Ford’s $300,000, 800+ hp Mustang GTD is putting all supercars “on notice”
Ford debuted an all new-Mustang tonight at the Pebble Beach Concours in California, one unlike any before it.
Here’s the first paragraph of the press release for the 2025 Mustang GTD, heavy on the drama:
“Deep inside a metal storage garage hidden behind a wind tunnel building in Allen Park, Michigan, a handful of team members gathered in 2021 for a new, after-hours mission that on paper felt like an impossible dream: Design a Mustang to take on the best of European sports cars. The result is a limited-edition, ultra high-performance street-legal performance car with the soul of a Mustang. Debuting today is the all-new 2025 Ford Mustang GTD, a technological tour de force inspired by the Mustang GT3 slated to race in Le Mans next year.”
OK, here are the answers to the questions you have. The GTD name refers to the IMSA “GTD” racing class for cars that are built to FIA GT3 regulations. And, unlike a source reported this morning that we also referenced, the Mustang GTD is not mid-engined. It will cost about $300,000, before options, and be available late in 2024 or early 2025.
The Mustang GTD is a full-fledged supercar, Ford insists.
“This is our company. We’re throwing down the gauntlet and saying, ‘Come and get it.’ We’re comfortable putting everybody else on notice. I’ll take track time in a Mustang GTD against any other auto boss in their best road car,” says part-time amateur racer and full-time Ford President and CEO, Jim Farley.
The fenders, hood, the cover that replaces the trunk lid, the door sills, front splitter, rear diffuser and roof are all made from carbon fiber with optional carbon fiber front and rear fascias. An available aero package that includes a comprehensive underbody aerodynamic tray is also done in carbon fiber and includes features pioneered in motorsports, as well as some technology that would be illegal in racing, such as hydraulically controlled front flaps to manage airflow for aerodynamic balance in coordination with the hydraulic active rear wing.
The car will begin life at the Flat Rock, Michigan factory and be sent to Multimatic in Canada for finishing. Multimatic, of course, built the Ford GT and handles much of Ford’s sports car racing.
Where there once was a trunk is now the semi-active suspension, a hydraulic control system, and a transaxle cooling system.. A cover replaces the trunk lid and includes two air scoops to funnel air off the back glass into the area and through the heat exchangers.
Farley continues: “Mustang GTD shatters every preconceived notion of a supercar. This is a new approach for us. We didn’t engineer a road car for the track, we created a race car for the road. Mustang GTD takes racing technology from our Mustang GT3 race car, wraps it in a carbon fiber Mustang body and unleashes it for the street.”
“We obsessed about the racing technology under its skin. What makes it go is even more compelling than what you can see when it passes you by. When you look at the engineering, the aerodynamics, how the powertrain works, the Mustang GTD is a rocket ship for the road,” says Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford Performance Motorsports.
“The hardware has been carefully selected and developed to enable blistering lap time performance. The target for this project was clear – go much, much faster than we’ve ever gone before with a targeted sub-7-minute Nürburgring time. This makes it the fastest roadgoing Mustang ever from Ford,” says Greg Goodall, Ford chief program engineer.
The Mustang GTD uses a purpose-built and supercharged 5.2-liter V-8 with dual air inlets. With its 800+ hp (Ford has yet to nail down an exact figure) it’s the highest-horsepower street-legal Mustang ever. It also features the first dry-sump engine oil system fitted to a roadgoing Mustang, helping keep the engine lubricated during sustained and demanding cornering. The engine’s more than 7500 rpm redline “generates exceptional notes through the available titanium active valve exhaust system.”
Road grip and cornering stability for the Mustang GTD come from 325 millimeter front tires—as wide as the rear tires of the Ford GT—while the rear are 345 millimeters, and mounted on 20-inch forged aluminum wheels or available forged magnesium wheels. Brakes are Brembo carbon-ceramics.
Power is sent from the engine to the rear wheels through a carbon-fiber driveshaft connected to an eight-speed rear transaxle for near 50:50 weight distribution between the front and rear. Lap time drive simulations and powertrain dyno testing led to the selection of the powertrain and transaxle architecture to put power to the ground.
The cockpit features premium materials including Miko suede paired with leather and carbon fiber, while digital displays aim to keep drivers engaged and in full command. Recaro seats optimized for track work are complemented by available 3D-printed titanium paddle shifters, rotary dial shifter, and serial plate, all made from retired Lockheed Martin F-22 titanium parts. The rear seating area has been removed to reduce weight and provide cargo space.
The 2025 Ford Mustang GTD can also be ordered in any color, or even color-matched to a customer-provided sample. These customizable options allow buyers to personalize their example should they choose to make it entirely unique.
Farley gets the last word: “Mustang GTD represents the very best of Ford Motor Company and what our team needs to do every day. This is what happens when we take what we’re good at and push the boundaries to see where the bubble stops. It represents the essence of the transformation we’re going through at Ford, from software to special edition cars.”
***
Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.
Hey Farley, get back to me when it’s been proven that this homologation special is independently proven to be faster than a C8 Z06 Corvette around the Nurburgring.
I was excited about the early news suggesting a new mid-engined car was coming…this is a cool Mustang, but isn’t something I’d ever consider paying over $100k for…not to mention $300k+.
They should really change the name for European market, where “GTD” refers to old mid-range diesel models, “grand tourisme diesel”. What my grandpa would select and buy…
This car won’t be street legal in Europe since the front splitter and canards are not allowed due to regulations so there really is no point to change the ill thought-out name. You would have thought that someone at Ford would have realised that GTD indicates a mid-market diesel powered grocery getter.
