New Undercarriage Shots of 2015 Mustang, with Production Valence and Exhaust

[Fenderaddict2]

Anyone else notice the floorpans in front of the IRS? Definitely an S197 floor pan. The stamped "frame rails" with the split midway down them and the air deflectors are definitely S197 floor pan give aways.

I'm beginning to think more and more that this might be a worked over S197 chassis. Fine by me so long as the IRS isn't compromised and it handles like a dream. Certainly would make "making it lighter" a little easier to accomplish since you already have detailed analysis of parts of the car and stresses in certain areas.

It would also keep costs down significantly.

EDIT: Gas tank also looks surprisingly S197 which again is fine by me since the S197 doesn't suffer from fuel starvation!

If it isn't a "worked over" S197 chassis then this is a mule to fool us all!

EDIT EDIT: I'm not sure the bracing we are seeing is Convertible bracing. It looks like it is the rear subframe bracing. Potentially something to keep the rear subframe from tweaking under hard launches which should eliminate wheel hop!

From my tour of the Mustang plant I was lead to believe a year ago that the new car would evolve the current chassis not replace it.

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[ArtRios87]

What can Ford do to improve over the current generation of Mustangs to make us want to go ahead and get a 2015. For once the new mustang could loose a few hundred pounds, increase the engine outputs by some 10% so that will be about 460 in the 5.0. I know Ford cares about us but what sells cars is a totally different formula and Ford knows that. So in order to keep selling mustangs they need to make a base model that takes away from the main competition the camaro. In order to do that they need the mustang to be a looker and I am sure they will deliver. Anyways I will probably be getting a 2016 Mustang 5.0 or even a cobra* if I have the means but I am not selling my current 2011 that's for sure.

 

[The Sarge]

From my tour of the Mustang plant I was lead to believe a year ago that the new car would evolve the current chassis not replace it.

Was this part of a supplier tour or something? If just a regular tour I find it hard to believe they would go into pretty closely guarded details such as that.

 

[FordBlueHeart]

^^^This is what I was thinking too.

 

[Overboost]

It was most likely the Mustang Alley plant tour last year.

 

[S550Boss]

Every new platform starts off as an "orphan" at one point as did the Alpha.

No it doesn't - not at all. The Alpha team built the car from the start for multiple uses and knew at least the first three users. It's development budget included funds from all those users, and all those users benefitted from the common architecture. So it wasn't built for a single use, only delivered sequentially. Now we have two on the market and are two years off from the third. And that's just what we know about. So at no point in it's development was it ever going to be an orphan.

If there is to be a D-class car built off the S550 (and it doesn't have to be a morbidly obese blob like the Taurus), nobody knows about it yet who is talking. But if there is then it means that much more development money is available for features on the S550. This means the Mustang would have parts and features available to it that it couldn't possibly justify financially on it's own. Such as increased use of aluminum and other alloys, more sophisticated suspension bits, engine features, etc.

This has happened before... The FOX platform was platform sharing at it's best for Ford. The Mark VII paid the bill for the 5.0 H.O. (according to press interviews of the time), although the F150 paid the bill for the basic engine. The Fox-based Continental paid for the new front suspension for the SVO and for the rear disc brakes. The replacement for the Fox, MN12, was supposed to be a shared platform and stopped early due to high costs and the plan to replace it early with DEW98. More recently the DEW98 paid for the basics of S197 - the floorpan, gas tank, and set the hard points (the rest sloughed off because the platform came to an end so there could be no sharing).

So if there is to be sharing, it will be Lincoln - a rich uncle with big pockets and high expectations. Sharing means a much larger budget, and it would be a huge benefit to the Mustang.

 

[Josh Painter]

[...]

Future Mustang platforms will have to be even more aluminum-intensive and even smaller and lighter to keep pace with making it's contribution to CAFE standards. The Mustang is not exempt from CAFE, it's a fleet-wide average, so the Mustang has to contribute to the fleet average in addition to the Focus et al. That's the purpose of the EcoBoost 4-cylinder Mustang and that's why it won't be a 350-HP screamer. 15 years from now, we'll probably see something along the lines of a 1.5 liter EcoBoost in the low end models of the car - probably with an electric hybrid assist (1.5EB +hybrid = ~300 HP). Nobody now wants this, but it's the future given the newly raised standards. No way around it. And a few V-8s will still be able to be sold then, very few.

