For nearly the past two years, Ford fans’ eyes have all been on the Mustang GTD, a positively steroidal pony car gunning for heavyweights like the Porsche 911 GT3 RS. The car world’s learned a lot about the car in that time, from lap times to available options, but the big figure everyone wants to know has been relatively secretive until now. We now know exactly how much the 815-horsepower Mustang GTD will cost, and it’s going to make your eyes water.
Back in 2023, Ford just about broke the internet when it unveiled the Mustang GTD at Monterey Car Week. We’re talking pushrod rear suspension (see our reel below), a rear-mounted transaxle, a dry sump oiling system, and an active rear wing element like you get on a Formula 1 car.
Since then, this exceedingly special Mustang has clocked a Nürburgring Norschleife time of 6:52.072, the first American production car ever to lap the famous track in under seven minutes.
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With the first Mustang GTD examples expected to be delivered soon, imminent GTD owner Kelly Aiken posted the window sticker of his Multimatic-built Mustang on Facebook and we finally know exactly how much Ford’s most exclusive pony car will cost.
According to the sticker, the GTD carries an MSRP of $318,760, but we aren’t done there. This GT3-inspired flagship Mustang also gets hit with a $3,700 gas guzzler tax thanks to its EPA figures of 10 MPG city, 17 MPG highway, and 12 MPG combined. On top of that, Ford’s charging a whopping $5,500 in freight fees, so you’re looking at an all-in price of $327,960 before you add any options.
What sort of options? Well, this window sticker states that a visible carbon fiber roof is an extra $10,000 and red brake calipers will run you $1,500, but that’s about all we know for now on pricing. It’s also worth noting that the awesome DRS rear wing is part of an optional performance package, and if the price of the visible carbon fiber roof is anything to go by, don’t expect the performance package to be cheap.
However, the Mustang GTD isn’t alone in the race for America’s next poster car. A base Corvette ZR1, including gas guzzler tax and freight, stickers for $178,195 and is an absolute monster. We’re talking 1,064 horsepower, a top speed of 233 MPH, zero-to-60 mph in the low twos, hypercar specs with the service network of a half-ton pickup truck. In the pantheon of American halo cars, it sits right up there with the GTD, and its pricing is a thorn in the side of the mega Mustang. See, the GTD is only about $30,000 cheaper than two ZR1s, and while we don’t have a Nürburgring time for the Kentucky kaiju yet, the monster Corvette seems like it should at least keep pace with the GTD around most power circuits.
If the Mustang GTD is 7.224 seconds slower around the Nordschleife than the 911 GT3 RS as it was when it set it last American production car lap record, and the 911 GT3 RS turned a 2:37.2 around Virginia International Raceway’s Grand Course in Car And Driver Lightning Lap testing, and the ZR1 beat that time by 4.9 seconds, it’s going to be close. If you want another data point, Car And Driver stuck pro Porsche driver Patrick Long in a GT3 RS around VIR’s Full Course, and Long clicked off a lap time of 1:51.4. GM put Global Vehicle Performance Manager Aaron Link in a ZR1 and had him lap VIR’s Full Course, and Link put in a lap time of 1:47.7, 3.7 seconds quicker than the GT3 RS. If the GTD is still chasing the GT3 RS around the ‘Ring but the ZR1 is beating the GT3 RS on one of America’s fastest tracks, the Chevy is absolutely right in the mix.
Then again, in this price bracket, will it really matter to most owners? Surely, most people able to pay $327,960 for a GTD can afford one of each, especially since they’re vehicles of different philosophies. While the Corvette ZR1 aims to be an all-rounder, the Mustang GTD has one mission and one mission only: Take the fight to the Porsche 911 GT3 around the world’s most famous tracks. Mind you, Ford wanted it to be number one in its segment, and if it’s roughly 7.2 seconds off the GT3 RS’ Ring time, that might be a tough feat to accomplish, especially since Porsche’s Manthey Racing skunkworks division has an even hotter package available for the GT3 RS. Still, The Blue Oval did reach its sub-7 minute goal, and there’s room at the party for all of these amazing cars; we’re all just lucky to live in a time when such magnificent machinery has been unleashed.
Top graphic credit: Ford
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And we haven’t even seen the ZR-1s final form. One with hybrid stickers was seen testing at Nürburgring
I’m sure these will be on BAT from dealers soon…
….and they won’t meet reserve.
