Fit and Finish - How's your's holding up?

StangOwner2B is on track with what I'm getting at. I will look into renting a Mustang for maybe a weekend.

I did test drive both a GT manual and V6, the first two to come into the Causeway Ford here back in late October '04.

From a driving perspective, with the GT, in 40* dry weather the car hooked incredibly on asphalt with only slight rear kick-out to the left, but what made me really impressed was that the car didn't make me feel unconfident. Some cars are just squirrelly if you get on them and that effects your confidence in controlling the car or the car controlling you. The Mustang suspension, stock was quite a confidence builder.

I haven't owned any other Mustangs, I've been around and raced people who own and work on them. I know the Mustang wasn't designed to be a luxo-ride, but the Ford say it's a $30k interior in a $20k car. So I was expecting some better quality materials.

One of the first pitfalls I noticed was the placement of the seat belts. You pretty much have to choke yourself to reach around, like you normally would in any other car to grab the seat belt and bring it around your torso.

The other things that struck me as kinda "eh", was the steering wheel design. I know what they were going for, but it looks like a over-sized Playskool wheel with big center button. If they put some other coincentric rings around the center emblem or something to break up that large center button, I don't think it'd look so strange to me. Maybe someone will make a aftermarket billet wheel that will retrofit.

Also, the shifter for the automatic..ugh.. come on Ford, it's plastic in a crummy spot. I hope B&M or Hurst makes some sort of bolt-in replacement that is a bit more sturdy and signifies some more of the drive-train's brawn rather then cheapo plastic trying to impersonate aluminum.

Another thing I did was to tap on the top of the dash board, just sounded like a hollow plastic can lol

The door panel speaker grilles look a bit gaudy to me, as opposed to a nice contoured panel with matching contoured-to-match grilles.

Most all of you would likely say I'm splitting hairs, granted this stuff isn't going to stop me from buying the car when the wallet and credit score is ready, but I was just curious how the rest of you felt and how your entirely new Mustang has been holding up to real world use.

I still believe that Ford should carry over some of the materials used on the Mazda line. Why not get a great performing, $20-$30k Mustang with solid interior materials from a sub-$20k car that's made in the same factory? It would bring the Mustang upto another level in terms of overall quality.

heck, not for nothing to anyone here that owns one, but even the new Vette, at $60k+ when you get into the interior, aside from the fancy door-locks and pretty looking gauges, makes you wonder where all the money went.

Ok, I'm gonna take someone's advice and rent a Hertz Mustang for a weekend and see how it goes. For Friday till Sunday is $107, or $44.99/day.

So, maybe before snow hits I'll rent one for a few days and see how I like it overall.