The new 2024 Ford Mustang has a little feature we’ve never seen before on a Mustang. Ford calls it the Performance Electronic Parking Brake, and by “Performance,” Ford essentially means drifting.
Call it a parking brake, drift brake, whatever. The point is to turn ordinary individuals into Vaughn Gittin Jr.-style drifters through the magic of technology. The way it works is relatively simple on the surface. When you’re circling and ready to begin your drift, simply pull the handbrake up. This activates the auxiliary parking brake caliper (not the main rear caliper) to begin your slide. You can keep turning and applying throttle, and in conjunction with the stability control system, the rear auxiliary caliper will increase or decrease the amount of pressure required to retain the drift as necessary. If needed, the bigger regular rear brake calipers will be used to increase your drift control.
It’s not otherworldly versus using a traditional handbrake to send the rear end into a drift, but this electronically-controlled system is meant to make it easier for novices to learn and improve their drifting skills by getting you started right and making it easier to hold a drift. Ford also believes that the system can be happily utilized by experts for competition purposes, though we imagine the real experts may prefer maintaining full mechanical control of the parking brake while sliding in and out of drifts.
Ford says all Mustangs with the Performance Package will come with this Performance Electronic Parking Brake as standard equipment, which means you need the Brembo braking system to utilize it. To show off this new technology on the interior, Ford has redesigned its parking brake lever to halfway resemble those you might see on a professional’s drift car. Of course, if you’d rather just use the Mustang’s powerful V8 or boosted four-cylinder to begin your drift, that could end up working just as well. We’ll report back to y’all after trying this system out to see if it was worth Ford’s effort.
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