USA
Ford revealed the Mustang Dark Horse SC Convertible on 14 August 2026, lowering it from a crane at Mustang Alley during the Woodward Dream Cruise in Ferndale, Michigan. It takes the supercharged 5.2-litre Predator V8 from the Dark Horse SC coupe, at 795 hp and 660 lb-ft (895 Nm) through a seven-speed dual-clutch, and puts it behind a fabric roof. Ford calls it the company’s first new open-air high-performance car in 13 years; the last was the Shelby GT500 convertible, which left the range in 2013.
What changes when the roof comes off
A car’s body shell resists twisting largely through its roof structure. Cut that away and torsional stiffness drops, which is why convertibles typically feel less precise on turn-in and pick up shudder over broken surfaces. The more power and grip the car has, the more that shows.
Ford’s answer here is not a heavier floor. It added a lightweight magnesium tower-to-tower brace across the top of the engine bay, tying the two suspension towers together so that loads fed in by one front wheel are shared with the other rather than flexing the structure between them. Magnesium keeps the mass penalty small, which matters on a car whose weight is already going up because of the folding roof mechanism.
The second change is in the damping. The convertible gets next-generation MagneRide adaptive dampers at all four corners, on springs and anti-roll bars specific to this model, and Ford has calibrated them softer than the coupe’s. That is a deliberate repositioning: the coupe is set up for lap times, and Ford describes the convertible as a top-down grand tourer instead.
What carries over
Everything mechanical ahead of the suspension tuning is shared with the coupe. The 5.2-litre Predator is the same hand-built supercharged V8 developed for the Mustang GTD, detuned from 815 hp to 795 hp, and the seven-speed dual-clutch is the same unit. There is no manual option, on either body style.
New for the convertible is a Precision Purple paint with a matching brake-caliper colour, plus Black Onyx and Space Gray interior choices. Both bodies are built on the same line at Ford’s Flat Rock plant in Michigan.
Price and timing
Ford has not announced convertible pricing and says it will come later in 2026. Order books open in the autumn, with first deliveries in spring 2027. The $108,485 figure circulating alongside the reveal is the coupe’s: $103,490 plus a $3,000 gas-guzzler tax and $1,995 destination. Soft-tops in this range usually carry a premium over the coupe, but Ford has published nothing, so the convertible’s number remains unknown.
The seventh-generation Ford Mustang is a rear-drive coupe built at Flat Rock, Michigan, and the last American muscle car still sold with a naturally aspirated V8 and a manual gearbox. The range runs from a 315 hp 2.3-litre EcoBoost four to the 795 hp supercharged Dark Horse SC, which starts at $103,490 before destination and the gas-guzzler tax.
