3 Reasons The 2025 Ford Mustang GT Is Still An American Dream Machine
Kristin Shaw
Now in its seventh generation, the Ford Mustang has been the quintessential muscle car since 1964. Over the years, the Mustang has starred in movies and fueled dreams for anyone who appreciates its distinctive body shape and sound. I don't know about you, but while I think the all-electric Mustang Mach-e is an outstanding all-electric car, there's nothing like the traditional vroom vroom of a Mustang with an internal combustion setup.
Starting with the 2024 model, the Mustang was transformed and updated with a new digital dashboard, a 13.2-inch infotainment screen, and unique front ends for each trim level. That includes new hood vents and a redesigned front splitter for the GT model. Happily, it doesn't look like the Mustang is bowing out of the lineup anytime soon. Whew.
The Ford Mustang continues to evolve.
Ford
For 2025, the Ford Mustang includes a choice: a 315-horsepower 2.3-liter turbocharged inline-four or 480-horsepower 5.0-liter Coyote V8. The Blue Oval added a new Remote Rev feature so you can rev the engine remotely with your key fob to impress your friends. Want to drift? There is an available new Electronic Drift Brake so you can perfect your technique. (Just be ready to buy a new set of tires sooner than later.)
Still, if you want the whole 'Stang experience and money is no object (we're talking $300K plus), go for the 2025 Mustang GTD. Motivated by a supercharged 815-hp 5.2-liter V8 engine, it's a race car for the masses with special treatment for the suspension, transaxle, and its adjustable dampers. Today, Ford announced the 2025 Mustang GTD shaved more than five seconds off its lap time at the Nürburgring track.
Ford Mustang
Ford
Inside the fighter jet-inspired cockpit, a customizable 12.4-inch digital driver's display offers information in an array of looks. Using video game creation tool Unreal Engine 3D, all it takes is a swipe of the touchscreen to adjust the settings. Right next to that, a 13.2-inch touchscreen presents crisp infotainment graphics to control the audio system, climate control, and more.
Ford didn't neglect driver-assist features either, equipping the Mustang with speed sign recognition, lane centering assist, evasive steer assist, reverse brake assist, and adaptive cruise control with stop-and-g0. I'm a fan of the active pothole mitigation technology (part of the Performance Package) that is on alert for jarring dips in the road and adjusts the suspension, steering, and braking inputs as needed.
Ford Mustang
Ford
My favorite trim in the 2024 lineup is the Mustang GT, which includes both the powerful 800-horsepower 5.2-liter V8 engine and a six-speed manual transmission. I'd highly recommend adding the GT Performance package for the best handling.
Manual transmissions are not as easy to find as they used to be, and Ford provides an exciting gear-shifting drive in the GT. Each shift is smooth, the revs thrilling, and the clutch calibrated for a friction point at just the right spot. Ford is keeping the love alive for stickshifts, and the Ford Mustang GT does it right.
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Digital Trends
7 minutes ago
- Digital Trends
The week in EV tech: Glitz on the coast, grit from Detroit
Welcome to Digital Trends' weekly recap of the revolutionary technology powering, connecting, and now driving next-gen electric vehicles. Monterey Car Week and its jewel event The Quail: A Motorsports Gathering have become the automotive world's most exclusive runway. Here, the richest of the rich—and the most daring of the designers—unveil concept cars that seem plucked from sci-fi dreams. Yet in the same week, a very different kind of revolution was also announced by Ford: a $30,000 midsize EV pickup, born from a new software‑designed, small‑battery platform meant to power a whole new 'family' of affordable electric vehicles. It's a reminder that while ultra‑luxury is dazzling, democratized EV tech isn't just possible—it's on the horizon. Recommended Videos Sculpted Innovations on the Lawn At The Quail, brands unleashed show‑stoppers resting somewhere between movie props and next‑gen vehicles. · Cadillac's Elevated Velocity concept redefined luxury and utility with flair: gullwing doors; bold 24‑inch wheels; and modes