I’m a huge Mustang fanboi, but I really struggle to understand the point of this thing. No one is going to spend that kind of coin on a Mustang except for collectors who are going to hold onto it in the hopes it will appreciate in value (LOL).
“the first American production car ever to lap the famous track in under seven minutes.” Isn’t Multimatic Canadian?
I recognize how bespoke the GTD is, and I appreciate that it’s roughly half the price that the GT was. That’s still quite the pretty penny. If I’m dropping that kind of coin I’d probably be looking at a used McLaren 720S or similar. Though if I’m also in a financial position to be buying that echelon of vehicle, maybe I’d buy one anyway because I could.
No interest in the corvette. I respect it for what it is, but it does nothing to rev my engine, so to speak. If anything the fact that they had to make it have so much power to approach the performance envelopes where the McLaren F1 was thirty years ago is a bit pitiful, really.
While I’m in awe of the performance capabilities of both cars, the GTD does nothing for me aesthetically.
God, I love this thing.
Full disclosure: I haven’t read Thomas’ (surely fine) article yet, since I’m saving it for tomorrow morning’s coffee.
I’m just posting now to say that even if I had Musk or Bezos’ bank account, I’d never buy an 800 HP Mustang or 1,000 HP Corvette. They’re just not that interesting to me, beyond the engineering utilized to reach those figures.
I probably would buy a nice, daily driver (but not concours) quality Citroen DS though, and donate the rest of that money to various worthy causes (including the defense of Ukraine) keeping just enough to maintain the Citroen (and me). 😉
I like the cut of your jib very, very much.
I have no use for billionaire’s codpieces, but a nice DS would warm the cockles of my cold dark heart considerably. Make mine a Safari though.
Billionaire’s Codpiece is a fantastic band name.
I really dig Citroen DS Safaris too… that’s just Citroen’s name for wagon/estate, right? I see a few of them at the “Best of France and Italy” car show at Woodley Park in Van Nuys, CA once each year. I love wagons (and hatchbacks) of course (I just bought my very first Volvo 240 wagon a few days ago, and I’m off to register it this morning (and maybe pay extra for CA DMV’s “legacy CA” yellow-on-black license plates)) and Citroen Safaris have decent cargo capacity, and they’re appropriately strange looking (to my American eyes) as if they’re from some more joyous, alternate timeline/universe. 🙂 Such wonderful cars… I even like the later Citroens that I never see here in the states such as the CX, SM, etc… I gather that contemporary Citroens are considered to be much less Citroeny/unique, and just more like regular cars, sharing platforms/tech from other brands owned by Stellantis. 🙁
I wish that I saw more Citroens on the road… they’re pretty rare/infrequent sightings, even here in car-crazy/rust free southern California. When I moved to over LA 30 years ago, there used to be a Citroen mechanic just 10 minutes away on Melrose Ave. in Hollywood. I’m so sorry that guy (or girl?) retired/closed years ago… if they were still there (and so close) I’d probably feel braver about buying an old DS.
If wishes were fishes, I’d have a lot of fish. 😉
Yes indeed – that is Citroen speak for wagon. Amazing load-levelers with the hydropneumatic suspension. I have never managed to own one, but I have had a bunch of Peugeots, 504s and 505s, mostly wagons, one each of 504 and 505 diesel sedans. Those are fantastic load-luggers too. I am very, very much a wagon fan, have two currently, ’11 BMW 328i, and ’14 Mercedes E350. And lots of others in my past.
Congrats on the 240! I’ve had two of them over the years (plus a dozen other Volvos), an ’82 245 Turbo and a ’91 245 that was actually the newest Volvo I ever bought, in ’96. Great cars! Well, my ’82 was a disaster worthy of the writers here, but that was long before blogging was a thing, LOL.
I’d be curious to know about what went wrong with your ’82 245 Turbo Kevin, should you ever feel like sharing. My ’89 isn’t a Turbo, and it feels fast enough for the around-town, never-in-a-rush driving I do 95% of the time (I didn’t even get into 5th gear during two hours of errands today, but that’s just traffic in LA). I’ll need to improve the stereo situation in it at some point.
I’ve never had a Peugeot, but of course I remember how intriguing 505s were when I was a teenager… they weren’t exactly common, but I would see them around NYC and Westchester in the 1980s. They were handsome cars, and some (the STX maybe?) even came off as fairly sporty, and credible alternatives to Audis and other German sport sedan offerings at the time.
