2025 Ford Mustang GTD: A $300K Pony Car With 800 HP, F-22 Raptor Parts, and Active Aero

All this week's rumors about a mid-engined Mustang supercar sold what was coming real short. The 2025 Ford Mustang GTD is more than a supercar and more than a road-legal track car that's too ferocious to race. It's like if Ford loaded a Shelby GT500 and a Porsche 911 GT2 RS into a blender with an F-22 Raptor—literally, as you'll soon find out.

Unlike the rumors may have led you to believe, the Mustang GTD is indeed a Mustang. It'll begin life at Ford's Flat Rock Assembly plant in Michigan, where all Mustangs are made, before its chassis is hauled up to Multimatic. Y'know, the A-list engineering firm that built the Ford GT, V8 Bronco DR, and Mustang GT3 and GT4 race cars. The GTD was developed directly in tandem with the GT3, and is named for the IMSA class the GT3 will race in. But because it doesn't play by anyone's rules, the Mustang GTD takes its performance much further.

It's hard to know where to start with the Mustang GTD, so let's begin with its engine: A 5.2-liter supercharged V8, probably related to the one in the last-gen GT500. It's Ford's most powerful road-legal Mustang engine in history with a targeted output of 800 horsepower, and it's the first to feature dry-sump oiling. It'll rev past 7,500 rpm and exhale through a titanium active-valve exhaust, and god does it sound savage.

All that power travels through a carbon fiber driveshaft to a rear-mounted, eight-speed dual-clutch transaxle, crammed back there for nearly 50-50 weight distribution. Weight received tons of attention in the GTD; its fenders, hood, roof, trunk cover, splitter, and diffuser are all carbon fiber as standard—the front and rear fascias can be made of the stuff as well, if optioned that way. It has no back seat, the rear subframe is tubular (which also boosts rigidity), and the 20-inch wheels are forged aluminum. You can get them in magnesium, too.

Those wheels wear some of the widest rubber you'll find on a road car, too. The fronts are 325 millimeters wide—10 millimeters wider than the last GT500's rears—while the GTD's own rears are 345 millimeters. They give the GTD a track four full inches wider than a Mustang GT's.

The GTD capitalizes on that absolute shmeat with semi-active suspension that adjusts spring rates, can adjust ride height by 1.6 inches, and features adaptive spool-valve dampers. It's double-wishbone up front and muti-link rear, with pushrod-actuated inboard shocks. A hydraulically adjusted active rear wing smushes it into the road, and it can be complemented by an optional aero package. Think a carbon underbody, and active front flaps that balance with the rear wing.

Naturally, it's all topped off by Brembo carbon-ceramic brakes, and variable traction control modified through steering wheel buttons. That system, as well as others on board, are capable of accepting over-the-air updates to further optimize performance.

The "quickest roadgoing Mustang ever" is so extreme that Ford expects the GTD to drop a seven-minute lap at the Nürburgring like it's nothing. Considering how close the far milder Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE got to that mark, the Mustang GTD will probably limbo under seven minutes with room to spare.

That's not why I likened it to an F-22 Raptor, though. It's made from one. Literally. Parts, anyway: the paddle shifters, rotary dial shifter, and serial plate are all titanium from a retired F-22. The rest is trimmed in leather, faux suede, and carbon fiber, while the seats are Recaro, of course. Ford will offer a multitude of regular paint options, but also paint-to-sample—which you can afford if you're in the market for a Mustang GTD anyway.

That's because the 2025 Ford Mustang GTD is expected to cost around $300,000. Production will be limited (to how many, Ford hasn't said), and cars will reach buyers between late 2024 and early 2025. Once again, it's street legal, so it won't be some gilded-cage track toy. You might really see one out there one day, and the sound of its titanium exhaust will make that day one to remember.

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