15 Coolest Features of the Wicked $325,000 Ford Mustang GTD
A window into the suspension, fixes for melting bodywork, rivalry with Chevy, and more.
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Turning a run-of-the-mill Mustang into the 2025 Ford Mustang GTD isn’t as easy as bolting on a wide body, a big engine, and some trick shocks. A ton of small but significant changes are made, and these are the coolest and most interesting things we found when we went hands-on and drove the wildest Mustang ever made.
Jim’s Window
The GTD’s rear suspension is a work of art, combining milled integral link geometry with pushrods and rockers that actuate electronically controlled Multimatic ASV spool valve shocks mounted where the rear seat used to be. Since a cover had to be designed to replace the seat, Ford CEO Jim Farley insisted the team put a polycarbonate window in it to show off all the trick components. Tilt the rearview mirror down enough, and you can watch it work while you drive.
Two Intakes
The engine primarily gets its air from a scoop in the driver’s side “nostril” of the grille, but that’s not enough to fully feed the supercharged 5.2-liter V-8. To satisfy the engine, engineers had to add a second “surfboard” intake flattened out and sandwiched between the primary intake and the hood. That’s it in the front right corner of the photo.
No Flow Pony
Ford engineers and designers considered hollowing out the pony badge in the grille to get more airflow into the radiator. They decided against it because Chevy did it first with the “Flowtie” hollowed-out bowtie badge and didn’t want to copy their biggest rival. A carbon-fiber insert was chosen instead, a nod to the carbon-fiber bodywork.
Subtlety Isn’t Dead
With the trunk replaced by a cooler (and its fans and ducting) for the rear-mounted transaxle, Ford designers had a choice to make. The fans are visible through the vents in the trunklid, and the team considered painting them body color but decided it was too ostentatious.
Heat Changed Things
Originally, Ford designers had planned a central exhaust, but the heat from the titanium Akrapovič system kept melting the reverse light. The dual-exit exhaust was a workaround.
Similarly, the trunklid wasn’t always going to be carbon fiber, but the 250-degree heat coming out of the transaxle cooler was melting prototypes formed from plastic.
It Has a Special Fuel Door
The super-wide bodywork meant the GTD’s fuel filler door had to be redesigned, but not for the reason you’re thinking. The original hinge mechanism didn’t allow it to clear the new fender, so it had to be modified to swing out differently.
It Almost Had Clearance Lights
The new widebody is 81.7 inches wide, which on a truck would require orange clearance lights on the front and rear ends and fenders. A careful reading of the law, though, reveals that rule only applies to vehicles that can be used for both private and commercial purposes—trucks and vans.
Even without the lights, the body is now so wide that the door mirrors only stick out 0.2 inch past the fenders.
More Than Holes
The massive hood vents allow hot air trapped in the engine compartment to escape, but not enough. If you’re going to the track, Ford engineers recommend removing the mesh grilles, which are easily unbolted from below, for even more airflow.
The aerodynamic flicks wrapping partway around each vent are part of the optional Track package and weren’t originally going to be on the car. While testing at the Nürburgring, engineers 3D-printed some prototypes, discovered they reduced the lap time noticeably, and sent the schematics back to Michigan to be added to the production car.
Complicated Vents
The massive vents in the front fenders aren’t just for show. They help get high-pressure air out of the front wheelwells and channel it down the sides of the car. Ford engineers went through more than 120 iterations of the vents, tweaking the fins and the mesh over and over, looking for maximum airflow while still meeting legal requirements and keeping rocks from being thrown into the doors and rear fenders.
The scoops in the rear fenders channel air through the rear wheelwells. They’re not for brake cooling, which is done entirely under the car, nor are they for the transaxle cooler, which is mounted under the trunklid.
No Kids’ Heads
See that silver strut above the light, crossing over the hydraulic fluid tank just to the right of the blue bodywork? It’s not supporting anything. It’s there to fulfill a legal requirement ensuring the opening is too small for a child to get their head stuck in there. The law makes no distinction about whether that’s even possible given the position of the opening, so it has to be there.
