Kia Stinger vs Ford Mustang

What's the difference?

There is nothing quite like a car company occasionally building a car that could be considered a risk. And there are all kinds of risks in the car business - the market isn't ready for that car, people don't identify your brand with this or that type of vehicle, the list goes on. And it's long. It's very easy for me to sit on the sidelines and say, "Pft, what were they thinking?" Few cars land on your driveway without years of thinking having already gone into their development.

The Kia Stinger is the kind of car that would have caused lots of thinking and plenty of hand-wringing at Kia HQ in Korea. Not because it was a bad idea - it wasn't. Not because it's a bad car - it is, in fact, the opposite. And not because SUVs have already changed the way we look at cars - Kia has done well out of that.

It's just that Kia has never produced a car like the Stinger. A five-door coupe-sedan, rear-wheel drive and with a focus on driver dynamics. Most of us know very well how the Stinger GT burst on to the scene in a blaze of well-deserved glory. It's not all about the GT, though. There's a whole range of Stingers and just below that very accomplished sports sedan is the Stinger GT-Line.

The new Ford Mustang GT was not designed for Paris.

Fighting through the morning peak hour rush (which seems to extend through the middle of the day and the afternoon), the new Mustang feels like a caged animal. Which is appropriate, given the car’s namesake is a wild horse that exists to roam the American wilderness.

But once we finally break the shackles of Parasian traffic we find ourselves getting to let this Mustang gallop across the French countryside and unleash its full potential. But more on that later…

The reason we're driving the Mustang in France is because the American brand wanted to connect it to its new racing program at the famous Le Mans sports car race (you know, the one in the Matt Damon movie, Ford v Ferrari).

No less than Bill Ford, great-grandson of the company’s famous founder, was on-hand to see the Mustang at Le Mans, such is the passion for performance.

Ford (the man, not the company) took the opportunity to declare that the Blue Oval brand is not only committed to internal combustion engines for the foreseeable future, but it will retain the V8 under the bonnet of the Mustang GT for as long as it can legally do so.

Australians will have to wait a few more weeks (maybe months) before the seventh-generation Mustang arrives, but here’s what you can expect when it lands on local roads.