“That thing will never run a sub-seven-minute Nürburgring lap time,” a journalist whispered to me in September 2023 at the Detroit reveal of the 2025 Ford Mustang GTD. “It’s a fat pig that weighs too much.”
That person, and probably a lot of the Internet keyboard cowboys, was wrong.
This all took place as Larry Holt, executive vice president of Multimatic, explained the GTD’s active aerodynamic systems. That, in addition to the unique suspension setup and powertrain, turned the Ford Mustang GTD into a street-legal track weapon.
If there was one key takeaway from my all-too-brief experience in Ford’s latest flagship, it is that this horse is out to win.
The shortest version of the story goes: As the GT3 prototype set to race in IMSA and WEC (including Le Mans) was shown to CEO Jim Farley and Bill Ford for the first time, the two immediately told the team that they “needed to do a road-legal version of it,” Design Manager Anthony Colard told The Drive.
With the Ford GT dead, the Ford Mustang GTD was set to retake the baton, taking the automaker from a GT supercar flagship to a track-ready Mustang.
No one is going to look at the GTD and think: What the heck is that? It’s obvious this is a Mustang, albeit one that never skipped a day at the gym. The GTD starts out in life as any other Mustang model would at Flat Rock Assembly Plant in Detroit, but then the body-in-white is shipped over to Multimatic’s facilities, where GTDs are born.
At 81.7 inches wide, the Mustang GTD is six inches wider than the standard Mustang. The front has a large splitter, ripe for being scraped, and models equipped with the Performance Package receive an even larger one with dive planes on each corner, providing more downforce. The flared front fenders have angled vents that wouldn’t look out of place on a fighter jet, and frankly, look like shark gills. The rear fenders balloon out and feature ducts to suck in cool air for the transaxle and rear end. The rear might be the most normal thing about the GTD, and even that’s unique with mesh grilles sandwiched between the taillights to dissipate heat.
However, there’s also a drag reduction system (DRS), which opens and closes the enormous rear wing mounted with swan necks off the rear C-pillars (when equipped with the aforementioned Performance Package). This is straight-up race car stuff. The bulging fenders hide the steamroller 325/30 Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2R street-legal front tires that are essentially slicks. The rears are even wider at 345/30. These are some of the widest tires put on any car in production.
The bits you can’t see are all the hidden aero features underneath the car. The DRS system boasts a bevy of NACA ducts just like a jet plane, and there are also replaceable plastic strakes that direct airflow. Why plastic? Because they are made of plastic and intended to be a wear item at the track, as they simply bolt on, Vehicle Dynamics Technical Specialist Steve Thompson told The Drive. While those are static, the active flaps in front of the front tires kick open to reduce drag, stall the underbody airflow, and kill the downforce generation.
Likewise, the suspension is revolutionary. The front is similar to a standard multilink setup, but it utilizes Multimatic’s semi-active Adaptive Spool Valve Dampers with dual rate and height adjustments. The rear is even more special, featuring integral link pushrod-activated inboard dampers that utilize the same hardware and tuning as the front. This stuff is race car territory and is certainly not standard, off-the-shelf stuff for your average Mustang.
The interior of the GTD is, for better and worse, a Mustang. The Recaro bucket seats are different from those found in the Dark Horse with larger bolsters to hold you in place when driving around a race track, but the leather is not markedly nicer than a Dark Horse. Column-mounted titanium paddle shifters feel great in the hand, as does the flat-bottom steering wheel. The latter has buttons to control suspension and exhaust modes, along with red toggles for drive modes. The rotary shift knob on the center console has a titanium bezel; and both the titanium paddle shifters and rotary shift knob bezel can be swapped out for magnesium bits that are more of a brass hue for an unknown cost. Buttons on the lower dash panel activate the front end lift system and Track Apps pages, but the 12.4-inch digital gauge cluster, 13.2-inch touchscreen, door panels, dashboard materials, and even the fake carbon-like weave made from plastic are all similar to the GTD’s lesser sibling. Not sure a numbered plaque on the right side of the dashboard makes this special.
