It’s the “right time” to build a Mustang GTD supercar

The Ford Motor Company has built supercars before—like the Ford GT that took Ferrari at Le Mans—and won. Now the automaker is taking the supercar recipe to its everyday Mustang pony car, which boasts supercharged performance and a supercar price tag of around $300,000.

Video version

– Hi guys. It’s the 2023 Monterey Car Week at The Quail. At the event, we get to see a lot of big cars for the first time and Ford is here with one big Mustang GTD. Jim Farley is joining me now.

So Jim, you know, Ford has made some race cars in the past. In fact, he beat Ferrari at Le Mans years ago. But now, we’re seeing a new one. We’re adding the supercar race car recipe to the Mustang, to Mommy and Daddy’s Mustangs. So talk to me about what this car is and why it’s so special.

Jim Farley: Well, the Mustang is the best-selling coupe, sports coupe in the world, which surprised a lot of people. The previous generation, we globalized it, so we sell right and left hand drive in places like Australia and Sweden. It has become really popular. We kind of want to mix it up in the next generation. We love Shelby’s and all that stuff.

But we want to take a hard turn right and compete globally in Mustangs and motorsports. to [INAUDIBLE] And NASCAR, but Australian supercars – GT4, GT3, amateur racing with Dark Horse, our own racing series, like Spec Miata or Miata Racing, and we want to build a business around racing Mustangs.

So when we decided to go back to Le Mans, which we will do next summer with the GT3, we didn’t want Aston Martin, Mercedes and Porsche to enjoy their cars. So we built the Mustang. It really isn’t a Mustang. The tech in it is kind of crazy, but it’s the top Mustang. We think it’s kind of the right turn for us to build a Mustang at the higher end, $300,000 range.

– I installed it there at $300,000. So I think what people are really trying to understand is that this is a car that can compete with the best cars in Europe–

Jim Farley: Yes.

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– – A type of car that is a racing car and that is also very similar to the one on the street. And this thing is basically a race car with a trick suspension in the back.

Jim Farley: Yes.

– Transmission Setup, 500HP Supercharged – 5.8–

Jim Farley: 800.

– Sorry. 800.

[CHUCKLING]

5.2 liters of supercharged engine. So what we’re really talking about here, Jim, is a European style race car which is a road race car.

Jim Farley: You totally get it.

– We can drive down the street, right?

Jim Farley: Yes, with carbon fiber, that’s great, but what people won’t know is the technology underneath. And that’s the point. What we want to do is take the race car and then put that squad stuff into the race, like the DRS system, a lot of the traction and electronic stability controls that we wouldn’t be able to play and balance your street car performance so the street car can function just like a race car , which the Europeans had not already done. Their car tends to be very different on the road.

That idea behind the car, is to compete with those companies as an underdog. And I don’t see any reason why the Mustang shouldn’t. I loved Porsche. I love all of these brands throughout my career. But I don’t know why Mustangs can’t compete with them. But do it – build a race car for the road.

– You know, I’ve gone on record saying you’d jump in this car and race any other CEO. I’ve seen a couple of CEOs here make very fast cars. You said you would take them in this car, right?

Jim Farley: Yes.

– Do you think customers want this car? Is your Mustang a loyal thing, you know, I’m at that level I want this race car for the road.

Jim Farley: I think we learned a lot about the GT. We did GT’s on the road, race cars. But then we did the production track cars, the Mark 2 and Mark 4 GT and they were way more popular than we thought. I think the Mark 4 was priced at $1.8 million. And we’re starting to see more interest in track cars. That’s why we developed the Dark Horse R. And yes, I think there will be some Mustang customers who will love this. I think there will be a lot of American enthusiasts who buy Porsches, or they buy Aston Martins, and they buy Mercedes, who will buy a Mustang for the first time because of this car.

This competes in a different group of cars. I think these customers are actually very different from our core customers.

– right. So obviously your core customers buy a lot of cars.

Jim Farley: Yes.

– And I want to shift gears to electric, if I may. Your second quarter earnings were announced recently. Another quarter of going under the hood in there with the breakup of the action, and really showing what’s going on out there. How is this transformation now for Ford?

