The main bar across the dash is actual aluminum, the gauges are now easier to read (and a bit lighthearted too – the speedo reads “Groundspeed”), there’s matte-look plastic instead of shiny stuff wherever possible, and they’ve even tucked a little flock-lined sunglasses holder to the left of the steering wheel.

Nobody’s going to buy a pony car for its infotainment, but the MyFord Sync system is workable once you know where the shortcuts are. The voice commands are the way to use it, but it does remain a tad slow in some operations, with font that’s too small for easy on-the-move operation. It provided straightforward enough turn-by-turn instructions when threading through traffic, but early in the day, when a wrong turn required some backtracking, trying to use the map’s zoom functions and so forth to find our way back wasn’t very effective. Had I not been behind the wheel, I would have just booted up the ol’ smartphone.

2015 Ford Mustang dashboard, centre stack vents, navigation. Click image to enlarge

First on the menu was the combination I was most interested in driving, a six-speed manual, performance-package Ecoboost Mustang. With a 2.3L turbocharged four-cylinder putting out 310 hp and 320 lb-ft of torque, it’s essentially making as much power as mid-2000s V8 ‘Stangs, and with a snoot-full of boosty torque at low revs to pull like a bigger engine.

Depressing the now-standard push-putton starter, the Mustang’s new global four-pot turbo fires up and settles into a far-off purr. You can barely hear the thing – there’s just a bit of a cheery whistle when you dip into the boost down low. Off we go through LA’s bump and shunt morning traffic, upshifting early and letting the torque do its thing.

The main characteristic of this new Ecoboost Mustang is that it’s easy to drive. Super-easy. My First Mustang levels of easy. While this is a relatively big coupe, with the turning circle of a barge, there’s less of a sense of interminable heft to the thing. The old car had a nose like Cyrano de Bergerac’s Michigan-born cousin, and it stuck it in the air anytime you got on the loud pedal. The new Mustang now controls its pitch and dive, bringing better behaviour to the table in exchange for some of that sense of drama.

Then you get it up and into those California canyon roads, and sweet sassy molassy, is she ever a beaut. Among some of the other new technologies Ford has fused into their half-century old pony car is the ability to toggle driving modes between normal, sport, track and snow & ice (there’s no Eco mode, as I guess that’d be dialing up the Mustang II factor a little too far). Normal is fine, tame, maybe a little dull. Sport firms up the steering and gives you better throttle response, and Track wicks everything up and turns off the traction control.