Carbon Fiber will inevitably become more affordable, and we'll see it increasingly used in auto and trucks, particularly in performance cars where weight savings are critical. Research has shown that cutting a car's weight by 10 percent results in fuel economy gains of about 7 percent. Big Bro's 54.5-mpg CAFE standard kicks in come the year 2025, and carmakers realize they can't achieve the weight savings they need to meet the standard solely by using more aluminum.

Ford and Dow partnered up about a year and a half ago to develop new, less labor-intensive manufacturing processes to use carbon fiber in high-volume auto production. Their aim is to drastically cut the cost of using the composites. The collaboration should be bearing fruit in the second half of the decade. Not in time for the S550, but perhaps for its successor.

 

[mister.peabodyjunior]

Not only is carbon fiber expensive from a material perspective, but tooling and manufacturing is very expensive. The processes and tooling needed to produce carbon fiber parts, panels, etc is complicated when dealing with tight tolerances and minimal variation.

Carbon Fiber will inevitably become more affordable, and we'll see it increasingly used in auto and trucks, particularly in performance cars where weight savings are critical. Research has shown that cutting a car's weight by 10 percent results in fuel economy gains of about 7 percent. Big Bro's 54.5-mpg CAFE standard kicks in come the year 2025, and carmakers realize they can't achieve the weight savings they need to meet the standard solely by using more aluminum.

Ford and Dow partnered up about a year and a half ago to develop new, less labor-intensive manufacturing processes to use carbon fiber in high-volume auto production. Their aim is to drastically cut the cost of using the composites. The collaboration should be bearing fruit in the second half of the decade. Not in time for the S550, but perhaps for its successor.

 

[jjw]

Exactly. Thanks again Mr. P.
Check out what Gurit helped develop for Aston with the Sprint series of prepreg's and double sided nickel plated oil heated molds. I would think something like that would make more sense for mass production cars at a lower price point then say vacuum resin transfer or autoclaved prepreg, but that is still some incredibly expensive tooling. Consider having enough machines to support the production of maybe 3000 50-70k mustangs per year, vs something like 100 275k DBS's over 5 years? Ouch.

 

[bballr4567]

Is this the carbon blade IRS that was rumored? I know they have it on a few FWD vehicles and not sure if its been adapted for RWD.

 

[FStephenMasek]

The comments at the start about the flat black on the exhaust outlets ignore the paint on the red lights above the mufflers. It just seems to be part of the camouflage.

 

[Whiskey11]

Is this the carbon blade IRS that was rumored? I know they have it on a few FWD vehicles and not sure if its been adapted for RWD.

Definitely not... This IRS shares more in common with Ford's integral link setup than it does anything control blade at least from the pictures we have seen so far. Control Blade is all stamped steel pieces, this has at least an aluminum lower control arm. Trust me on this, you don't want a Control Blade under this Mustang. The fact that the Falcon did so well with it in Australia was more inspite of the design than because of it. It has some huge short comings in the performance world that they had to work around, not too much unlike the current live axle setup.

 

[NitroMustang65]

The comments at the start about the flat black on the exhaust outlets ignore the paint on the red lights above the mufflers. It just seems to be part of the camouflage.

Well that sucks :(

 

[OKCfan]

Definitely not... This IRS shares more in common with Ford's integral link setup than it does anything control blade at least from the pictures we have seen so far. Control Blade is all stamped steel pieces, this has at least an aluminum lower control arm. Trust me on this, you don't want a Control Blade under this Mustang. The fact that the Falcon did so well with it in Australia was more inspite of the design than because of it. It has some huge short comings in the performance world that they had to work around, not too much unlike the current live axle setup.

Based on the limited shots of the underside it definitely looks to share similar design as the ILIRS, perhaps some commonality with the AWD Fusion which shouldn't be too difficult to adapt for RWD use. I know this may go against what some people here would like to see but I hope one day this kind of commonality could make possible a RWD sedan possibly shared by Lincoln and Mustang. If not for the S550 maybe the next iteration.

 

[Whiskey11]

Based on the limited shots of the underside it definitely looks to share similar design as the ILIRS, perhaps some commonality with the AWD Fusion which shouldn't be too difficult to adapt for RWD use. I know this may go against what some people here would like to see but I hope one day this kind of commonality could make possible a RWD sedan possibly shared by Lincoln and Mustang. If not for the S550 maybe the next iteration.

My hope is that Lincoln develops itself as a brand into something desirable again. The biggest advantage the Mustang would gain from that partnership is reduced costs by spreading platform expenses with another car. See Fox based Mustangs.

Correct me if I am wrong but isnt the Mustang currently made in the same plant complex as the new Fusion? That would lend a lot of credability to the integral link connection since the Fusion was added to that plant for the 2013 model years.

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