barbies has been good to folks too.
