$325,000+ Ford Mustang GTD makes a splash at Detroit Auto Show
More than 5,000 people hoped to be selected to buy car
Yes, the new limited edition Ford Mustang GTD starts at $325,000.
If you want the unique “Spirit of America” edition revealed on the eve of the Detroit Auto Show at Huntington Place on Thursday night, well, that’ll cost a little extra.
The super car has a supercharged 5.2L V8 engine with 815-horsepower, 664 pound-feet of torque and can reach 202 miles per hour, “the most of any street-legal Mustang ever,” Ford said.
More than 5,000 people applied to Ford with the hope of being selected to purchase one of these collector cars — no fewer than 300 and no more than 700 will be built for each model year 2025 and 2026.
If you want one, it’s too late. The window opened in April and closed in May. The hand-picked group of approved buyers from the U.S., Canada and Mexico were notified in August. Deliveries begin in coming weeks.
Buyers selected after a grueling review
The highly detailed application can take up to two hours to complete.
A team at Ford spent thousands of hours combing through applications of potential buyers and choosing a short list based on their responses to lifestyle questions including:
How many cars did this buyer own already?
What did they plan to do with it?
How do they engage others with the car?
What’s their presence on social media?
Is charitable giving part of the applicant’s life?
This is only the second time that Ford has gone through this application process for a limited edition vehicle, the first being the Ford GT built between 2016-22, said Jim Owens, Mustang GTD brand manager.
Price: How high can it go?
Owens, 60, of Bloomfield Township, Michigan, has been at Ford for more than 38 years, the last quarter century in performance racing. He also worked with Carroll Shelby, the legendary racing driver and automotive designer.
As a member of the buyer review team, Owens said the vehicle pays homage to Mustang history and automotive racing.
If the price of the track-ready car starts at $325,000, how high can the price go?
“We don’t discuss that,” Owens told me.
These cars are customized for every buyer, he said, and that may include:
enhanced aerodynamics
unique exterior paint, including the Spirit of America package unveiled just prior to the auto show
The Spirit of America design has a Performance White body with twin racing stripes in Race Red and Lightning Blue, mimicking the iconic red, white and blue Mustang tribal that debuted in 1964. The stripes run the length of the Mustang GTD body.
matching the interior paint with their favorite color
A customer might, for example, cut a swatch from a favorite shirt and ask Mustang designers to match it, Owens said. “This vehicle is — special.”
A red, white and blue color scheme
The Mustang GTD has a performance package with a “drag reduction system that can change the angle of the rear wing and activate flaps under the front of the car to find exactly the right balance between airflow for speed and downforce for grip, depending on performance conditions,” Ford said.
But wait, there’s more: This Mustang GTD also “features exposed carbon fiber aerodynamic elements, including the front splitter, as well as on the rear diffuser and spoiler. A bright ‘MUSTANG’ wordmark appears on the underside of the rear wing.”
Owners may choose between Race Red or exposed carbon fiber mirror caps. Race Red calipers are standard. The Mustang GTD performance package comes standard.
Inspired by the man who broke the sound barrier
The design also matches the overalls that Craig Breedlove wore when he broke both the 500- and 600-mile per hour barriers in the 1960s.
Breedlove, a structural engineering tech from Southern California who worked in the aerospace industry, purchased a $500 jet engine from a Korean War fighter plane and went down in history as the first person to break the 500- and 600-mile per hour barriers on land.
“He bought his first car when he was only 13, and at 16 drove his 1934 Ford hot rod with a supercharged V8 engine to a recorded speed of 154 mph on the dry lakes of the Mojave Desert,” according to his Automotive Hall of Fame biography. He was inducted in 2009. He died in 2023 at 86.
“Mustang GTD wouldn’t have been possible without people like Craig Breedlove, pushing the edge of the envelope and challenging the Goliaths of the day in an all-American way,” Owens said in a news release.
Note: GTD stands for Grand Touring Daytona, the class that Mustang competes in during International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) competition, noted Baytown Ford, just east of Houston, Texas, on its website. The famous Daytona 24-hour race opens the IMSA season. GTD is the highest class of street-legal sports cars before it changes to the experimental prototype division.
The Mustang GTD starts life at Flat Rock Assembly Plant, like all Mustangs do. Then it’s transported to Multimatic’s facility in Markham, Ontario, for completion by engineers from Mulitmatic and Ford Performance.
“This shows how much the Mustang has grown over the last 60. years, that the brand can be anything it wants,” said Matt Anderson, curator of transportation at The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan. “We have the Mustang Serial Number One on display, and people come from all over the world to take their picture with it.”
The limited edition Ford Mustang GTD Spirit of America will be on display for public viewing during the Detroit Auto Show. Media day and the charity preview event are held on Friday, Jan. 10, while public days begin on Saturday, Jan. 11. See schedule here.
See more: Cars from National Lampoon’s Vacation’ and ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ at Detroit Auto Show
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