That Mustang Horse Head Logo Is Actually The Logo For Dark Horse, The New 500 HP Mustang

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The unveiling event for the new 2024 Ford Mustang just ended, and we now know what that the odd horse-head-only logo they teased earlier today is all about: the Dark Horse, the new high-performance edition of the 2024 Mustang. Since the head is an interesting and never-really-seen variant of the famous horse, I thought it might be nice to be reminded that this isn’t the first time that Ford has considered having just a horse’s head on a Mustang. The first time was way back in 1964, before the Mustang was ever released.

Darkhorse2

Here’s where the logo was first seen, at seven seconds into this little ten-second video:

And now we know the head-only logo is going to be used on a manual-transmission (fine, or 10-speed automatic), track-focused variant with a 5-liter, 500 horsepower Coyote V8, which Ford suggests is their most powerful non-turbo V8. There’s road-going and more track-focused variants as well, along with special handling packages.

Darkhorsehead

But, back to that horse head badge: the first time for the lone head, the consensus seemed to be – and this may be urban legend, but I can see it – was that the solitary head felt too much like a chess piece, which wasn’t exactly the tone they were going for.

Sculpture Car

In the end, they went with a galloping horse designed by artist Phil Clark, and it was decided that it would always face left. Even this wasn’t a foregone conclusion, and they did try them both ways:

Leftandright

Yikes, that’s weird. It’s hard to look at it going the other way. Luckily, that new front-facing horse won’t have this problem.

 

27 thoughts on “That Mustang Horse Head Logo Is Actually The Logo For Dark Horse, The New 500 HP Mustang

  1. An opportunity was missed to tie it into Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog:

    Bad Horse, Bad Horse, Bad Horse, Bad Horse
    He rides across the nation
    The thoroughbred of sin…

    None of this Dark Horse wimpy stuff!

  2. Just a horse head? This is the car Jack Woltz would drive, I guess.

    Somewhat unrelated topic here, but I’m really starting to get annoyed at the dress code for “cool” presenters of products. You’ve always got the guy in the t-shirt with a sport coat over it, some lived-in jeans, and tennis shoes. And then there’s the guy in the same clothes, but with a collarless leather jacket instead of the sport coat. I’m not expecting a 3-piece suit when introducing stuff that is supposed to be cool, but my god, these guys all follow the same dress code. Mix it up, guys. Somebody please wear a utility kilt, or maybe bring back knickerbockers. Just show some damn originality.

  3. The new Dark Horse logo looks pretty goofy. That was really the best that a design team for one of the biggest car companies in the world could come up with for the new, bad ass version of the Mustang?

  4. I was really surprised at how jarring that right-facing horse emblem is once you see it in the grille. Now I want to buy a Mustang and 3-d print a right-facing horse emblem and drive people insane.

  5. Dark Horse, huh?
    So how does that work with the comic book company of the same name? Because the comic book company doesn’t make cars, there’s no trademark/copyright infringement?

    1. I thought the same thing but my first thought was Dark Horse wine because I buy more cheap wine than comic books these days. Dark Horse Comics logo looks more like the 1964 chess piece but the wine logo looks pretty similar to the new horse face logo if you ask me.

    2. Correct, trademarks are done by class. When you get a trademark, you get it only for a particular class or classes of good or service, you don’t get sole use of it for everything. So since comic books and wine and cars don’t compete, they can all use the same name, and still each legally own the trademark for that particular class.

  6. Ford, don’t you already have enough names you can throw at special edition Mustangs? Shelby GT 350, Shelby GT 500, Boss, Bullitt, SVO, SVT, Mach 1, Cobra, you haven’t thrown ST or RS at the Mustangs yet. Did you really need another one?

  7. This horse head logo reminds me of something… I can’t quite put a finger on it, but it doesn’t say “horse” to me. Certainly not from a distance. It almost looks vaguely… uh… vaginal.

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