like Terra for off‑road, Elements Defy vibrating debris off the body, and Sand Vision for enhanced visibility in dust storms—all wrapped in cabin amenities like red‑light therapy and a 'waterfall' screen embedded in the steering wheel. · Karma Automotive impressed with its Kaveya super‑coupe and 'GT‑UV' study—complete with a production‑ready interior, carbon‑fiber structure, and a blistering 1,000 hp electric drivetrain. · A wave of ultra‑luxury and performance electrics also made their presence felt: from Rimac's 2,107‑hp Nevera Rhypercar (price: ~$2.5 million), to Acura's RSX prototype, powered by an in‑house EV architecture and showcasing Honda's e:Architecture, soon to reach production. Not to mention Mercedes‑AMG's futuristic Concept GT XX with 1,341 hp from triple axial‑flux motors, a radical performance blueprint. Set against this spectacle of excess, these vehicles illustrate the creative peak of EV tech: performance, luxury, radical design—yet firmly perched out of reach for most of us. Ford's 'Model‑T Moment' Hits Home Now look at the other end of the spectrum: Ford's bold announcement of a $30,000 midsize EV pickup, built on a software‑defined vehicle platform, sparked a collective intake of breath—not for its headline price, but for its implications. This 'universal EV Platform' is designed with a small, affordable LFP (lithium‑iron‑phosphate) battery, fewer parts, and an architecture structured to spawn a family of cost‑efficient models. More than just building a pickup, Ford is signaling the arrival of integrated EV tech where intelligent software, battery management, and production‑scale efficiency converge. Unsurprisingly, Ford CEO explicitly framed the move as a technological and price war with BYD—China's EV champion known for cost‑effective batteries and platform economies. Ford's plan is a direct challenge to the global dominance of affordable EVs emerging from Asia, blending scale, simplicity, and local battery production to undercut and compete. Ford's new generation of EVs will be built as software-defined vehicles, meaning their core systems—everything from performance tuning to infotainment and battery management—will be controlled by centralized software platforms. Much like a smartphone, they'll receive over-the-air (OTA) updates, enabling Ford to introduce new features, improve efficiency, enhance safety, and fix bugs without a trip to the dealership. This concept first became reality in 2012, when Tesla introduced OTA updates in its Model S, setting a new standard for connected vehicle technology. In the years that followed, Chinese EV startups NIO and XPeng adopted similar software-first architectures, launching their own OTA-capable vehicles around 2018. By 2021, American EV makers Lucid and Rivian als o embraced the software-defined model, reinforcing the shift away from the traditional, hardware-centric approach to vehicle design. Today, SDVs are becoming increasingly commonplace across the industry. For drivers, this means owning a more adaptable and future-ready vehicle—one that can evolve over time. Automakers can remotely update vehicle behavior, improve range estimates, refine infotainment interfaces, and even introduce entirely new capabilities after the car has been sold. This also paves the way for personalized experiences and subscription-based features, where owners can unlock upgrades or tailor their vehicle's digital environment on demand. Two Worlds. One Future. What's most compelling is the contrast—and the convergence—of these stories. On one side, Monterey's lawn dazzles with what's next-level bold: solar visions, luxury interiors, hyper‑performance, AI‑driven cabins, and exaggerated power figures. On the other, Ford offers a quieter, yet perhaps revolutionary pivot: EV tech embedded in affordability, not as an afterthought, but as its core. Software-defined platforms mean updates, performance, safety, and user features can be upgraded without hardware overhaul—a glimpse at how mass‑market EVs can evolve fast. This isn't just a tech fantasy. It signals that EV solutions for the mainstream are maturing. Deep integration of cost‑effective battery chemistry, lean parts architecture, and software-centric control are what make an attainable EV reality—not just for well‑heeled collectors, but for everyday families.
USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
Retired Ford worker's wallet returned after 11 years stuck in an engine
Richard Guilford remembers Christmas 2014 like it was yesterday because it was when the now-retired Ford Motor Co. assembly plant worker lost his wallet on the job and grew to accept he wouldn't see it again. And he didn't — at least not for more than a decade. Guilford, 56, lives in Petersburg, Michigan. He retired from Ford in January 2024, but in 2014, he was repairing the electrical systems of vehicles at Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne when, unbeknownst to him, his wallet slipped out of his shirt pocket, landing amid the transmission system of a red 2015 Ford Edge SUV. The wallet would end up going on a 151,000-mile odyssey across multiple states before a mechanic in Minnesota last month discovered that the obstacle that was preventing him from putting the vehicle's airbox back in place was — a man's leather wallet. "He messaged me in the middle of the night with a picture of it and said, 'Did you lose your wallet years ago? Lol. I found it. It's in the engine of a car. It's in Minnesota,' " Guilford told the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network. 'For 11 years, that wallet was riding on top of the transmission, held in there by the airbox." 'Hey Schmitty, my wallet's missing!' Just how the wallet disappeared in the first place is quite a tale. Guilford said he worked 35 years for Ford in various plants and his expertise centered on electrical. In 2014, his job was to make heavy electric repairs in the garage area at Michigan Assembly in Wayne. That means as cars came off the assembly line, 'if there was a minced wire in the floor harness, it came to me for repair. If the lights didn't work, or whatever, it came to me.' At that time, Ford assembled its Focus and C-Max cars at Michigan Assembly. Today, Ford's website says, the plant employs close to 6,000 people and builds the Ford Ranger pickup and Ford Bronco SUV. Guilford said his team excelled at its job. So when some of Ford's other plants in North America got behind on repairs of the vehicles they built, Ford would sometimes send them to Michigan Assembly for the fix. The week before Christmas 2014, he said, about 2,500 vehicles arrived from other factories that needed electrical work. One day, Guilford did something unusual and put his wallet in his shirt pocket because his pants did not have pockets. That would prove to be a mistake. "I was working on the floor harness underneath that particular car," Guilford recalls of the 2015 Edge. He remembers the car because it was shortly after that vehicle was completed when he noticed his shirt pocket felt lighter. 'I told my buddy (Dave Schmit), who was my work partner, 'Hey, Schmitty, my wallet's missing!' " Guilford said. What is the most stolen car model?: This muscle car tops the list of America's most stolen vehicles A night-long search for the missing wallet Guilford's anxiety escalated with each minute he couldn't find it. The wallet contained only $15 cash, but his driver's license and Ford employee ID were in there. He also had "a couple hundred dollars in gift cards" for Cabela's sporting goods store. He had planned to use those cards to buy Christmas gifts for his kids. The first vehicle he and Schmitty looked through in their search for the wallet was that 2015 Edge Guilford had just worked on. Guilford recalled: 'We were looking through it for my wallet forever. I thought I lost it under the carpet of that car because I had pulled the carpet up on that car to work on the main wiring harness." Ford spokesperson Jessica Enoch said "it's exceedingly rare" for any plant workers to lose a personal item in a vehicle they are working on and she said there are policies to secure personal items to prevent it from happening. Enoch did not provide examples of those policies and declined further comment on this story. Guilford worked the midnight shift at the time and when the day shift arrived, nearly all of his team and the day side crew were on the hunt. "Everybody tried to help me find my wallet and we didn't find it," Guilford said. "We were looking in the cars. Everybody was going car-to-car. We had a list of the cars we worked on. I couldn't say I lost it in that particular car (referring to the 2015 Edge), but it was in one of the cars." It would turn out that Guilford's first instinct that the wallet was in that 2015 Edge was right. Guilford had also worked on the transmission wiring on that vehicle. Today, he reasons that when he bent over, that was when the wallet fell out of his shirt pocket. "It landed on top of the transmission, but it must have fell down into a little cubby, which I didn't see and know that I had done that, and I put the car back together," Guilford said in hindsight. "You'd think it would have fell out later, but it was locked in there in that airbox." A Ford Edge's secret revealed The airbox contains the vehicle's air filter. It is in the front part of the engine compartment. Guilford's wallet was on the transmission, possibly held in place by the airbox when that 2015 Edge left Michigan Assembly in 2014. The car was shipped to Arizona first where it was bought by the person who owns it now and lives in Lake Crystal, Minnesota, which is about 95 miles southwest of Minneapolis. That's where Chad Volk, who opened LC Car Care in Lake Crystal in 2018, became well acquainted with the 2015 Edge. Volk, 40, said he started "wrenching" on cars with his dad in the garage at age 5 and later became a diesel mechanic for a construction company. He told the Detroit Free Press he has done various maintenance on that Ford Edge for years. But in late June, while replacing the SUV's cooling fans, Volk discovered the car's secret. He had pulled out the airbox, something he'd done several times before on that car, only this time it wouldn't slide back into place. So Volk looked closer to investigate and saw the wallet sitting on top of the transmission. "I was surprised. You find stuff all the time, usually tools," Volk told the Free Press. "I looked through it and I see a Ford Motor Co. badge. I thought I'm going to try finding this guy to see if I can get it back to him." Volk knew the wallet was old, but Guilford's driver's license said that he lived in Michigan. So he took a "stab" at finding Guilford. On social media, Volk found a Richard Guilford in Michigan who had worked for Ford and he thought that's got to be the guy. So on June 30 Volk privately messaged Guilford. 