Watch the Ford Mustang GTD Nurburgring Record Run With No BS Music or Camera Cuts
As you may have heard, the Blue Oval headed to the Nürburgring Nordschleife again with its monster Mustang, the GTD. The result was another sub-seven-minute lap, but it was more than five seconds faster than the team's last visit. And now, you can get a from-the-cockpit view of the record-breaking lap yourself.
Although your audio system of choice is unlikely to play back the claimed 815 horsepower under the Mustang GTD's hood, you'll get the gist. And it's a loud and quick one as pro driver Dirk Müller goes for a not-so-leisurely lap around the Green Hell.
The Mustang GTD, which is slated to start production soon, is one of the mightiest street legal cars out there. Sure, there are faster production cars, but the GTD's performance is on par with other six-figure supercars that have looped the 'Ring—and it's quicker than any other American car around the track.
Its 202-mph top speed is definitely more exhilarating than riding a bicycle around the famed track.
Beverly Braga has enjoyed an eventful career as a Swiss Army knife, having held roles as an after-school teacher, film critic, PR manager, transcriber, and video producer – to name a few. She is currently a communications consultant and freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous outlets covering automotive, entertainment, lifestyle, and food & beverage. Beverly grew up in Hawaii but roots for Washington, D.C., sports teams.
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Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
The American Car Industry Can't Go On Like This
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. Last year, Ford CEO Jim Farley commuted in a car that wasn't made by his own company. In an effort to scope out the competition, Farley spent six months driving around in a Xiaomi SU7. The Chinese-made electric sedan is one of the world's most impressive cars: It can accelerate faster than many Porsches, has a giant touch screen that lets you turn off the lights at your house, and comes with a built-in AI assistant—all for roughly $30,000 in China. 'It's fantastic,' Farley said about the Xiaomi SU7 on a podcast last fall. 'I don't want to give it up.' Farley has openly feared what might happen to Ford if more Americans can get behind the wheel of the Xiaomi SU7. Ford was able to import a Xiaomi from Shanghai for testing purposes, but for now, regular Americans cannot buy the SU7 or another one of the many affordable and highly advanced EVs made in China. Stiff tariffs and restrictions on Chinese technology have kept them out of the U.S. If things changed, Ford—along with all other automakers in the U.S.—would be in serious danger. Chinese EVs can be so cheap and high tech that they risk outcompeting all cars, not just electric ones. In the rest of the world, traditional automakers are already struggling as Chinese cars hit the market. In Europe, Chinese brands now have roughly as much share of the market as Mercedes-Benz. 'We are in a global competition with China,' Farley said earlier this year. 'And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.' It might sound a bit overblown. American auto executives delivered similar warnings about Japan in the '80s—and Ford's still standing today. But this week, Ford signaled, in unusually clear terms for the auto industry, that it sees China as an existential threat. At a Ford factory in Louisville, Kentucky, Farley announced a series of drastic countermeasures to begin making cheaper electric cars that can compete with Xiaomi and other Chinese companies. The changes are so fundamental that Ford is retooling the assembly line itself—the very thing Henry Ford used to get the world motoring a century ago. Ford's answer to China starts with—what else?—a pickup truck. In 2027, the Louisville plant will produce a new electric truck starting at $30,000. By today's standards, this would be one of the cheapest new EVs you can buy in America. It will cost far less than Ford's current electric truck, the F-150 Lightning Pro, which starts at about $55,000. Plenty of Americans might get excited about a decent, affordable electric truck. But what's more important than the price is how it'll be made. Ford's other EVs, including the F-150 Lightning and electric Mustang Mach-E, were heavily adapted from existing gas-powered models. Those vehicles are built by cobbling together a hodgepodge of individual components that evolved independently of one another over time, like a house that's been slowly renovated several times across decades. Retrofitting a design for a big, expensive EV battery comes with all kinds of compromises, including high costs. Ford realized early on that it was spending billions