Editor's note: The author is the only child of Phil Clark, the man who sketched the Mustang's original running-horse emblem. She, like the Mustang, celebrated her 40th birthday in 2004.

The Ford Mustang Dark Horse will be offered with a color-shifting paint color and hand-painted stripes when it goes on sale this summer as the most powerful 5.0-liter Mustang.

For Ford to keep eyeballs on this Mustang as it ages, it must gallop onward. Both the GT and Dark Horse engines run a 12.0:1 compression ratio and use the same voluptuous twin-throttle-body intake.

While this Mustang concept was being finalized in September of 1962, a competition was held between Ford designers where Gale Halderman’s design was chosen as the basis for the running pony logo ...

UPDATE 12/15/22:Ford has confirmed that the 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse's 5.0-liter Coyote V-8 will make an even 500 horsepower and 418 lb-ft of torque—on premium fuel.

The 2024 Mustang Dark Horse is powered by a projected 500-horsepower, 5.0-liter V-8 that hits the half-millennium mark with no help from a supercharger or turbochargers.

Whether it will work, of course, is yet to be seen. As a Youth myself, relative to the average age of a new car buyer in the U.S., the Dark Horse does appeal to me — it's novel, modern, interesting.