Jim Farley: Well, net-net, we’ve increased our guidance for the year on a profit basis. The first half was really, really we did over $7 billion. It was very positive. What we discovered is that all three companies – because they have a growing business for each of them – all work differently than we thought. Professional business is way more profitable than we thought. Super Green product appeared, and it is very popular with professional customers. So this is much better than we thought.

In our blue business, hybrids fare much better, thanks to the Bronco and a couple of breakout products like the Maverick. And of course the F-150. And then e-commerce, volume is OK, we spent the first half getting ready to triple production in the fourth quarter, but profitability is really challenged. Fortunately, two other companies are doing enough to offset this challenge. What we’re seeing with the E is that people just love cars but don’t want to pay a premium.

– You know, I heard an analyst kind of say, I appreciate the fact that you guys were dividing that by the actual cost of making these cars. So I was recently driving an F-150 Lightning across California as a consumer to see what that was like. What are some of the main things you learned from that experience?

Jim Farley: Yes, I think as leaders, we have to go and see with our eyes on our ears. I learned a ton. What I’ve learned is that the problem with our society transitioning, even to partial electrification, is a human problem. It’s not a technical problem. And charging, and do you go to a fast charger but wait in line, or do you go to a lower speed charger and wait? cost and how to plan a trip differently?

I learned a lot from our sales staff, from our professional customers. We have a lot of professional customers like the one who visited a wind farm that now uses electric vehicles. One of the hottest things they said is Mojave, at 120 degrees the AC works perfectly. Like it doesn’t have to cool like a regular ice car. I just learned a lot about what we really go through.

The takeaway was, other than spending a lot of miles with BlueCruise, there’s a lot of new technology, we have to solve the human part of this shift.

– You mentioned the human part. A lot of it is software.

Jim Farley: Yes.

– And you guys have hired Peter Stern as Head of Consumer Programs [INAUDIBLE] Top tech executives in Silicon Valley. How important is that to your genre as bringing bridging the gap to where customers want to be and what they want to use their cars for?

Jim Farley: Yes. I think the biggest change in this industry that hasn’t really been reported but that you mentioned is going digital. We had representative products. They may have a digital IP address, but we couldn’t send programs to them. We couldn’t make really big changes to the car. We now design all vehicles that support the software where Ford writes on the software.

After all, we now have 550,000 subscribers to our program, 80% of which are professional clients. So we need professional people who know how to build a software project, profit and loss, but also marketing. Do we charge BlueCruise when you use it or sign up? You can argue both ways. I think maybe it should be use. When you get into the car and use BlueCruise, you probably only have to pay when you use it. Why do you have to pay for your subscription and many people never buy it? This makes no sense to me.

Peter is the kind of guy coming from Apple who built all of that Apple News, all of that services, the business, they know, and we need that talent in the company right now.

– So being talent, you’re also talking about people at Ford, people who built the cars, the UAW contract is talking about now. What is your level of broad and significant in terms of what happens in a month like what could be the end of the decade?

Jim Farley: Well, the contract expires on September 14th, which is about 30 days later. To be honest, it’s a really tough discussion. We are far away, but the good thing is that we talk and I believe in my heart as Mr. Ford does, that Ford is different. We have 20% more jobs in the US than any other brand in our hourly workers. We make more cars and export more cars. We make 100% of our trucks in the United States. Our competitors don’t.

So I believe that Ford and the UAW will find a way forward to ensure a future for our manufacturing base in the country and for the middle class. We have a lot of work to do in the next 30 days.

– Well, it happens a lot. Like, this is a big deal.

Jim Farley: that it.

– Really quick, finally, we’re in Monterey, in Pebble Beach for Big Car Week and what’s the significance of that to have this car launched here but also Ford just to be here? And then I also know you have a personal history with this place and you love the event too.

Jim Farley: Yes. I mean, I’m setting myself up to graduate school working on Pebble Beach Cars. This was like my job. So I came here for a long time. But, look, the GTD is a very special car. It’s $300,000, and we’ve never built a Mustang — we’ve never built a Mustang in that kind of price area, and that’s the right crowd. Want to sell a $300,000 Mustang? You must be at The Quail.

– right.

Jim Farley: Like all of our customers walk around. So this is the right place. Just like a football game is the setting for the F-150. This is the place for this car.