of dollars on wiring, among other things that its competitors such as Tesla didn't need to deal with, because their electric cars are purpose-built from the ground up. No wonder, then, that Ford's electric division has racked up $2 billion in losses in just the first half of this year alone. Ford's approach with its new truck is more like bulldozing the entire house and starting from scratch. A small team full of former Tesla and Apple engineers, working out of California, designed the process. The new truck will be made with 20 percent fewer parts than a traditional gas vehicle, Ford has said, and half as many cooling hoses. The company has 'no illusion that we have one whiz-bang idea' to keep costs down, says Alan Clarke, Ford's head of advanced EV development, who spent a dozen years as a top Tesla engineer. 'We've had to do hundreds of things to be able to meet this price point.' For Ford, a single $30,000 electric truck is hardly a sufficient answer to China's inexpensive EVs. The bigger development might be the factory itself. Besides adding robots, the company's assembly line hadn't changed much since the days of Henry Ford. At the revamped Louisville plant, Ford is using what it's calling an 'assembly tree' system: three 'branches' where the vehicle's battery and major body parts converge to make the car with fewer parts. By doing so, Ford says, it'll crank out trucks up to 15 percent more quickly than the plant's current vehicles. It's one factory and one vehicle for now, Clarke says, but if successful, this approach could spread throughout Ford. 'It is certainly the future of EV-making, one way or another,' he told me. In some ways, Ford is simply catching up to what China has already been doing. 'Broadly, what Ford announced this week is already being done—just not by them,' Tu Le, the founder of Sino Auto Insights, a research firm, told me. With EVs, the battery became the most expensive part of a vehicle—so carmakers, starting with Tesla, began to rethink how body parts and other components were made and come together, in order to cut costs. China ran with many of those ideas. Ford's plans will be challenging to pull off. China has immense government subsidies, a huge pool of engineering talent, the world's best battery technology, and ultra-low labor costs. (According to Reuters, BYD, the Chinese EV giant, recently advertised a factory position that pays roughly $850 a month.) Meanwhile, Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act just gutted many EV subsidies and incentives that would have helped America catch up to China. Legacy automakers have made big promises before about a forthcoming EV revolution, only to retreat, retrench, and rethink when things got hard, or when they got a pass from environmental regulators. Last year, Ford canceled a large electric SUV, and its current EV lineup is getting old while competitors such as General Motors have been rolling out new models all of the time. Ford's new truck is at least two years away, and China isn't waiting around. Chinese EVs are surging in developing countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Djibouti, and Ethiopia—where more limited gasoline infrastructure and lower EV-maintenance costs make them especially appealing. That competition is bad news for a company like Ford, which builds and sells cars all over the world. Ford's new car is designed to be exported as well, though the automaker won't say where yet. A lot is riding on a $30,000 truck. As Chinese EVs take over the world, keeping them out of the U.S. becomes a tougher and tougher sell. It's not hard to imagine a company like BYD eventually getting the go-ahead to build a factory in the U.S. 'I see a Chinese EV being built in the U.S. within Trump's current term,' Le predicted. Those cars won't be as dirt cheap as they are in China when built with American labor, but they would still be considerably more advanced. Henry Ford's company once reinvented how cars were built. The most alarming possibility for Ford is that it could do so all over again—and somehow, even that might not be enough. Article originally published at The Atlantic Solve the daily Crossword
Business Upturn
3 hours ago
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Hennessey Unveils 1-of-1 Manual Venom F5 Hypercar with 2,031 Horsepower
