Ford Mustang Dark Horse carbon wheels add $13,990 to the coupe's price
The Mustang7G forum has been watching the configurator on Ford’s retail site for Mustang updates. After noting a couple of configurator hiccups, the forum dug in to get one of the Mustang details we’ve been waiting on: the price of the carbon wheels for the Mustang Dark Horse.
The woven five-spoke rims cost $8,995 and require the $4,995 Handling Package, for a final price of $13,990. The Handling Package installs magnetic dampers, adjustable strut top mounts, a rear spoiler with a Gurney flap, 305-section front and 315-section rear tires on 19-inch wheels instead of the 255- and 275-section tires, a new chassis tune to make all those bits work together, and front tow hooks. It was a similar case with the 2022 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500, that car charging $18,500 for the Carbon Fiber Track Pack that came with carbon wheels and Michelin Pilot Cup 2 tires.
If someone ordered a Dark Horse with just these two options, the coupe would cost $74,855 after the $1,595 destination charge, the wheels alone being 19% of that sum.
Each wheel weighs about 20.1 pounds, the quartet shaving 37%, roughly 30 pounds, off the Dark Horse’s unsprung mass compared to the stock aluminum wheels. The inclusion of tow hooks is the telling aspect, since it implies drivers will paying for these rims are more likely to get beached somewhere like the gravel trap on the outside of a circuit corner. And that’s where these wheels are meant to shine. Australian company Carbon Revolution got the commission to produce these wheels for the Mustang Dark Horse after providing carbon hoops for the Shelby GT350 R, Shelby GT500, and Heritage Edition of the GT supercar. The firm also makes the optional carbon wheels for the Chevrolet Corvette Z06, which Chevy claims cut 41 pounds of unsprung mass from that car. Corvette chief engineer Tadge Juechter said the weight saving shows its benefit by shaving 1 to 1.5 seconds off a 2-minute lap. That’s the kind of ridiculous gap we expect from Max Verstappen driving the RB19 against the rest of the Formula 1 field, without the price of an F1 program.
Carbon Revolutions is said to have nine other OEM wheel programs in development, at least four of them for electric vehicles.