Volvowise, I’ve also got an ’04 XC90 that’s my newest Volvo thus far, which I’m probably going to sell now that I’ve got the 240. I really liked the XC90, but had a hankering for a simpler/more basic 240. I’ve got some things to tend to on the XC90 before I can sell it though. As always. 🙂
Maybe someday I’ll be brave/foolish enough to hunt down a running Citroen DS that I can afford. I’d have to find a decent mechanic w/rates not quite in the stratosphere that’s also not too far from me (in Hollywood) too. Anything’s possible I suppose… 😉
Oh, it was just a used up heap, as aging cars tended to be in those days. I bought it around 1995 with 150K on it. It was rusty, it had every mechanical issue you could think of in an aging car (other than the motor and turbo were fine), and it caught on fire due to the notorious Volvo biodegrading engine harness problem. Like an idiot, I put the fire out and fixed the thing. The hilarious part is it would sit forever and start on the first turn of the key, but good luck actually going very far. I ended up selling to for a pittance to a coworker’s grandfather who only used it a few miles a week for errands. It was perfectly happy doing that.
My newest was an ’04 V70. It was OK, but the problem I found with it was that it cost as much or more as the Germans to run, but didn’t drive anywhere near as nicely. My favorite Volvo was my ’93 965 – that car was a delight. Smooth and fast, if definitely a cruiseliner not a speedboat, LOL.
A 505 STX with the Peugeot balance-shafted version of the PRV V-6 is a hell of a nice car. Never owned one, but drove a few. I dearly miss my ’79 504D – it was MINT (and mint green). I had to sell it after a job loss 20-odd years ago. Sigh. I will never find another one as nice as that one.
Some pictures of my various automotive shenanigans from the past 15 years or so here (along with various other stuff). I think the only car pictured that wasn’t actually mine is the Saab 96 – and there is a good story behind that car:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/10764510@N05/
That pic of the three Volvo wagons is fun – all three were mine at different times, but at the time of the pic I had sold two of them to friends. ’94 945, ’93 965, and ’95 945.
Hopefully the link works.
Thanks for the details, and yes, the link works fine, so thanks for that too Kevin. No surprise, but I love Saabs also, and almost bought a decently running high-mile 9-3 from a neighbor during the pandemic, but decided against it when I started researching what parts (alphanumeric LED in-dash display) and service (it was very hard to get into third gear) would cost. I probably still should have bought it… on my test drive, it really drove well, with plenty of grunt from the engine, nice steering/shifting, and overall it felt smooth and didn’t rattle despite the miles. And the cargo area was cavernous… really huge for not being a wagon.
My main question: Will Ford allow the GTD to face off against the ZR1?
Or do we have to wait for wealthy YouTubers to buy both and take them to a track?
Can the autopian do an article on the “gas guzzler” tax. Also nice to see 5 star crash safety all around on a expensive car.
I think you guys are missing the point here. Whether it’s twice as much as a ZR1 or whatever, doesn’t matter to the folks who want to buy the world’s hottest Mustang. Besides which, if I’m not mistaken, the GTD’s entire raison d’etre is to homologate the car for GT3 racing.
And though you’ve touched on it already in a way below, that’s also how Ford is targeting the actual buying demographic – rich guys who want to own an actual race car
Sure, there will be a few who love the idea of owning the most badass Mustang possible, but I bet many of the buyers want to be able to say they don’t just own a high end performance car, they own a racecar.
This is how Ford did it with the last GT.
Got
Treehunnidthousand
Dollars
Need threefiddy…
I said damn you Loch Ness monster, get off my lawn!
I love Mustangs, and whilst it’s cool that Ford found a way to make the GTD, it appears to me that they did so at the expense of furthering their more plebian offerings. I have no interest in racing, so having 800+ horsepower on tap is just a flex that doesn’t do anything for me.
I wonder how long we have to wait until one ends up on BaT…
5 days after the first ones ship. See the “special” RS6 Avant from the dealer
That would draw the ire of Ford, who apparently are doing the same “you can’t sell your car for 2 years” policy as the GT. I wonder if John Cena got one of them…
I have my metaphorical bowl of popcorn out
The Mustang GTD would be like if Chevy sold the C8.R to the general public.
Its incredibly close to a real race car in design and purpose, while the ZR1 is a supercar that also turns fast laptimes.
