The Mustang Mach-E Rally Is The Most Hoonable Electric Car You Can Buy

I’ve been thinking a lot about bump stops lately. I know that’s a weird way to start a review of the 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E Rally, but humor me. Bump stops ensure that the last bit of rebound and compression is smooth and easy. Without them the shocks can slam against the mounting points, resulting in a terrible ride and four sets of crapped-out mounts that you’ll have to figure out how to weld back together. I know this because before I got a set of 3D-printed bump stops from Perry Parts, this is exactly what I had to do on my lifted racing Miata.

These days, manufacturers are making fancy-pants active shocks with sophisticated electronic bump stops. It just so happens the 2024 Mustang Mach-E Rally is equipped with Ford’s MagneRide suspension and I got to experience all the e-bump stop goodness at DirtFish rally school outside of Seattle, Washington.

[Full disclosure: Ford flew up me up to Seattle and let me play in the dirt with its newest, rally-inspired electric car. There was food and a hotel, but nothing really matters after I mention the playing in dirt part.]

Why Does This Exist?

First, a bit about the Mach-E Rally. While it has a 1-inch lift over the standard Mach E, the minimum running ground clearance is still just 5.8 inches. The front splitter gets a tweak for a slightly–and I do mean slightly–better approach angle. but don’t look for any rear bumper modifications for an improved departure angle. The Rally doesn’t have any more suspension travel either, so you can’t take this thing out to the desert and hoon around like the nimrod you are. No, this is purely a rally car, meant for flat dirt or gravel roads without whoops or rocks to get in the way.

That’s not to say there aren’t any nods to getting dirty. There are skid plates protecting the front and rear motors, although only the front plate is made of metal. The rear is fabricated out of plastic. There is a recovery hook in the front and paint protector on the rocker panel to keep your pretty paint job from getting pitted by gravel. A cool rear spoiler, 19-inch rally-inspired white wheels, and integrated fog lamps in the front round out the Rally’s exterior.

Unless you’ve been living under an automotive rock these past few years, you know that the Mustang Mach-E is Ford’s answer to the question none of us asked, “What if we made an electric SUV inspired by the Mustang?” I’m not here to debate the ol’ “Is it really a Mustang” question–it’s not and I will accept no other answer–but I can tell you this thing has some pretty impressive specs.

The Rally trim goes hard with 480 horsepower and 700 pound-feet of torque out of its dual motors. The extended-range 91 kWh battery can store enough power for 265 miles of range, although you won’t get that on any kind of rallycross course.

At a DC fast charger the Mach-E can accept a charge of up to 150 kW, but remember it won’t charge that fast for the whole session. Still, Ford says the Rally can go from a 10- to 80-percent charge in 36 minutes. For home charging the Mach-E comes with an 11.5 kW onboard charger. Not the quickest out there but certainly fast enough to get a full battery overnight.

Here at DirtFish I really don’t care about charging times or battery capacity. I’m wondering how a 5,000-pound vehicle with Michelin CrossClimate 2 all-season tires–more on those later–is going to respond to 700 pound-feet of instant torque on this sloppy rallycross course because of course it’s raining.

Rally All The Things

I buckle in and set the car to RallySport drive mode. This optimizes steering for control on loose surfaces, nixes any lift-off brake regeneration, calibrates torque delivery to be super-linear and loosens up the traction control and ABS nannies. Granted, it doesn’t turn them all the way off, but there is definitely some playfulness here.

As for the MagneRide, the biggest change here in RallySport mode is the addition of the electronic bump stops. This is done by changing the viscosity of the fluid inside the shocks. See, the Magne in MagneRide stands for magneto-rheological fluid. There are little magnetic particles mixed in with the damper fluid. When a current is applied, those particles cling together, changing the consistency of the fluid to make the shock harder or softer.

But, the Mach-E Rally goes a few steps further. After all, we want bump stops at the very extreme end of the dampening process, right? The MagneRide shocks take the speed of damping into consideration. I spoke with vehicle dynamics engineer Matt Hubbard who shed some light on the subject.

