Base Model/Standard Interior

[shogun32]

And if 8% is the best someone can do then they shouldn’t be buying a new car of any kind.

Not sure that benchmark is going to hold up. Short of cash of course, that may be the new floor in consumer financing. The people willing and able to pay cash is a TINY fraction of the current ownership. Cash is of course a GOOD THING, but we as a society have gone absolutely MAD for cheap credit. And are going to pay the piper bigly.

Is Ford going to survive as a going concern when they have to slash 40-60% off their prices so meet the consumer where they are? In some sense they did this with Maverick. Can they sustain it when Mustang reverts to a 20-35,000 car in full-zoot trim? Ditto F150 crash from 50+K to 35K?

My traditional ceiling has been 25k for a new auto. I let that come up to 35-37k for the GT/PP1 and SS/1LE cause they were "speshual".

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[TrackMustang]

I'm John the Baptiste, crying out in the forum wilderness. I'll leave the role of Messiah to someone else - I'm not much for suffering for the betterment of (undeserving) mankind.

In any event you conflate big money, and establishment with 'rightness'. Clearly that appeal to authority has lost every shred of it's pretense. It would be fun to interview and analyze if the auto industry even employs human-factors guys or designers of the classic bent. Or has design decisions just devolved to chasing what everyone else is doing without understanding if the change has an actual benefit to the TASK at hand. Human natural state is sheeple - blindly and unquestionably doing what they are told to do. Few are the people willing to jut out like a boulder in a river torrent.

Despite that I agree with most of that, what’s to say the real issue isn’t that you conflate your opinion and the establishment of rightness? Further more the possibility that you simply fail to see the progression because your confuse what WAS right with what IS right, or even better; what WILL BE right. Maybe right isn’t the word, maybe it’s better. Maybe it’s more aesthetically pleasing, maybe it’s easier for the human eye too observe and absorb the data this way than it is on analog dials that you prefer…

My point in all this, is these companies have the money to find the answers to these question, whereas you know your personal preference. Saying they’re “following” others is easier than acknowledging that your opinion isn’t the best opinion.

I equate it to manual transmissions. I love them. I always will. I have no interest in an automatic and I’ll fight for how stupid automatics are. However, I am wrong and the change is coming (already here) wether I like it or not.

 

[shogun32]

My opinion and $1.25 will get you bad cup of coffee from 7-11...

But you don't have to be a design guru to observe everybody is just copying everybody else. One year it's triple element headlights with LED 'angle' as eyebrows/surround, and it metastasizes into a cancer across multiple brands. Next year it'll be some other stupid fad somebody cooked up and got enough 'focus groups' to agree with them, and so it too spreads like chicken pox.

Having run out of good or useful ideas, they're reaching for all kinds of silliness. How many people would actually say they didn't buy a S550 because it's shape wasn't chiseled every which way? How many said they won't consider it until it had 2 iPads and could play games and had this and that eye candy? I get that both those camps aren't zero. Mustang adoption is crashing but I dare them to produce the research that lays the preponderance of blame on those 2 items.

Is Dodge creaming Mustang because it has Track Pages and some token eye candy? Or is it because it's got facets, LED squinty eyes, and a giant center iPad? No? Then that must not be the reason... If Dodge had any sense they'd reverse their stance on ICE Charger/Challenger and bury Ford and the Mustang.

I happen to have studied HCI and industrial design and of course remain a total nobody. I have a nose for good and bad design. Again, not saying anybody should be looking me up for advice. I may well be

You are out there like fucking Pluto, man. You're gone!

It comes from looking at zillion different offerings and seeing what does and doesn't work.

Ferrari still has designers on staff who care about functional beauty and integration. Where is Ford's team? Did they get cost-center'd out of existence by C-level aspiring to mediocrity? Even something as basic as panel fit keeps getting brought up because Ford doesn't give a sh*t about doing the MOST FUNDAMENTAL job right or well, when their "cheap-ass" competition can and do execute.

badly executed "tech" isn't going to save your butt. Even if by some miracle Ford's Tech didn't suck, it still won't save them.

Unless you're a 13yr old boy, eye-candy has a shelf life of about 90 seconds. More often than not it becomes an irritant and hinderance once subjected to daily use in sub-optimal conditions.

 

[Bikeman315]

Ferrari still has designers on staff who care about functional beauty and integration.

Funny you mention Ferrari. I was just reading about their new $400k SUV. I’m guessing the right side screen is only for the passenger to use?

 

[shogun32]

Funny you mention Ferrari. I was just reading about their new $400k SUV. I’m guessing the right side screen is only for the passenger to use?

given that layout, yes. If it wasn't intended as such, then this would be an example of seriously WTF bone-headed decision. Everybody is capable of egregious design sins from time to time.

I would frankly ask Ferrari to explain what possessed them to do the above. What problem where they trying to solve? If the word 'driver' passed their lips they deserve a proper thrashing with a 2x4.

My guess it would be some nonsense about everybody else having 2 screens but we didn't like putting it in the middle so we went with some kind of symetric hump (envious of Mustang?) because trying to fit the features into the driver's screen wasn't possible.

And my retort would have been, have you considered putting an iPad in a fleece-lined pouch between the console and seat with an app? You do your fiddling and swiping crap, and then the driver puts it away and off they go. What do you want to bet it hadn't occurred to them to change the freaking paradigm?

Is that an X-box/PlayStation detachable controller in the middle of the dash?
Any conversation with Marketing that starts with
"but we need"
"but user want"
should be met with a stern 'NO'. Only one in 1000 should be met with a "maybe... but NO".

