A car with a roof is like a busmans holiday to me as I spend too much time driving up and down the A1 in my company car. A convertible with the roof down totally changes the driving experience
It was also a bucket list experience for me, driving a convertible muscle car on a U.S. road trip
it was also much cheaper than a bike at about £630 for 17 days vs. £2300 for the RT last time.
The rental company probably won't guarantee a Mustang, the exception being (ISTR Hertz in LA, LV or SF), so you're probably just as likely to end up with a Camero, Chrysler L200 (very common) or possibly something else.
We were lucky when we arrived at the Alamo depot in Denver as we sprinted off the bus and managed to get in the queue ahead of three Danish guys who also wanted a Mustang. The lady at the desk advised that they had one Mustang, one Camero and the sh*tty L200. We quickly checked out the Mustang and Trudi then stood guard whilst I checked out the Camero as the Danish guys were hovering.
I chose the Mustang as it had a nicer interior, although very similar to the mid-00's Mondeo. It was a V6 3.0 with an horrible automatic box and allegedly 307bhp, but it felt asthmatic at 8000ft elevation - my 320ED felt like a racing car in comparison once we got back to Manchester Airport. I only passed my test in 2008 and have only driven cars with parking sensors and automatic headlights and windscreen wipers, so panicked as we left the parking lot and onto the motorway and realised the headlights weren't on and I didn't know where the switch was
Luckily it was 11pm, so I managed to swerve onto the hard shoulder and park up whilst I figured out how to switch them on
once we reached the nearby hotel, it was a pig to park at first without parking sensors as it felt huge. Luckily I had my lovely little parking attendant with me....
The next day we headed up into the Black Hills as the temperature hit the high 30's. This is when we discovered that the air con is useless with the roof down (the 118 convertible I'd driven before had very effective blowers) and it gets far too blustery much above 60mph. The pattern thereafter was roof down in the National Parks or nice twisty roads like Utah 12, roof up when covering long distances at speed e.g. Devils Tower - Little Bighorn.
The other problem was the leather seats. These looked much classier than the cloth seats in the Camero, but were far too bloody hot when the car had been parked in the sun with the roof down.
Handling wise, it is a heavy car, but was OK in the Black Hills, Yellowstone, UT12 and CO550 (Million Dollar Highway from Silverton to Ouray).
Lastly, the stereo didn't have a valid Sirius radio subscription, so there were very few channels to listen to, mainly country and western and the odd soft rock channel. However, it will connect to a phone via Bluetooth and play your music, so take a good selection and maybe some podcasts and audio books as we got bored of the same music, even with about 1200 tracks on my phone.
It was a cracking holiday though and whilst not as much fun as a bike, it was much more fun than a normal saloon. The 2015 Mustang is a completely new car based on the current Fusion/Mondeo platform, so you could get lucky