CapnQuiz

Hello,

I am a 26 year old single guy from Michigan and thinking about buying my 1st car. I'm very interested in getting a Mustang. I do have a few questions though, and if anyone could help with them I would appreciate it.

1) Given the often bad winter weather in my state, I am concerned about how well the Mustang will hold up in the snow/ice. Is this a valid concern, and if so what can I do about it?
2) Should I be looking at an '05 (Ford is not giving the discounts on them I hear) or consider an '06?
3) I do not have much of a daily commute to work, but do have other events that I attend out of town on a regular basis. I'm thinking the V6 is probably a better option for me (and a hardtop as opposed to convertible). Is this reasonable thinking? Also, What else should I consider as far as car options (e.g. interior, exterior packages)?

In advance, thanks for your comments.

Guest

Hey man, congrats on your first car, whatever it may be.

Ford isn't offering a discount on the stangs unfortunatley. It's only family based vehicles. Chevy is not offering the Corvette for their sale either.

I'm not sure where you live, but here we have some nasty winters. I snowboard so I often go up to the mountain. I would suggest getting a winter tire and a summer tire, and switch them for the seasons. What I do is I use my stock wheels and winter tires for the winter, and my chrome wheels and performance tires for the other seasons. Just avoid nasty days and drive slow. I've done fine except for a patch on black ice that scared me half to death! Just slid a bit, no damage. It held the road a lot better than I thought it would.

A V6 would suit you perfectly depending on how long you plan on owning the vehicle. But if you plan on putting miles on it I would suggest getting the GT. I only say this becuase I rebuild engines and in my opinion the 4.0 is a crap engine. It just doesn't last. I get them in all the time. The 4.6 (which is in the GT) is a much more solid engine. Personally, i think the 5.0 and the 3.8's are the strongest engines out of the bunch, but those are in older 'stangs.

All that aside, the V6 will be fine if you plan on having it for several years. But if you need it to last you much longer, go with the GT's 4.6. Just a little advice for down the road. I'm not trying to turn you off of the V6, it's a great car.

You'll find a good amount of pep in the 6banger... It pushes out 210HP at the crank, and even more if you modify it. It does just fine stock though, for getting from point A to B everyday.

I don't know much on the interior packages so I'll wait for someone else to help out, but I hope I could help you a bit...and good luck!

99saleen351r

^^^^^^^didnt read post^^^^^^^Living in Michigan the stang is defiantley NOT a good snow car.hey suck in the snow but with tires and slow speed you might be able to handle it.The v6 car is most likely your best bet if you dont care about performance, and the new ones are very nice.If you can hold out for the 06 do so so all the bugs are worked out and the prices drop.Go down the dealer check out what they got, chances are they dont have any GTs anyway so take out the v6 and see how it feels if you like it jump on it.How did you get by for so long with no car??I could never do it

Guest

Yeah I completely missed that part, probably wouldn't be the best then. I don't know much about michigan, but I'd assume it gets pretty rough there.

mustang_montana

ok i bought my stang beginning of febuary, and i live up in new england. our winters suck. within a couple days of having it, we had the worst storm of the year, and guess what i drove to work? yep the stang. the tires on it were basically bald, and one was losing air? yeah later i found out there were nails in the tires...hahaha. but anyway, the intake manifold was also cracked within the first week...no relevance to winter handling but just thought id add that, so i go to work and the roads are clear on the way there. when i get out there is a foot of snow on the ground with blizzard like conditions. going 5 miles per hour i manage to somehow creep out of my parking space sideways, yes sideways, and narrowly miss hitting 3 cars parked nearby. i somehow get outta the parking lot, spinning my wheels real good every 2 feet, and get onto the mainroad . every time i stop i slide forward 3 feet, regardless of how i stopped, but the ebrake kinda helped when the breaks locked up. so im goin about 5 mph down the road sliding around like all hell, cars around me are backing off about 4-5 car lengths hahaha, i kinda fishtail the whole way to the next lights, and continue some more spinning out and such. almost miss my turn cause the stang wouldnt stop, kinda slid past my turn a bit. and somehow creeped along my road and got to my house. didnt make it up the maybe 20 degree incline of my driveway! haha needed help from my family to clear the ice and junk and finally manged to get her up there. this was the first storm i drove in. i drove in about 3 storms like that, and a dozen puny storms but with same effects. bottom line is i made a big mistake in driving it through those storms, but in my defense i was caught off guard and drove my other car through some worse storms when i knew they were comming. winter tires may have helped a bit? but i doubt it. from my experience, stangs dont handle well at all even with less than an inch of snow. get a winter beater if you can afford to!