“RallySport mode ramps up the damping in mid- and high-speed events. Mid-speed damper velocity would be something like one-half to one meter per second. A pothole could be as quick as two or three meters per second.”

At a certain position, an electric current gets added to the fluid, making it thicker. As that position increases, so does the current, up to a maximum of 5 amps.

“EBS is a separate part of the algorithm. We can control how the ramp-up happens and when it happens,” said Hubbard.

What does that mean from behind the wheel? It means I can slide this fatty-fat EV around corners, loading up the outside shocks with all the weight physics can distribute. Any undulations in the course mid-corner are taken up by the electronic bump stops so I don’t even feel them. I just add a bit of throttle to get the all-wheel drive Mach-E to rotate, then add more of that linear electric torque on corner exit. There is no waiting for turbos to spool, no worrying about gear selection– just point and shoot.

Of course, I am doing a fair amount of countersteering here. This is my first time in the car and even though I have an instructor with me, I’m basically guessing what kind of speed it can handle. I’m often a bit too aggressive on corner entry, causing me to panic-lift, sending weight to the front and the rear coming around. Then I’m back on the gas and countersteering, all four tires trying their best to maintain grip on the sloppy and muddy gravel course.

What’s In A Tire?

Ah yes, the OEM all-season tires. Ford has to consider on-road performance as range as well as traction on a rallycross course and there isn’t one tire that will do all three. Michelin does offer some rally tires with a radius that could clear the 15-inch front brake rotors, but they are not DOT-approved. DirtFish runs Hoosier tires on their Subaru BRZ instruction cars but the largest wheel diameter you can get for a gravel tire is 15 inches. You can find 16-, 17-, and 18-inch tires for asymmetric and wet tarmac, but not for gravel. And Hoosier gives this explicit warning: “Hoosier Racing Tires meet DOT requirements for marking and performance only and are NOT INTENDED FOR HIGHWAY USE.”

So while the off-road world has brought us dual-personality tires like the new BFGoodrich KO3 or the Falken Wildpeak shoes, which can easily get you to work or through the Rubicon Trail, it looks like rallycross folks who want to really send it will need to search for a set of dedicated rally tires and wheels for the Mach-E Rally that can clear the brake rotors.

Driving the Mach-E Rally on the pavement with the CrossClimate 2 tires is a pleasant experience, with plenty of grip on the wet tarmac in the surrounding town of Snoqualmie. You can drive it in RallySport mode on the street but I wouldn’t recommend it. The steering is way too heavy to be enjoyable–and I’m saying this as someone who enjoys a weighted steering feel–and you don’t get any of those sweet, sweet free electrons through one-pedal driving. Unbridled mode might not have the electronic bump stops, but the MagneRide dampers do a fine job here handling tight turns and road undulations.

The Mach-E Rally also gets all the advanced driver’s aids you could ever want like blind-spot monitoring, adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping assist. Also standard on this trim is Ford’s hands-off/eyes-up BlueCruise semi-autonomous driving technology. This is not a self-driving car–there are no self-driving cars on the market today no matter what Uncle Elon says–but the Mach-E will change lanes on its own after a driver-initiated signal. It also knows enough to push to one side of the lane or the other if a semi-truck or RV starts getting a little too friendly in the neighboring lane.

The Best Rally EV You Can Buy

You’ll be hard-pressed to find another electric SUV that can do the same things as the Mach-E Rally when the tarmac switches to dirt. It’s possible that the new Hyundai Ioniq 5 N could be a contender with a good set of rally tires, but its front brakes are even bigger so finding a wheel might be a chore.

The upcoming Rivian R3X may also be a worthy adversary, but we don’t know much about it save for a video on Rivian’s website showing it getting all slidey on a dirt course.

However, you’ll pay a fairly steep price for all this fun. The 2024 Mustang Mach E Rally starts at just under $60,000 and that does not include any destination fees. Folks who are reasonable with their money won’t likely want to spend that kind of coin and immediately risk damage by slamming it into a tree at the Oregon Trail Rally or some such, but I know how you Autopian readers are. I expect those of you who buy this to immediately hoon it as instructed. You’ll have a blast