Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Auto

The 2025 Ford Mustang GTD is basically a street-legal race car

This $300,000 Mustang is a street-legal race car

Dave McQuilling
By
Mustang GTD on track from front
Ford / Ford

Like many major motor companies, Ford has a tremendous racing pedigree; it famously took on Ferrari at Le Mans and won. The Detroit-based company has also dabbled in rallying, drag racing, and NASCAR — amongst other things. In order to compete at this kind of level, sacrifices have to be made. This usually means you’ll never see a “race car” on the road, as they likely fail to meet any number of NHTSA requirements.

But if you really want to drive one of Ford’s greatest engineering achievements to Walmart, to your kids’ softball practice, or just down a particularly pleasant bit of country road, you can. Sort of.

Recommended Videos

The 2025 Ford Mustang GTD is a first for Ford. It was developed in tandem with the Mustang GT3 — an out-and-out racer that will compete at the 24 hours of Le Mans in 2024. Ford CEO Jim Farley explained the logic behind the GTD’s development: “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.”

Related

Farley isn’t joking. The new Ford Mustang comes with a host of features that have never been seen on a street-legal car. And while it’s nice to have a racer you can take on the road, those wishing to get their hands on a GTD may have a hard time doing so. The GTD is set to retail from around $300,000 — which is to be expected for a cutting-edge supercar. But the money may not be enough. While there are no exact numbers, availability is “extremely limited.” So a lack of friends in high places at Ford may be another barrier to entry.

The Ford Mustang GTD
Ford / Ford

Carbon fiber, a new kind of suspension, and a lot of horsepower

If you do somehow get your hands on a Ford Mustang GTD, what will you actually be getting? In terms of raw power, the GTD has a supercharged 5.2-liter V8 that should get north of 800 horsepower. That vastly powerful engine won’t be pulling much weight, as carbon fiber features heavily in the GTD’s build. The body, rear diffuser, roof, fascias, undertray, interior, and even the drive shaft are all made of the durable, lightweight substance.

This isn’t just a dragster, either. Ford aims to tackle the twists and turns of the 13-mile-long Nürburgring in under seven minutes. The vehicle’s cornering ability is undoubtedly enhanced by the bodywork’s aerodynamic features and never-before-seen suspension, which adjusts spring rate and ride height settings depending on conditions. Other features include carbon-ceramic brakes, magnesium wheels, an optional titanium exhaust, and many other tweaks that will undoubtedly give the Ford Mustang GTD a frankly obscene power-to-weight ratio.

The limited number of Mustang GTDs Ford will be producing are set to hit the road between late 2024 and early 2025.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Dave McQuilling
Dave McQuilling
Dave has spent pretty much his entire career as a journalist; this has included jobs at newspapers, TV stations, on the…
The 2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ is everything you want in a luxury SUV
The Cadillac Escalade IQ is bigger and more powerful than any other Escalade SUV
2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ Sport

The Cadillac Escalade is one of the most luxurious cars in the world. Since it was first introduced more than two decades ago, it's always been sold with a V8 gasoline engine to complement its big SUV body style design. But now that the world is transitioning to electric vehicles to reverse the effects of climate change, General Motors is at the forefront with plans to electrify 50% of its vehicles by 2030 — including the Cadillac brand.

Last year, GM delivered the 2023 Cadillac Lyriq, and by the end of this year, it is expected to produce the 2024 Cadillac Celestiq, which will compete against the Rolls Royce Spectre. Well, GM is just getting started, and it recently unveiled its first-ever all-electric Cadillac luxury SUV dubbed the Cadillac Escalade IQ. What can you expect?

Read more
Explained: The cool history behind the car logos of your favorite automakers
Ferrari's Prancing horse logo came from a pilot (and more cool stories of car symbols)
Close-up view of the logo of a Ferrari on public display in a car show

Automakers are often defined by the cars they produce, but their stories go much deeper than that. The manufacturer's logo is at the core of everything, an instantly recognizable symbol that sums up who that manufacturer is. There is just as much variety amongst these car logos as there is amongst the cars the companies produce.

Some of them are pretty obvious. Jaguar’s logo is a Jaguar because the company is called Jaguar. Kia, Nissan, and Ford’s logos are basically just stylized versions of the company name. Lexus, Honda, Hyundai, and a few others go even simpler with a stylized version of the first letter of said company name.

Read more
The 9 fastest cars in the world right now
Find out who tops the list of fastest cars
Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ Coupe

Despite the push to make more fuel-efficient vehicles with smaller engines, automakers are using high-powered supercars to attempt to set new top-speed records. Automakers have made large strides in aerodynamics and have found a way around emissions by keeping production of record-setting vehicles incredibly limited. Like lap records, top-speed runs are purely for bragging rights. There’s no incentive to have one of the fastest cars in the world beyond giving automakers the ability to say that they have one of the fastest cars in the world. It really is that simple.

Unlike other figures that are used to differentiate vehicles from one another, like zero-to-60 mph times, cornering G-force, or quarter-mile times, setting a new top speed record is insanely difficult. Beyond ensuring that a car has the right amount of power and efficiently flows through the air, finding a long enough stretch of road to get a car up to 300 mph is nearly impossible. That’s why top speed records rarely get broken.

Read more