Ford's most ludicrous muscular Mustang, the 815-horsepower supercharged GTD, is touted as among the most practical of track-focused super-sports cars. In a battle between the GTD and its bowtie rival the Corvette ZR1, or Porsche's 911 GT3 RS, the extra-wide carbon-bodied Mustang really brings the heat on track, but proves itself reasonably docile on the road, even (or especially?) when that road is getting pummeled with little chunks of ice dropping out of the sky. During his recent YouTube review of the mega Mustang, Miles Branman of the MilesPerHr channel became likely the first person to test how the GTD handles a deluge of rain mixed with hailstones. Maybe only Chevrolet's all-wheel-drive hybrid ZR1X could do better.
It really wasn't all that long ago that every test driver on the planet would have been mildly afraid of driving an hugely powerful rear-wheel-drive sports machine with the most track-focused compound tire that France can make in the wet. It's a testament to modern tire compounds and electronic driver assists that Miles was even capable of keeping the car pointed in the right direction once the wet stuff began to fall. With a familiar test route in the mountains above Palm Springs, California, the weather is constantly changeable, especially at elevation, but the driver and the Mustang were ready for it. Even just taking the precaution of slowing down and refraining from dramatic inputs was enough to keep it between the ditches and shiny side up.
Ford has managed to do something else with the Mustang GTD that might have seemed strange even just a couple decades ago, the big blue oval has made its supercar robust. Gone are the days of fragile featherweight sports machines, the Mustang GTD is as substantial, presumably, as any other Mustang. Perhaps simply by dint of its expensive carbon-fiber bodywork, the hail had nary an effect on the car's post-storm aesthetics. Carbon fiber doesn't dent, after all; it simply bounced the hailstones right off its pricey resin plastic facade rather than the natural skyward kinetic energy forcing deformation.
Even if you're caught in a hailstorm in your GTD, simply give the car a bath and you might never know it was driven at all. All the more incentive for people who buy these things to actually drive them on the road, where they belong. Just don't expect to drive through a hailstorm at V-max unscathed.
