If you’ve got cash to burn on spare rear tyres, don’t mind a bit of excess wear on your brakes, engine and drivetrain, and want to impress your mates in front of Maccas on a Friday night, then the 2015 Ford Mustang is the car for you. It has an electric line lock feature that clamps the front brakes, holding the car still while you step on the gas and light the rears up.
The new Mustang is beautiful. Even better, it’s coming to Australia next year. You’ll be able to pick it up with a turbocharged 2-litre EcoBoost or Ford’s excellent 5-litre Coyote V8, but in either spec, it’s a rear-tyre-smoking, two-door-slamming, all-American muscle car. And now it has Burnouts For Dummies installed as standard.
An electronically-actuated line lock applies hydraulic pressure to the front brakes, but not the rears, letting the engine freely spin the driven tyres while the car itself stands still. Of course, line lockers are nothing new; professional burnout artists (is that a thing?) and drag racers have been using them for years. A line lock is used to activate only one pair of brakes on a car — locking the front brakes while letting the rear wheels spin freely, making for an impressively stationary burnout.
While there is a minor advantage to ripping a quick skid before blasting down the drag strip at full noise — the extra heat softens your car’s tyre compounds, helping them grip the road a little more effectively — there’s no denying that Ford’s electric line lock on the 2015 Mustang is a party piece for an already impressively high-tech vehicle. Check it out in the video below.