These Ford Mustang Concepts Are Dog Water

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We’ve seen several automotive publications express excitement over what quite frankly are dog water Ford Mustang concepts designed by international students. We get these kids probably have no idea what America’s pony car is really all about, but the fact Ford then showcased these design concepts and will be building full-scale models of each is cause for concern.

Ford gets embarrassed by Porsche unintentionally.

Ford held a design contest in collaboration with China’s College for Creative Studies, which expanded to other countries like Germany, we guess to show off how cosmopolitan the Blue Oval has become. That’s fine, but none of the three finalist designs are truly recognizable as the pony car so many love.

The first is called the Mustang Mach-S Concept and it looks like the C7 Corvette and Porsche Panamera had a love child. There’s absolutely nothing Mustang about its shooting brake shape, which is supposed to be more practical for road trips.

It’s not that the design is bad, it’s that it doesn’t fit with the Mustang aesthetic or philosophy at all.

The Mustang Hyper Tandem Concept looks like those crazy Hot Wheels cars we played with as kids, only an automaker is touting this as a possibility now. Designed as more of an endurance racer, other than the taillights and badge, we couldn’t peg this thing as a Mustang (which we could also say about the Mach-E).

Why couldn’t Ford launch a new model line like this? What’s the point of slapping a pony badge on this thing? This feels cheap and disingenuous. We think people are becoming increasingly wary of this sort of thing as automakers seem more willing to rob the past to sell the half-baked modern vehicles.

Then there’s the Mustang Super Utility Concept, something which looks straight out of a gritty sci-fi movie like Blade Runner or maybe Robocop. It’s apparently supposed to be an off-roader, which you could’ve fooled us with the low ride height.

What we want to know is why Ford would make an off-road Mustang that looks like this melted candy bar on wheels when it has the Bronco lineup? We’re not going to applaud this thing like the trained seals are doing, because it’s objectively stupid and ugly.

One would think after the whole Probe debacle, which was supposed to be the new Mustang, Ford would’ve learned its lesson. But more recently it applied the Mustang name to the Mach-E grocery getter, so we don’t have a lot of faith these concepts won’t foreshadow some weird vehicle that’s nothing like the Mustang wearing its badge.

Images via Ford

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