Would You Rather: 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse vs. 2024 GMC Canyon AT4X AEV Edition
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Great news: You made it to the Wheel of Fortune bonus round and solved the puzzle. The category was What Are You Doing? and you shouted "Eating asparagus with Tony Danza!" to stunned applause. Pat Sajak flipped open the prize card, and there was a choice: 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse or 2024 GMC Canyon AT4X AEV Edition. Both cost in the mid-$60,000s range, and you could take your pick. So which would you rather drive home?
Both of these American badasses are the ultimate versions of their respective models. The Dark Horse is the most track-focused Mustang, with 500 horsepower and brakes to shame a Corvette Z06. The Canyon AT4X AEV Edition is one of the most off-road-capable vehicles on the market, with locking front and rear differentials, ultra-aggressive 34-inch Goodyear Wrangler Territory MT tires, and more underbody armor than an M1 Abrams. They're both great fun, but you'll need to give Pat a decision.
The Mustang clearly wins the under-the-hood contest, with its naturally aspirated 5.0-liter V-8 belting out 500 horsepower and a NASCAR soundtrack—even in the quiet mode, the active exhaust is still pretty loud. The GMC uses GM's turbocharged 2.7-liter four-cylinder, an engine that would win Truckiest Truck Engine of the Year from Truck-Engine Magazine, if any of that existed. It's powerful but unhappy, like the dictator of a cruddy country. Its 310 horsepower is okay, and its 430 lb-ft of torque impressive, but, like Hamlet's Player Queen, the Canyon's engine doth protest too much. The sound improves if you roll down the windows and introduce the pleasant scree of the turbocharger to the soundtrack.
You'd think that on pavement, the Mustang would be the better drive, but that's not always the case. On sunny, warm, days on smooth pavement, the Mustang Dark Horse is divine. In almost any other situation, it reminds you that it would rather be on a track. The Pirelli P Zero Trofeo RS tires are semi-slicks, hardcore track rubber that offers stupendous grip but provides no quarter for, say, rain. Or low temperatures. Or truck grooves in the road, which they will eagerly follow. On battered pavement, the Dark Horse's wheel squirms constantly as the front tires sniff out the ruts. If you want a friendlier Mustang, Ford will sell you a GT, but the Dark Horse is uncompromising. It doesn't relax.
The AT4X, on the other hand, enjoys the specific on-road benefits that accrue when a truck is built to conquer boulders and dry washes. Huge tires with lots of sidewall make for a great ride, as does the long-travel suspension with Multimatic dampers. It doesn't love the corners, this Canyon, but it's happy on the highway, where that big four settles down and generally chills out below 2000 rpm. The biggest demerit is the rear visibility, which is impeded by the giant spare tire mounted in the bed, which is part of that $10,000 AEV package. Besides the extensive skid plates and steel bumpers, the AEV gear includes the company's beautiful Italian-made Salta wheels, which we nominate for best truck wheels on earth. They tread the fine line of looking tough without implying that their owner has done prison time for vandalizing a rival's tattoo parlor.
The two interiors are pretty close to a draw, with the edge going to the Canyon for its contrasting AT4X color scheme on the seats. The Mustang interior is a sea of black, with the notable exception of the shiny metal sphere adorning the six-speed manual shifter. Yes, you can get the Dark Horse with a manual, and you should. It might not be a quick as the 10-speed automatic in a straight line, but you'll really capture the vibe when you put the instrument cluster in Fox-body emulation mode. Both the Canyon and the Mustang offer g-force displays on their center dash screens, but one of them is likely to put up much bigger numbers. We saw 1.07 g's on the skidpad from the Dark Horse, and if you ever saw that number on the Canyon's g-force display, it would preclude filing an accident report.
While we can tease out victories on either side here, the decision ultimately boils down to practicality. A high-performance truck is still a truck, with four doors and a bed and four-wheel drive. A high-performance muscle car is a toy rendered even less useful for daily life. The Dark Horse is loud and obnoxious and not much good for anything other than going fast. Naturally, we're picking that one. There are other trucks that tackle the Canyon's basic mission. Meanwhile, when the last Camaro rolls off the line, we'll be down to one V-8 manual American sports coupe, so we'd do our part to encourage Ford to keep building them. But what say you? Pat and Vanna are waiting.
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