Certain cars are more than mere steel, engine and glass; they are icons. The Mustang is for sure one of those. And icons are able to reinvent themselves all the time. Ford just presented the first new performance Mustang variant in more than two decades — the 2024 Mustang Dark Horse.
With sinister looks and a specially modified 5.0-liter V8 – the most powerful 5.0-liter V8 ever, generating 500 horsepower¹ – Mustang Dark Horse expands the lineup and sets a new benchmark for American street and track performance that could only come in a Mustang.
To enhance the extreme power of this car, Pirelli created tailor made versions of its P Zero tires. The base Dark Horse puts the power down via Pirelli P Zero tires (PZ4) with staggered wheels (19-inch-by-9.5-inch front and 19-inch-by-10-inch rear wheels). While versions equipped with the Handling Package benefit from the brand-new Pirelli P Zero Trofeo RS: a tire that delivers the most performance of the entire Pirelli road range and is also approved for track driving.
It uses Formula 1 construction techniques to apply multiple compounds across the tread surface. The result is improved grip in wet and dry conditions, reduced tram-lining, and more consistent performance as the tire wears.
This tire also inherits all the attributes of the P Zero Trofeo R, improving performance in the dry and enhancing the drivability in the wet, as well as providing more consistent handling during sports driving.
To suit the specific characteristics of the car, Pirelli has developed a bespoke version of the P Zero Trofeo RS for the Ford Mustang Dark Horse, featuring a harder compound on the inner part of the tread to improve the steering feeling and the car balance and a softer one on the external section to maximize the performance and the lap time on track (multi-compound tread technology.)
“The building process is a new process that is partially a spin-off of the Formula 1 process which allows us to use more than one compound in both the width and the thickness of the tread,” Davide Conti, Pirelli North American R&D Director, explained. “So in this way, we can balance the grip levels that we want on the inside and outside of the tire and also manage the stiffness of the tread blocks in the different areas of the tire. This allowed us again to have to push further the trade-off between the wet the dry traction, also because the wear of this is definitely better than the previous product…”
The 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse strengthen an incredible and long-lasting collaboration: Pirelli and Ford have had indeed a strong relationship for more than 20 years, working together to develop tires specifically designed for a wide range of more than fifteen different Ford models. As we know, icons get along with other icons.
