As it launched the S650 Mustang, Ford talked about the lineup as a triangle. It finally makes sense.
One side was the base car. The second was the Dark Horse model, which formed the development base for the Mustang GT3 to race in 2024—with eyes on earning a 24 Hours of Le Mans GT-class trophy with a pony car. And now we know the final side to the triangle: The team homologated the GT3 race car via a $300,000 global street-legal track monster: the Mustang GTD. Named for the North American IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s GT Daytona class, the GTD will blast onto the scene with more than 800 hp.
This car has been in Ford CEO and racer Jim Farley’s head for 50 years. “I want to see Porsche, I want to see Aston Martin, I want to see Mercedes sweat,” he says. So when the sixth-generation Mustang was in the works as a global car, an initial effort was made to take that car to Le Mans in honor of the 50th anniversary of the GT40’s wins there. However, after initial studies determined there would be no way to reach the podium with that car’s silhouette, the team pivoted and developed the second-generation Ford GT with Multimatic.
But the dream of Mustang as