A Media Snippet accompanying this announcement is available by clicking on this link. 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Unveiled today (August 15) at The Quail, the unique new model is built as a symbol of individuality, innovation, and American pride, the bespoke LF model becomes the most personal, driver centric, analog, and engaging Venom F5 to date. Passionate collector and American Entrepreneur, Louis Florey personally specified every bespoke element, from the unique aerodynamic package to the distinctive Cocoa Brown exposed carbon fiber. Working with Hennessey's new 'Maverick' customer commission division, the 1-of-1 model sets a new benchmark for America's Hypercar and demonstrates the capabilities of the Texan firm's world-class designers and engineers. Featuring an all-new carbon fiber tub, the commission pairs Hennessey's latest Evolution package with an open-top F5 in track-spec 'Revolution' configuration. The design is based on the already exclusive 'Stealth Series', which sees exposed carbon fiber flow from nose to tail, broadening to envelop the cockpit before narrowing again beneath the 290 mm-high rear wing. Tinting the carbon fiber Coco Brown, opting for brilliant River Sand Metallic paint – the color of rich champagne, and adding a body-color tri-stripe, then specifying a six-speed gated manual transmission, instantly makes this the most unique and complex F5 to-date. John Hennessey, company founder and CEO: 'When our customers have a dream, we work to make their dreams come true – exceeding customer expectations is a badge of honor. Our new 'Maverick' division enables our customers to take our American Hypercar to a totally new dimension. I see it as the ultimate expression of the American Dream!' Previewing bodywork elements from the forthcoming Venom F5 Evolution, the LF features a wealth of aerodynamic revisions from a new front splitter, reshaped dive planes, re-sculpted fender louvres, a new rear deck with integrated lip spoiler, and a significantly taller rear wing. Paired with new suspension and Hennessey's new 6.6-liter twin-turbo V8 Fury engine with 2,031 bhp, the aerodynamic enhancements ensure high-speed poise on road or track, enabling extreme performance with the roof on or off. Inside, the LF debuts a new generation carbon monocoque. Hennessey's 'XCell_2' tub improves stiffness, seating ergonomics, and pedal box geometry, with repositioned footwells offering space for the third pedal and promoting a more positive driving position. The LF sees machined aluminum pedals completed with laser-etched Hennessey logos and moved to a new floor-mounted configuration. The interior is entirely reimagined with analog connection a guiding principle. 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'The LF demonstrates how far we'll go to deliver an outstanding customer experience and it's the perfect launchpad for our new bespoke 'Maverick' division. It's where engineering meets imagination, and where design fuses with passion – there can be no greater way to connect driver with the most raw, powerful, and intense celebration of internal combustion.' The Maverick division, officially launched with this commission, will allow a small number of customers to work hand-in-hand with the Hennessey team to create uniquely personal Venom F5 builds. From custom paints, new mechanical elements, and exposed carbon finishes to personalized interiors and even reimagined bodywork, the program reflects Hennessey's commitment to celebrating the individuality of its customers – while staying true to Hennessey's pioneering spirit and Texan independence. As the most expensive and complex F5 to date, the Venom F5 Revolution LF will stand alone as a 1-of-1 commission. However, the ethos it represents will carry forward into future Maverick projects – each as bold, personal, and uncompromising as the customers who seek their own American Dream. Monterey Car Week also saw the global public debut for the new 2,031 bhp Venom F5 Revolution Evolution production car. The F5 Evolution is the world's most powerful internal combustion road car and the next generation of Venom F5. All future F5 builds will feature Evolution enhancements as standard, while owners of the 32 customer cars already delivered can upgrade their model to the Evolution specification. Following an extensive development program, this next generation of America's Hypercar features a comprehensive set of updates that boost overall performance, handling, and comfort. The new 'Venom F5 Evolution' has increased power and torque, updated aerodynamics for improved downforce, new mode-adaptive suspension for enhanced handling and ride quality, new interior, plus an optional touring exhaust system and touring seats. For more information about Hennessey's Venom F5 models – including Coupe, Roadster, and Revolution variants – or to inquire about the Maverick bespoke division, visit or contact the company at +1 979 885 1300. ImagesClick the link below or email for images of the 1-of-1 Venom F5 LF:
CNBC
3 hours ago
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Why Slate Automotive says it has cracked the code to affordable EVs
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