The word 'NO' is the most underutilized word in the English language.

 

[Spectre]

How many folks (on here) are going to lay down $44k-$55K for a heavily modified S550 GT financed at 8%?

Straight cash, homey.

I'm John the Baptiste, crying out in the forum wilderness. I'll leave the role of Messiah to someone else - I'm not much for suffering for the betterment of (undeserving) mankind.

John the Baptiste was beheaded...

 

[Ace]

Guys pulling out pictures of dated models of highend brands is not making any point here. All carmakers are going full gimmicky with displays. Also you just have to recognize that the Mustang has a starting price around $30k, so you are stricly limited how complex your dashboard is gonna get. In my mind I always think the price difference between Dark Horse with Handling Package and a C8 Z51 is not that big, but comparing the highend model of a $30k car with the entrylevel model of a $65k+ car is just not fair.

Here are more reasonable competitors. Material quality beside the only one from the below I kinda like is the Z, the other ones definitely don't look better than the S650 interior. I think one strechted display frame actually looks way nicer than some glued on vertical tablet like we have in the Mach-E
Golf R

M240i

i30N

Nissan Z

Supra

 

[lcbrownz]

You should quit your job and be a car interior developer/designer. These multi billion dollar corporations with hundreds of years of combined experience could learn a lot from you.

Actually, bean counters (in the automotive industry) have more power than car designers. Thousands of new car designs get trashed every year by bean counters saying that's too expensive to produce or that will undercut our bottom line.

 

[lcbrownz]

A lot. Just you wait and see. The orders sub forum is going to go nuts. And if 8% is the best someone can do then they shouldn’t be buying a new car of any kind.

Interest rates are going up today by the Fed.

 

[lcbrownz]

Guys pulling out pictures of dated models of highend brands is not making any point here. All carmakers are going full gimmicky with displays. Also you just have to recognize that the Mustang has a starting price around $30k, so you are stricly limited how complex your dashboard is gonna get. In my mind I always think the price difference between Dark Horse with Handling Package and a C8 Z51 is not that big, but comparing the highend model of a $30k car with the entrylevel model of a $65k+ car is just not fair.

Here are more reasonable competitors. Material quality beside the only one from the below I kinda like is the Z, the other ones definitely don't look better than the S650 interior. I think one strechted display frame actually looks way nicer than some glued on vertical tablet like we have in the Mach-E
Golf R

M240i

i30N

Nissan Z

Supra

Even the new electric Cadillac Lyric uses a large OLED display panel, but its height is not above the dash.

 

[SINBUSTER007]

ace,
glad you put those picts in of the dash. i know and most of us know that tech is here to stay, i think that point is understood, but what we (at least i) have been talking about on this forum and others is that the design element of the interior of the mustang is nowhere to be found. i think they said lets just build a shelf and put 2 tablets on top and call it a day.....
that is really what it looks like. the ones you show from VW, Supra, etc at least look like they tried to incorporate the tech screens into the "flow" of the dash and i for one would accept that. i think my 6yr old could have designed a better dash layout than Ford....

the old saying, you cant throw a frog into boiling water because he will jump out, but if you put the frog into cool water and heat it up, eventually the frog will get COOKED!
ford is doing this with the masses, putting these "bits" in subtle so that way when they decide to go full EV on all of us, we have nothing to say because we have been cooked like the frog!

 

[Bikeman315]

Interest rates are going up today by the Fed.

Damn, didn’t hear that. Sucks!

 

[Bikeman315]

Guys pulling out pictures of dated models of highend brands is not making any point here. All carmakers are going full gimmicky with displays. Also you just have to recognize that the Mustang has a starting price around $30k, so you are stricly limited how complex your dashboard is gonna get. In my mind I always think the price difference between Dark Horse with Handling Package and a C8 Z51 is not that big, but comparing the highend model of a $30k car with the entrylevel model of a $65k+ car is just not fair.

Here are more reasonable competitors. Material quality beside the only one from the below I kinda like is the Z, the other ones definitely don't look better than the S650 interior. I think one strechted display frame actually looks way nicer than some glued on vertical tablet like we have in the Mach-E

I wonder if there might be an opportunity for an aftermarket dashboard cover. If done properly it could quite a lot of folks down.

 

[TrackMustang]

Actually, bean counters (in the automotive industry) have more power than car designers. Thousands of new car designs get trashed every year by bean counters saying that's too expensive to produce or that will undercut our bottom line.

Are you serious dude…

Please go look up the word sarcastic and hopefully we can avoid a response like this in the future.

 

[Ace]

ace,
glad you put those picts in of the dash. i know and most of us know that tech is here to stay, i think that point is understood, but what we (at least i) have been talking about on this forum and others is that the design element of the interior of the mustang is nowhere to be found. i think they said lets just build a shelf and put 2 tablets on top and call it a day.....
that is really what it looks like. the ones you show from VW, Supra, etc at least look like they tried to incorporate the tech screens into the "flow" of the dash and i for one would accept that. i think my 6yr old could have designed a better dash layout than Ford....

Currently we don't know if the image in the topic is actually the base model. From what I could find it's just one of multiple concept pictures of the S650 interior that were released, so there is no confirmation if they really go for this dual tablet setup. If they do, it's really ugly and has every reason not to be liked.

But the interior that is confirmed with both displays being integrated into one big frame is not as nicely integrated as it could be, but imho not worse than the competition I posted.

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