'I was like, 'Hey did you lose a wallet years ago? I found it in the engine in a car,' " Volk said. "He said he lost it in the factory and they looked for it for days. (Guilford) said, 'There's even $15 in it for you.' He told me he just retired in January and this was the gold piece to the pie." Volk declined to keep the $15 cash that Guilford offered him from what was inside the wallet. Instead, he said he walked three doors down from his auto repair shop to the post office. There, he paid $10.80 to mail the wallet back to Guilford in Michigan. 'The funny thing is I literally had the airbox out of the car a couple weeks before that and I didn't see it," Volk said. "My guess is it was jammed somewhere else and fell to the right spot, because an inch one way or the other, it would have been on the ground and no one would have ever found it." A guy who tries 'to make someone's day brighter' Volk said he has been longtime friends with the 88-year-old man who owned the Edge, which has about 151,000 miles on it. The man died the day after Volk found the wallet. "So I didn't get to tell him about it. But I told his son, Dan, about it and he got a kick out of it," Volk said, admitting it is a cool story. "The car is still in the family.' Volk said it never occurred to him to keep the wallet or to toss it out. "My first instinct was just to jump on (social media) and find him," Volk said. "I wanted to try to do as much as I can to get it back to him. It's how I am. For small jobs, I don't usually charge people, just to make someone's day brighter. I'm just a one-man shop. It was a friend's car too, so that made it all the better." As a result of his good-willed gesture and the publicity he's received from local media about returning the wallet, he won a new customer. Volk said a man drove several miles to Volk's shop to have Volk service the man's classic car. "He said he trusted me," Volk said. "I got new followers on Facebook and other people too." Guilford said everything in the wallet is in pretty good shape considering the journey it endured. Guilford said Cabela's assured him it would issue him new gift cards. "Some things in it were hot and crisp, think of how hot that car got," Guilford said. "It doesn't look like it ever got wet, just hot. That little corner kept (the wallet) completely dry and completely preserved. I want the wallet to stay as it is. It is a memento." Jamie L. LaReau is the senior autos writer who covers Ford Motor Co. for the Detroit Free Press. Contact Jamie at jlareau@ Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. To sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
3 Dividend Stocks to Hold for the Next 5 Years
Key Points The next five years are pivotal ones for Ford and its place within the automobile industry. Qualcomm is more of an AI outfit than you might recognize, which is why many investors may be underestimating it now. The market may reasonably fear for Verizon's future profitability, but what a yield in the meantime! 10 stocks we like better than Ford Motor Company › An intended holding period of "forever" is often a great mindset to have when looking for new stocks to buy. It's freeing, in fact, because it automatically eliminates a bunch of names that aren't worthy long-run ideas. Just don't become so regimented in your thinking that you end up ignoring some solid, shorter-term possibilities, including dividend-paying stocks. With that as the backdrop, here's a closer look at three great dividend stocks to buy and hold for the next five years, at which time you'll want to make a major reassessment of each one. Think of these picks as long-term leases with an option to buy. See, the next five years could bring significant changes for each of these underlying companies and their industries. This change could be for the better, but this change might also start to clearly work against these companies in the meantime. Ford Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) is, of course, one of the United States' oldest and most iconic carmakers. Investors who know anything about the outfit, however, know that it's not exactly been much of a dividend stock with the most promising future for a while now. Its sales growth has been scant (if not outright negative) since the industry's peak back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Although the global automobile business recovered well enough from the fallout of the 2008 subprime mortgage meltdown, most of that growth has taken shape outside of the U.S., where Ford isn't much of a factor. Much of the industry's net growth since then has also been driven by sales of electric vehicles (EVs), which haven't exactly been a bright spot for the company either. EVs accounted for only about 2% of last year's total revenue, and that was down from 2023's figure. Perhaps the most troubling detail to income-minded investors, however, is that Ford outright suspended its dividend in early 2020 due to the uncertainty of the then-new COVID-19 pandemic. While playing such defense was arguably the right call at the time, it still shows how fragile this stock's dividend payment is. It's since been (mostly) restored, for the record. The company reinstated slightly smaller regular