No Old Lines
Almost every single line in the bodywork is different than other Mustangs’. Between accommodating the wide body and getting the aerodynamics right, Ford designers changed practically everything but the character line on the doors below the side windows. (The doors couldn’t change due to side impact crash protection, so that line stayed.) Everything else, including the lines in the roof, is new. Those were intended to match the lines in the hood, trunklid, and trunklid vents, but the vents had to be made larger for more airflow, slightly ruining the effect.
Yellow Means Racing
Mustang fans will notice the three-segment daytime running lamps (DRL) on the GTD are yellow, not white like other trims. Yellow DRLs are a calling card of Ford Racing (née Ford Performance), so now the Mustang gets them, same as the Raptors.
No Wing Button
Ford engineers wanted to add a button that would allow drivers to open and close the rear wing at will, offering a sort of manual drag reduction system activator and parking-lot party trick. The team ran out of time and places to put an extra button, though, so the wing is controlled entirely by the computer based on driving conditions (although you can turn it off and it’ll just stay closed).
Hydraulics Go Both Ways
Yes, the GTD has hydraulics, and they do multiple jobs. Their primary function is to lower the car in Track mode. Each corner of the car has three springs, not one. The first is the stiffer primary spring, the second a softer secondary spring, and the third a tiny helper spring that only activates when a wheel comes off the ground. The car lowers itself by compressing the softer secondary spring with hydraulic rams, dropping the nose 1.6 inches and the tail 1.2 inches and leaving only the stiffer primary spring activated.
On the front end, though, the rams also go the other way. In order to raise the nose to clear curbs, dips, and parking stops, the rams extend the front springs by 1.6 inches.
Since the car already had hydraulics for the suspension and nose lift, Ford used them for the active aerodynamics, as well. They control the rear wing and hidden flaps under the front of the car, alternating between high-downforce and low-drag configurations. The pump and reservoir are in what used to be the trunk cavity.
Widest Front Tires on the Market
With 325/30R20 Michelin Pilot Cup 2 R rubber mounted up front, the GTD claims the title for widest front tires ever put on a street car. The record was previously held by the Chevrolet Camaro Z/28, which had 305s. The rear tires are even wider, at 345/30R20.
Technically, though, one passenger vehicle had wider front tires 40 years ago: the Lamborghini LM002 super SUV, which mounted 345s all around.
Were you one of those kids who taught themselves to identify cars at night by their headlights and taillights? I was. I was also one of those kids with a huge box of Hot Wheels and impressive collection of home-made Lego hot rods. I asked my parents for a Power Wheels Porsche 911 for Christmas for years, though the best I got was a pedal-powered tractor. I drove the wheels off it. I used to tell my friends I’d own a “slug bug” one day. When I was 15, my dad told me he would get me a car on the condition that I had to maintain it. He came back with a rough-around-the-edges 1967 Volkswagen Beetle he’d picked up for something like $600. I drove the wheels off that thing, too, even though it was only slightly faster than the tractor. When I got tired of chasing electrical gremlins (none of which were related to my bitchin’ self-installed stereo, thank you very much), I thought I’d move on to something more sensible. I bought a 1986 Pontiac Fiero GT and got my first speeding ticket in that car during the test drive. Not my first-ever ticket, mind you. That came behind the wheel of a Geo Metro hatchback I delivered pizza in during high school. I never planned to have this job. I was actually an aerospace engineering major in college, but calculus and I had a bad breakup. Considering how much better my English grades were than my calculus grades, I decided to stick to my strengths and write instead. When I made the switch, people kept asking me what I wanted to do with my life. I told them I’d like to write for a car magazine someday, not expecting it to actually happen. I figured I’d be in newspapers, maybe a magazine if I was lucky. Then this happened, which was slightly awkward because I grew up reading Car & Driver, but convenient since I don’t live in Michigan. Now I just try to make it through the day without adding any more names to the list of people who want to kill me and take my job.
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