I was driving the Mustang Mach-E again. Soon after, Darren Palmer, head of EVs at Ford, asks if we journalists have any questions. I do. Why does it steer like it does? The wheel is heavy, with gloopy inertia, and unnecessarily forceful self-centring. Why didn’t they let the Ford of Europe engineers have at it? I knew Palmer wouldn’t gloss over the issue. He used to be one of those European Ford engineers, developing the best-steering mass-made cars of all. He answered that yes, the Europe crew have now been let loose on the Mach-E, and a new steering calibration will be coming as an over the air update soon.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Ford chose the initial assistance programming just to make the Mach-E feel more like the V8 Mustangs, and Palmer doesn’t disagree. The first customer cars also got a pretty tail happy ESP calibration, and he says Mach-E drivers thought that was a bit (my word here) inappropriate, so that’s been dialled back already.