Full disclosure; I own a Shelby GT350, had a GT500, and owned/ raced a C5 Racecar (that I also drove on the streets)
I’d rather have a GT350. That motor is glorious.
Don’t they grenade if you look at them wrong though?
If I’ve got F You Money, I wouldn’t care!
Doesn’t really change the conclusion, but the ring times quoted in the article are misleading.
The 992.1 GT3 RS did the 20,600 meter lap in 6:44.848, the full 20,832 meter lap took 6:49.328. The Mustang GTD did the 20,600 meter lap in 6:47.260, so really only 2.4 or 2.9 seconds slower depending on the distance.
I really don’t get this product, but whatever. I guess it’s probably better looking than the Corvette, but that isn’t saying much and there are better looking cars for less than either of these uggos with their performance potential that none of the buyers could exploit or will, as they’ll be parked in garages and trotted out to occasional C&Cs. For that matter, there are much cheaper versions of these with more accessible performance, but I guess one can’t brag about being only 1/who cares and rattle off unapproachable performance numbers achieved by actual pros that some basic EV will smoke in a couple years, anyway.
I’ve never really understood who this car is for outside of ultra wealthy boomers who already own 10+ muscle cars and want to be able to say (Mr. Regular voice) MY MUSTANG BEST MUSTANG!
It’s just an odd product. $330,000 will get you an actual exotic. A McLaren 720s starts at $305,000. A Ferrari 296 starts at $343,000. Pricing hasn’t been released on the Temerario yet but the Huracan started at a comparatively reasonable $249,865. You can get a non-RS 992 GT3 for under 300 grand. Actual 992 RS-es are currently going for $400,000+ which is insane to me.
OR…you could have a Mustang. I understand that I’m not the target demographic for this thing and will probably never be able to blow six figures on a car anyway but I just don’t get it. It just doesn’t seem THAT special and despite everything Ford has put into it it still can’t keep up with a GT3 RS.
I do get the America, FUCK YEAH angle but for this much money you could have a ZR1, a GT500, and a Hellcat…probably with some money to spare for all the tires you’ll go through. Anyway I’ll be very curious to watch these over the years because I do wonder if Ford is pushing their luck a bit with the GTD.
The people who the Mustang name means everything to aren’t going to be around forever. I feel like once the boomers all go to the big Margaritaville in the sky there are going to be a metric fuck ton of American collector cars out there and less than a metric fuck ton of buyers. Hell there are people alive today who think of an EV crossover first when they think of a Mustang….
This car is for Jim Farley.
The Mustang name might not be around forever, but the McLaren name means nothing. Their models are indistinguishable from each other to all but the most insufferable of pedants.
I don’t think Ford is pushing their luck. The wealth gap keeps increasing, year after year. They’ll sell every model they produce. I don’t know if they are waitlisting these like they did for the GT, but if they are, they’ll sell every single one they *plan* on producing.
Gonna have to disagree with you there. You might not like McLarens, and that’s fine. If I had $300,000 to blow on a car they wouldn’t be my first choice due to their well documented QC issues. But between the mighty F1 and all of the racing history almost everyone knows the name. If you pulled 10 random people off the street and asked them if they’d heard of McLaren many would say yes. Normies are obsessed with Formula 1 now, which definitely helps the brand recognition.
McLaren as a brand, I will concede. Specific McLaren models (which was my point), no way. The GTD looks like a Mustang. McLarens are all just vaguely soap-shaped blobs.
Yeah I agree. They have too many damn models and not enough to differentiate them. I’m a massive nerd and I’m not sure that I could tell you what’s what with their current stuff outside of the truly insane cars (like the Senna and Elva) and the 720, because for whatever reason I’ve seen several of those in the wild.
The price is crazy, if you carefully shop you can get 100 Mustangs for this price.
(~ 20-25 year old mustangs)
Ford loves to act like Mustang is this amazing word class name plate, and pretend like they didn’t once build the Mustang II or an electric crossover.
As someone else mentioned if this was to to homoglate the car for racing then it definitely makes sense. While I don’t disagree with you about the Ferrari and other options, I suspect for many buyers it’ll be parked next to the Ferrari.
And for pleabs that can only afford one $350k car this sounds more like a raw type of performance car experience you won’t get out of a similarly priced Ferrari. And you won’t have Ferrari acting like they still own the car after you bought it either.
