Famed fire survivor and not-a-Ferrari owner Jay Leno just took custody of his brand-new Ford Mustang GTD, the American carmaker’s attempt to muscle in on the European exotic market. And I do mean brand new. The car only just started rolling off the assembly lines of the company that invented assembly lines, and Leno’s GTD is serial number 12, matching his Ford GTs. The Mustang was delivered straight to him by no less than Ford CEO Jim Farley himself.
As seen on the latest episode of Jay Leno’s Garage, Farley walks the one-time talk show host through the Mustang GTD and what makes it special. Farley says that this is the “ultimate Mustang ever built,” and it’s not hard to see why: This front-engined American machine lapped the Nurburgring in just 6:52.072. It managed that using the optional Performance Pack, which adds a front splitter, underbody flaps, and a Formula 1-style DRS spoiler that grants it 2,000 pounds of downforce at 180 mph.
The Mustang GTD is the street-legal version of the race-spec Mustang GT3 that took a podium finish at Le Mans in 2024. As Farley keeps on pointing out to Leno, though, the GTD comes with a bunch of features the race car didn’t even get. And yet, as Leno takes it for a spin on the streets of LA, he notes, “You could drive this every day… In a complimentary way, it’s like a Miata. It’s extremely light and nimble on its feet.” It’s calm enough, when you want it to be, to act like a normal car.
Finer details
On the rear of the GTD there’s an etching of every generation of Mustang, a proud lineage that the GTD is now at the apex of. The paddle shifters, gear knob, and serial plate are 3D printed out of titanium, because as Farley says, every last detail of the car is focused on “weight and performance.” He didn’t mention that the titanium literally comes from decommissioned F-22 fighter jets, but, just so you know, it comes from decommissioned F-22 fighter jets.
Inside the cabin itself, there’s a little rear window just to see the suspension dampers in action. Farley points this out during the actual drive, though Leno jokes that he can’t look without crashing. I don’t know that any production car has ever let me look at the suspension, uh, suspending, but that’s certainly a way to signal that this is no normal car.
Most touching of all: Everyone who actually built the car signed it underneath the hood, a testament to the fact that this is a low-volume model with only a small team working on it. Only 1,000 GTDs will ever be made. Leno has other Fords that were signed this way, and he says that he’s always open to signatories or their relatives swinging by the garage to see it.
Exotic, but also homegrown American
Farley says that the Mustang GTD is a “high-performance exotic car,” rather than a more traditional muscle car. That said, it was important to Ford that the Mustang remained recognizably a Mustang. So where, say, the Chevrolet Corvette has gone mid-engined, the GTD still has a great big stonking V8 right at the front of the car. It’s a supercharged 5.2-liter engine based on the company’s Predator line, making 815 horsepower and 664 pound-feet of torque. That’s good for a top speed of 202 mph. Stopping all that power are ceramic brakes with 17-inch rotors.
The GTS also boasts $4,000 worth of microchips onboard for the computers to perform all their wizardry, a lithium-ion battery in place of a paltry old 12-volt, and you even get a concierge service, meaning a specialist flies in to do any work the car needs.
If you’d like a signed Ford Mustang GTD yourself, it’s easy! You just have to apply for one (so Ford can judge whether you’re special enough, I guess) and fork over $327,960, at minimum, before you put any extras on it. That prices it a little bit above a Porsche 911 GT3 RS, one of the European exotics the GTD is meant to directly challenge. Worth it? Whichever side of that answer you fall on, you know you want one.
