Epic fail: the 1980 Ford Mustang V8

Many wise, knowledgeable car enthusiasts will sagely inform you the third gen ‘fox body’ Mustang is anything but a fail. They will inform you that, in the near half century since its launch, it has proven itself an ultimate tuner car: cheap to buy, easy to work on, straightforward to boost to big horsepower. The fox body Mustang, they will tell you, is a legend.

Epic Fail is here to tell you that these people are wrong. Yes, the Gen 3 Mustang has indeed proven itself a fine platform for modification, but that’s just proof of how badly Ford ballsed it up first time round. No one’s ever felt the need to modify the Mona Lisa.

OK, some third-gen Mustangs weren’t entirely awful. But some really were. Case in point is 1980’s 4.2-litre V8 model. This hydrocarbon gargling, fire breathing beast churned out – ready for this? – a grand total of 118bhp. That’s a specific output of 29bhp per litre. If your 1.0-litre Ford Fiesta made such pitiful power density, it... well, it wouldn’t actually move. 

There were, in Ford’s defence, some mitigating circumstances behind the V8’s flaccid firepower. In the wake of the 1979 oil crisis, the Blue Oval tried to figure out a way to squeeze some extra economy from its hoggish 5.0-litre V8, and came up with the not especially ingenious solution of simply sleeving it down, and hoping that’d do. It didn’t. If the 4.2 did save its owners on fuel bills, that was simply because they couldn’t be bothered to drive it.

The other issue afflicting the third gen Mustang was its deeply gawky design, which with modern eyes appear to be the work of either a) primitive AI or b) whatever they used to build Erling Haaland. Ford boasted it had set three separate design teams in competition to come up with its design, thus offering proof that too many cooks really do spoil the muscle car broth. At least it gave all those future tuners plenty to improve upon.