I’d give my first born for a GTD.
The GTD is a strange product. It doesn’t have any real meaningful connection to regular Mustangs and costs more than a 911 GT3-RS. On top of that the thing is ugly.
Other than being purchased to say you can purchase it, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it to exist.
If I recall correctly it’s built off the same platform as the S650, so it does have a connection. That being said I’m sure there’s very little that’s the same.
LOL – the bodies get their start at Flat Rock, yes, but once they go to Multimatic, they come out very, very different.
The point of it is to be bought by Rick Hendrick and Rick Hendrick-esque people at Barrett-Jackson for the next 15 years.
So the “purchased to say you can purchase” part.
It’s a homologation car for GT3 racing. They don’t care who buys them or what their reasons are.
If the reason is the advertising that comes from GT3 racing, it needs some connection to the actual Mustang. The 911 GT3-RS actually has that connection that helps sell other 911s. I’m also certain Ford cares immensely who buys them.
No what I’m saying is if they want to race the car in GT3 in a certain configuration, there has to be a road legal equivalent sold to the public.
Think Plymouth Superbird for NASCAR or Ducati Panigale V4 R for World Superbike.
I understand homologation. But the reason Ford is spending the money is that they believe it will help them sell more regular cars. They aren’t making money selling GTDs. But since the GTD doesn’t have any connection to any other Ford (the GTD is more a Multimatic than a Ford) it doesn’t do them much good to sell regular Mustangs.
No one outside us is going to know it’s more Multimatic than ford.
That said, no Ford is a “Ford” in the sense that they built all of it. They assemble parts from someone else and the assemblies coming into ford assembly plants from tier 1 suppliers are only getting larger. This doesn’t mean assembling isn’t hard, but begs the question, what is a Ford anyway? What amount of it needs to be built wholly by Ford corporate? Ford oversaw and paid for the contract work just like they do for the majority of their cars.
The people who watch races and would care about the GTD are going to know it has almost no connection to a real Mustang.
The people who watch GT3 racing know about the difference between GT3 cars and stock. Racecars are cool. Homologation special are cool. I want to own a NASCAR not because I think Camries are better than Altimas, but because NASCAR tech is cool. Same here.
Sure, but that doesn’t change my point. Ford isn’t making money on the GTD, and the regular Mustang bears no resemblance to a GT3 car. Liking a homologation special won’t translate to the cars that Ford wants to sell. It is too big a leap in this case.
At least the Dodge brothers have nothing to do with it.
Selling the GTD isn’t going to help Ford sell more regular cars. Winning LeMans with the GTD is going to help them sell more Mustangs.
The people who watch LeMans are going to know it has almost no connection to a real Mustang.
Absolutely. But the people that buy Mustangs aren’t going to care, if Ford can slather “LeMans Winner” all over their advertising for the next several years if they win. They won’t even need to say it was only a class win.
OEMs pay a startling amount of money for bragging rights in racing. Let me tell you, Jim Farley really wants a Ford to win LeMans.
I’m sure he does. It isn’t as though there would be zero value to Ford. However, my estimate is that a halo car, which is more expensive and slower than the competition, will not generate much value. Especially when the people who know what LeMans is will know it isn’t a Mustang or even really a Ford.
I might be wrong, but it wouldn’t be the first time an investment in a halo car flopped.
Of all the things the buying public might say about any mainstream automaker, I don’t think “gee, I wish they did a ton more racing” is even on the list.
The top ten are probably filled with keywords much more tied to functionality, TSBs, recalls, ownership experiences.
The kind of guys who buy V8 Mustangs would absolutely eat that stuff up. We’re not talking about the buying public.
Ford going into F1 as an F1 engine “partner” has dubious retail value as well. And probably costs a lot more than the GTD program did.
Both of those efforts are funded from the marketing budget. I don’t find that hard to comprehend.
According to who? GT3 isn’t Group A, and the Mustang GT3 was homologated by the existence of the regular Mustang in 2023. Ford doesn’t have to do anything to keep it running in GT3 until 2030.
The amount of people who don’t get this is surprising.
I don’t believe this is true. What aspect of the car is being homologated with the GTD? The transaxle configuration, maybe? Considering WEC and IMSA let Porsche run mid-engine 911s without making any road versions I doubt they’d raise a stink about a transaxle. I believe this car is more of a tribute build than anything else.