What really makes the Ford Mustang GTD’s cabin feel special is the rear window on the back bulkhead. It’s made out of Lexan and provides a clear view of the pushrod activated inboard dampers. There’s no backseat, though the bulkhead has two divots large enough for a backpack. There’s also no trunk. In fact, the trunk lid doesn’t even have hinges. There are two push pin releases plus an electronic release mounted near the rear license plate. Once all three are released, one or two people can slide up and remove the entire trunk lid, but not the wing, since it’s mounted on the C-pillar. Under the rear deck lid is access to the 12-volt battery, the transmission cooler, and hydraulics for the suspension. This is all in the name of a nearly 50:50 weight distribution.
A supercharged 5.2-liter V8 Predator engine delivers 815 horsepower and 615 lb-ft of torque, its tune sung by a titanium exhaust system from Akrapovič. A Tremec-sourced eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission and limited-slip rear differential send all the power to the rear wheels.
Ford wouldn’t provide a zero-to-60 time, but I suppose it’s somewhere around 2.8 seconds. That wide rubber grips and rips. Top speed checks in at 202 mph, which I did not see while blasting around the tracks at The Thermal Club outside of Palm Springs, California.
Ford let me loose on an autocross course before hitting the track at Thermal, with both sides C and B looped together for their 3.067-mile Indycar car road course configuration. It took only the first right-hander on the autocross course to realize this Mustang steers and moves unlike any I’ve ever driven. The turn-in is razor sharp and immediate, the response is straight out of Porsche’s playbook, and the steering weight is perfect. After a few laps on the autocross course it was clear this engine can cover ground and gain speed at an incredibly rapid rate. In the name of going slower, but sideways, I held the traction control button down to enable five levels of traction management while in Track mode. Oddly, the system was seemingly not progressive in how it reduced traction control with no noticeable difference between 5 and 4. Level 3 started to make a difference with the reins being pulled back a bit, but then levels 2 and 1 didn’t seem to matter until I hit 0. That was the number that allowed me to go completely sideways in a controlled drift and leave two thick, black marks on the pavement.
Toggling the red Track Mode buttons tells the hydraulic suspension system to drop 1.95 inches, which can be felt as it’s happening. I pulled onto the track in fully automatic mode only to find within the first corners the car’s not downshifting at the times I’d like it to, leaving the supercharged V8 with lower revs than desired coming out of Turn 1. Grabbing the upshift paddle one time engages an Auto Upshift feature, which will automatically upshift before hitting the hard 7,650 rpm redline, but downshifts are on me with the paddle shifter. This control instantly solved my problem on the downshifts, but the system consistently upshifted during Turn 9 mid-turn when I would’ve preferred it didn’t. Full manual control sounded fun, but in practice, the power comes on so quickly it’s easy to run straight into the hard redline and bang on the rev limiter. Multimatic spokesperson Sam Ashtiani said the Nürburgring lap records were set with the Auto Upshift mode and not full auto or manual mode. Perhaps the biggest miss with the entire GTD is the fact that once Auto Upshift is engaged there’s zero visual indication in the digital gauge cluster it’s on. It’s like a secret cheat code that’s been enabled and you just kind of hope the car engaged what you think was just engaged.
Every single corner inspired more confidence in the GTD’s unflappable chassis, immense grip, and progressive nature in the way I could feel what was happening with the tires. The car turned in sharply, but it didn’t want to oversteer or understeer, it just wanted to go. But it’s still a Mustang, and it wouldn’t be hard to turn off everything and slide this thing in a controlled manner, thanks to its weight balance, but that’s not the quick way around the track.
I saw 148 mph flash across the digital gauge cluster before digging deep into the pizza-sized 16.5-inch front and 14.5-inch rear cross-drilled and vented carbon ceramic brake rotors, which are supported by six-piston front and four-piston rear Brembo calipers. The brake pedal is far more linear than the available carbon ceramics and tuning of the Corvette Z06. Despite the high speeds and nearly 100-degree ambient desert temperatures, the brakes never faded, and the pedal never went long. Nothing but confidence from this system even deep into triple-digit speeds.