quarterly dividends in 2022 and has occasionally paid an additional special one-off dividend since then. But investors still aren't exactly as bullish on the company or its stock's dividends as they once were. That's why its forward-looking (regular) dividend yield of 5.3% and forward-looking price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of just over 8 are well above and below (respectively) the industry's norms ... or most industries' norms, for that matter. Given the company's likely ability to at least continue funding its current level of dividend payments, though, the market is pricing in more risk than it arguably needs to. You can collect a sizable dividend as a result of this mostly unmerited worry. Why only five years? The automobile business is changing, but it's not yet clear whether Ford is built to change with it. If it doesn't look any more competitive in 2030 than it does now, there may not be enough long-term growth in store to make it worth holding on to. Qualcomm Most investors are familiar enough with Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM), but many don't realize it's a dividend payer as well. It's not a big dividend, mind you. Its forward-looking yield of 2.3% is just average, even if its annual dividend growth is better than average. It also shines in terms of consistency. The company has now upped its annual payout every year for a couple of decades. That's not necessarily the only or the primary reason you might want to make a point of owning a stake in Qualcomm for the coming five years, however. While its continued cash payments are certainly a nice perk, this ticker will be able to serve double duty as an income and a growth name over this timeframe. See, Qualcomm makes value-priced performance processors for smartphones, tablets, and even some laptops. Microsoft in particular has touted its Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs as capable of handling heavy-duty artificial intelligence (AI) duties from the computer itself rather than in the cloud (where it's still usually handled). You'll also find Qualcomm's technology in advanced automobiles, augmented-reality equipment, and video game consoles. It's by no means a leader in most of these markets. But it's well-positioned to serve the consumer technology market, which is increasingly looking for affordable AI-powered solutions that will be made possible by the ever-falling costs of AI platforms themselves. And that opportunity is certainly brewing. Mordor Intelligence believes the worldwide AI hardware market is poised to grow at an average annual pace of 26% through 2030. Why only five years? Like Ford, you may decide to stick with Qualcomm well beyond 2030. You'll just want to make a major reassessment at that time because its penetration of the mid-priced segment of the AI hardware market could start to be stymied by other manufacturers then. The company will need to make sure it remains competitive in the meantime. Verizon Finally, add Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) to your list of dividend stocks to buy and hold with a five-year deep-dive checkup on your calendar. Verizon is, of course, one of the nation's big three smartphone service providers, controlling roughly one-third of the market. That's not all it does, but that's the source of the vast majority of its revenue. And it's good at what it does, even if it doesn't do things all that differently or look all that different from rivals AT&T or T-Mobile. The stock just doesn't perform all that well, largely because there's little to no real growth opportunity here, other than sheer population growth. Verizon is really, really good at generating cash flow, though a bunch of which gets passed along to shareholders. The stock's usual lethargy, paired with its dividend payments, translates into a forward-looking dividend yield of 6.3%, which you'd be hard-pressed to find with any other stock of a comparable quality. And that's based on a dividend, by the way, that's now been raised for 18 consecutive years. It's not likely to break that streak now, being so close to becoming dividend royalty. Why only five years? The only real concern here might be debt. Verizon is sitting on $124 billion of debt (versus a market cap of $183 billion) that's costing it $1.7 billion worth of interest payments every quarter (versus quarterly net income of around $5 billion). Much of this debt load is still locked in at the relatively low interest rates of yesteryear, but a good portion of this is coming due over the next five years. It can handle it in the meantime, but with rates already as high as they are, investors will want to gauge how much additional interest cost the company will be fielding beyond 2030. For perspective, about two-thirds of its profits are already dished out as dividends. Any more than that, profit margins could become uncomfortably and restrictively thin. You may also want to check in on Verizon's private 5G networking venture then. It's the company's only real growth engine at this time, but a subtly promising one. Should you buy stock in Ford Motor Company right now? Before you buy stock in Ford Motor Company, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Ford Motor Company wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $668,155!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,106,071!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,070% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 184% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 13, 2025 James Brumley has positions in AT&T. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Microsoft and Qualcomm. The Motley Fool recommends T-Mobile US and Verizon Communications and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. 3 Dividend Stocks to Hold for the Next 5 Years was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