BraMas

I live in Michigan also but I choose not to drive my Mustangs in the winter. But I see people doing it all the time. If I were you get an auto trans and like fordracer said keep good snow tires on your car. I would also not lower your car to much if you plan on driving in the winter it's really easy to get hung up on the piles of snow left at the bottom of our driveways from the snow plows plus our roads SUCK! And put weight in your trunk sand bags work good just in case you get stuck. And as far as the V6 or V8 the V8 are not that bad on gas. If your are going to keep your car pretty stock it will be fine in the winter in Michigan

Ford68pony

I will have to agree with everyone on this post. About any rear wheel drive car is going to have problems with any snow or ice on the ground. Weight will help in the back end especially as light as the mustang is, but in the end, you are still trying to push all the weight instead of pull. That will always cause problems in the winter. My suggestion (most people might not agree with this, but then most people aren't like me) is use half your money and get yourself a classic mustang (they rarely go down in value anyway) then use a little of the other half and get yourself a dependable winter car. Preferable something that has all wheel drive. But hey, that's me. Back to the point though, mustangs don't go good in winter. if you are going to get a mustang, might as well spend the extra to go GT for both the play and the resell value, plus what FordRacer was saying. Better yet, move to somewhere that doesn't snow so you can drive it all the time!!! Good luck on your decision.

Doomtroop

Hey, congrats on whatever car you buy. I don't own myself a mustang right now because I'm only 20 years old but I eventually plan on buying one in a few years .

I'm posting here because I live in Montreal, Quebec and here the winters are harsh and cold (and I mean really cold, we get -40 regularly). We have a lot of snow and terrible driving conditions.

Right now, I own a Ford Contour 96. It has no traction control, no abs brakes and no options that assist the driver. It's not a bad car but it's far from being a good winter car. I've been driving for 4 years now during winter time and have never had any accidents or problems. I know that my ford has frontal traction unlike the mustang and that I can't really compare the two cars. I do know, however, how driving in winter is.

So here are a few tips that you should take in consideration whatever car you buy :

-Having winter tires are a MUST. You simply cannot drive in snow without them. Like FordRacer said, you can alternate between your summer and winter tires. If you don't have winter tires, forget about driving in winter.
-Whether you will have an accident or not doesn't depend on your car. It depends on how your drive. If you're a smart driver and you drive carefully, you shouldn't have any problems at all. I've seen people with 4X4's have terrible accidents because they got overconfident with their car capabilities.

So basically, I'd say that buying a mustang gt or v6 and driving in winter can be easily done. However, you have to make sure that the proper tires are installed on it. If you drive carefully, you shouldn't have any problems.

And for the record, my neighbor owns a mustang 03 gt and drives it all year without any problems. Obviously, if you have a lot of money (unlike me and most of the people our age), I'd consider buying a 2nd car like Ford68pony suggested to use during the winter.
Hope my tips help.
Nick

xRockThePonyx

I don't know how much worse Michigan winters are than southern Ohio, but I drive my stang just fine in the winter. I even lived up in Kent, OH which is never Cleveland and the lake effect and I had no problems. All I do is try and stick to roads that I know have been treated, and I always take it extra slow to make sure I'm safe. You just have to be extra careful when it comes to driving around, and make sure and put some weight in the trunk when winter rolls around. I always get a good checkup on my car before winter and make sure I'm ready to go. Never had a problem and the stang has been through two winters now.

For those who say it's not a good idea to drive your stang in the winter, or that it's impossible- that's not true at all because I've done it and so do a lot of other stang owners around cincinnati. Hell, I see one cobra ALL the time near my work and he gets around just fine in the snow.

^ Definitely not true either. I've never used snow tires and i've never had problems.

ShadowDrake

I'm in Michigan right now and my Mustang is DEFINITELY a summer vehicle ONLY. With the salt on the roads, and an extremely light rear end, getting that on icy roads is dangerous for myself and others on the road, plus the salt is going to eat it up a lot faster than otherwise.

For the winter, I'm doing like a lot of people in the area, buying a junker 4x4 truck for around $1000 and using that for winter, if it gets ruined I can only say "oh well." Your winter vehicle doesn't really have to be glorious, it just has to get you from point A to point B.