I kept hearing a scraping noise around Turn 8, and initially thought it was me kissing the curbing or the suspension bottoming out. It turns out, the replaceable airflow strakes under the body were making contact with the curbing. Please don’t fret, GTD owners, they clip in and out—though I am sure they cost a pretty penny. But hey, you wanted a race car, right?
Ford swore up and down the Mustang GTD is quieter than a C8 Corvette and Mercedes-Benz AMG GT R. I didn’t measure the decibels inside the GTD, nor have I in the other two cars, but I’ve driven them, and find that claim to be highly dubious. The most notable thing about driving a Mustang GTD on a street is how loud it is inside the cabin. From the steamroller tires, the lack of sound deadening, and the fact there’s a hole in the rear bulkhead to admire the suspension, it’s not terribly surprising it is insanely loud. But man, is it cool—and it’s mesmerizing to watch that rear suspension work while riding in the passenger seat. Handling proved to be just as fun on canyon roads as it was on the track—in Sport mode. Track mode, however, can’t be enabled while in motion as the car is required to be in park so the suspension can lower. Even in Sport mode, which isn’t the lowest ride height, the front nose lift was required to traverse some intersections with water drainage ditches and while exiting a parking lot. That rear wing? You can’t see out the back as visibility is all but non-existent. The carbon ceramic brakes aren’t grabby and didn’t make a bunch of squealing noises. Notably throughout my four hours on the street in the GTD, multiple squeaks and rattles would come and go in various places of the interior. Also, I saw an average of 9.4 mpg over the course of 211 miles of mixed enthusiastic driving. Mustang GTD Chief Program Engineer Greg Goodall told The Drive, “there was zero action taken to enhance fuel economy.” Could the GTD be daily driven? Sure. Would my wife appreciate taking a road trip in it? Not so much.
More than you can afford, pal, it’s a Mustang. That’s the line that kept going through my head while driving the GTD. It costs $325,000, but that’s not the car anyone’s going to buy, nor is it the car I tested. That’s without the Performance Package with the DRS system, or any other cool bits like the magnesium paddles or liquid carbon finish. Ford won’t disclose the costs of any of this or what the cars we drove with the Performance Package cost. Spirit of America package? Who knows the dollar figure? Ford wouldn’t say. If you have to ask, apparently you can’t afford it.
It goes so far beyond the Porsche method, where you pay more for less. This is, you pay whatever Ford deems it costs, and no one will disclose it.
Even at the base price, the 2025 Ford Mustang GTD costs about $90,450 more than a Porsche 911 GT3, and $71,305 more than the 911 GT3 RS. The GTD achieved its goal of besting the 911 GT3’s ‘Ring time, but the 911 GT3 RS is still quicker around the Green Hell than the American brute for less money. Impressively, the GTD hangs with these Porsches despite weighing over 1,000 pounds more than the Germans.
Suppose we are on the topic of bragging rights, the 911 GT3 RS, for less money, has far more customization abilities in terms of settings and controls for the aero and suspension. A McLaren Artura costs less than the Mustang GTD before going nuts with options, and we are squarely in McLaren 750S pricing territory for a Mustang. Nutty.
There won’t be that many people who find out how the GTD compares to all these sports cars and supercars, because Ford’s only committed to producing it for 2025 and 2026 so far, with a run of 300 to 700 units per year.
In many ways, the GTD delivers on Ford’s promise: to build a track-ready weapon that hangs with the Porsche 911 GT3 on the Nürburgring. It proved so many armchair experts wrong, and it ran a sub-seven-minute lap time twice.
The way it drives, especially on the track, but even on the street, is special. The way it handles is special. The way it looks from the exterior is special. But inside, despite Ford’s best efforts, it is still a Mustang. At the end of the day, it nailed the mission with a world-class sports car, to which only the people actually buying one and signing the two-year agreement not to sell or flip it know what it really costs. This hippo can dance.
Ford promised a world-class Mustang capable of a sub-seven-minute Nürburgring lap time, and it delivered just that.
As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media.
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