I’m a long standing Corvette enthusiast and owner. Over the decades I’ve admired certain versions of Mustang, though never pulled the trigger to buy one. That may change with the GTD. I’m not convinced, it’s going to track like a mid-engine vehicle, very tough to pull through corners without the engine following the driver. However, GTD doesn’t have to. Put high-tech in & out, sexy Recaro seating, bone chilling acceleration, together with exciting overall performance and a “what the hell was that noise” exhaust, and I may have to order a GTD and convince my Corvette Club not to kick me out.
Love it
Yes, I guess I’m out of touch with today’s market. I don’t see the point of this car…at a time when it has become almost impossible to find a reasonably priced (and I mean under 75k!) car in a showroom anywhere that has any appeal to me at all, Ford puts all this money and effort into a street legal monster such as this. And enough of the Science Fiction Monster styling, OK? Every new car seems to be uglier than the last one.
I feel I’m decidedly in the minority here, but I think this car is very cool and I congratulate Ford for building it. And I congratulate Farley for issuing his challenge to other car builder CEOs. To me, the Mustang has always been about swagger, and this car has it. I expect them to sell every one they make, and I doubt many folks who buy them will take them to the track, but that’s just the way things are with the current breed of hyper cars. The majority of C8s won’t see the track, nor for that matter will many Porsche GT3s. But Ford will be racing this at Daytona and Le Mans, and I’ll be cheering them on.
Sometimes, a company has to build something cool just because it can.
Your comment implies that there are not C8s and GT3s racing at Daytona or LeMans. Let’s compare GT entries of Porsche and Corvette vs. Ford, shall we?
Farley is able to issue challenges because he knows that nobody is going to take him up on it. If the Mustang loses to a C8 or GT3, nobody will care because that is to be expected. On the off chance the Mustang wins, it makes the others look like idiots. Literally a no-win situation for others no matter how you put it.
When Bob Lutz wanted to challenge the industry with Cadillac, he scheduled a track day and welcomed all comers. GM even provided cars to participants if they did not want to bring their own. Until you see Farley do the same, know that he is not serious about his challenge.
But know this, if Farley were do schedule something like the CTS-V challenge, some guy who runs a roofing crew or something will likely show up in a 468ci C5/C6 on 355s with full aero and make pretty much everyone else look like a fool. This sort of thing happens every weekend on tracks across the country.
Wow, why all the flame throwing from the peanut gallery? Farley has said that Ford intends to keep producing the Mustang as a V-8 ICE vehicle for as long as possible (the EV, called the Mach-E, that masquerades as a Mustang notwithstanding). In doing so, of course Ford is going to continue put out special editions and limited versions, including homologation specials such as this new GTD, just as it has done since the Mustang debuted in 1964. This is nothing new.
Is this a “real” Mustang? Oh, for goodness sake… let’s see, it’s built from a REAL Mustang “body in white” chassis, powered by a version of the same 5.2L supercharged V-8 found in the Mustang GT500, and it even looks like a Mustang (go figure!)… oh, gee, I guess it’s not really a Mustang. Good Lord…
As to whether these make money for Ford, probably not — most of these homologation cars are expensive to develop and produce, and since they are only built in limited numbers, typically they are money losers. But that’s not the point; in homologating the race car version, they’re intended to also provide a halo around the brand, and Mustang is Ford’s halo car.
Whether or not this actually translates into more sales of regular Mustangs, or other Fords, is an open question, but so what? I’m glad Ford is doing this and hope they continue to give us awesome ICE cars here and there, while they allowed to do so. As we know Stellantis has already given up on ICE muscle performance cars by ending Challenger and Daytona production, and the Camaro will be gone in its current ICE configuration soon. Only Mustang and Corvette remain as American ICE-powered performance cars.
All good things come to and end, but let’s hope the bitter end of ICE-powered performance cars is still quite a ways off. Hat’s off to Ford for doing this car.
We should be happy. This will be the flagship for the Ford racing enterprise. Any of those high-end parts will filter their way down to street cars. I’m grateful that Ford is still producing the Mustang, especially since the Camaro and the challenger are going away. If we hadn’t got the 2006 concept car, none of the 2000 to current Shelby’s may have ever been built. Even in ordinary trim a mustang GT is pretty impressive.
This is where I dump Al of my Ford stocks. So they decided to build a 300k mustang!!! First how small is the 300k market, it’s tiny not even a rounding error in the overall size of ford. Let’s say they make 2000 a year for the next 5 years that 600 mil a year even if they can get 20% margin it’s only 120mil in profit, meanwhile they are ever falling behind in the future, which is EV. By the way this is a mustang, the guys that buy mustangs don’t have 300k to buy a house forget the car. The ford GT was special a mustang with 800 Hp and some carbon bits is not.
EVs are not the future. They are only the “future” being pushed that you are buying into.
Amen, brother!
It’s always been about the money. From day one.
I’ll have mine in Highland Green.
1968 called. They said to get over Steve McQueen.
Of course it is about profits. Ford is a publicly traded company and has an obligation to shareholders.
They will probably be able to get $300,000+ for all these they make. There are plenty people out there with very large egos and more money than sense. Then they will start showing up at Mecum and bring $500,000. Who in their right mind would pay $300,000 for this car.
Well seeing how pretty much stock C6 Z06s were hitting 7:10 on the Nurburgring in traffic for a fraction of this price, this isn’t impressive in the slightest.
I absolutely love it! This is what happens when you get the bureaucrats out of the front office and put in people that love cars and are even racers!
And by the way this is not a homologation car. The GT3 race class this car competes in doesn’t require road going versions.
In an interview from a year or two ago the CEO had said that Ford makes all the electric vehicles I’d does in order to bring the corporate average high enough to allow them to still make exciting ICE vehicles, and always will.
I have a GT350, which was another moonshot by Ford that no one asked for, and it’s fabulous. I applaud this GTD effort and hope one day to be able to get my hands on one!