In the context of the Ford Mustang GTD, a carbon fiber aesthetics package is clinically uninteresting. I mean, this is a street-legal racecar made by Multimatic; it has an inboard rear suspension that you can see through plexiglass; it has a ridiculous 815-horsepower, supercharged 5.2-liter V8; it can lap the Nürburgring in well under 7 minutes; its wing is enormous … I can go on and on. This thing is dope and needs nothing more to protect its dope status, and yet here is the new Liquid Carbon edition.
Ford Mustang GTDs have only begun hitting the road, and yet here we have a new edition that gets rid of the paint and replaces the door skins with carbon. “The Mustang GTD Liquid Carbon skips a trip to the paint booth to amp up aerodynamic, race-derived style while sacrificing none of the extreme on-track performance,” Ford writes in its press release. “The appearance is functional, too. Deleting paint and replacing the sheet metal in the doors with bonded carbon-fiber saves about 13 pounds compared to a Mustang GTD Carbon Series with the Performance package.”
Here’s the result:
“The carbon weave of the hood, roof, rear deck, and rear wing match up perfectly down the midline of the vehicle. Additionally, fenders and side panels match up to the dorsal elements of the vehicle, presenting a cohesive pattern in the carbon-fiber bodywork,” continues Ford in its press release, prompting me to look more closely at the GTD:
Notice how the carbon fiber weave’s direction changes right up the middle of the car. Trying to get the weave to line up between various panels must have been a humongous pain in the butt. Of course, they don’t all line up — the fender-to-hood interface involves a change in direction, and there are other areas where two parts meet and the weave isn’t exactly aligned — but the big parts seem aligned, which I’m sure is a tough thing to get right.
Here’s the interior, which Ford says is a “bold combination of black leather and Dinamica microfiber suede and Hyper Lime stitching on the seats, door panels, center console, instrument panel, and steering wheel.”
What do I think about the Liquid Carbon GTD? Well, the interior doesn’t seem like anything that special, and 13 pounds ain’t much. I realize when we’re talking about a car that Ford and Multimatic have already painstakingly tried to wring every pound out of, 13 pounds probably seems like a lot to engineers. But it’s about a week of dieting for most Americans. It’s not nothing, but it ain’t a lot. And while I appreciate the effort that went into making this carbon fiber look good, I own a carbon fiber car, and its raw carbon fiber roof is known to delaminate in the hot sun. Hopefully that’s not a problem here.
Also, I just like paint!
Just look at Beau’s “Beauberry” GTD above. I realize paint color is a personal taste thing, but I think that color looks absolutely fantastic – not just on that car, but on the Ford GT, too:
To forego that for carbon fiber … I just couldn’t do it. So maybe the Liquid Carbon GTD isn’t quite for me, but even I can appreciate how badass this thing looks. I mean come on:
It’s absolutely menacing.
