- Mustang GTD puts down 753 wheel horsepower and 609 lb-ft of torque on a Dynojet.
- That’s a massive jump over the old Shelby GT500 and proof Ford’s supercharged V8 evolved.
- The improved broad torque curve is one reason Dark Horse SC buyers can be very excited.
Automakers claim all sorts of things as they’re building and marketing their products. Horsepower and torque figures tell us what an engine can make, but they don’t tell us how much of that energy makes it to the tire. Now, we’re learning exactly how much power a Ford Mustang GTD pushed to the wheels, and to put it simply, it’s downright impressive. Perhaps even more notable is that Dark Horse SC buyers are going to get a similarly stellar powertrain.
First, let’s get the headline figures out of the way. Ford says this ultimate, $320,000+ super muscle car will make 815 horsepower (608 kW) and 664 lb-ft (900 Nm) of torque to the flywheel. Late Model Restoration just put one on its DynoJet dynamometer, and it made 753 horsepower (561 kW) and 609 lb-ft (826 Nm) of torque at the rear wheels.
That’s a drivetrain horsepower loss of 7.6 percent and an 8.3 percent loss in terms of torque. Most performance cars bleed 10 to 25 percent between the flywheel and the wheels, with 15 percent being the commonly accepted average. The GTD comes in at roughly half that. The tested car had just over 1,100 miles on it, and the team completed multiple runs in fifth gear to verify consistency.
Read: Ford Says The Dark Horse Makes 500 HP, Four Dynos Said Four Different Numbers
That output comes from the factory supercharged 5.2-liter V8 paired with a Tremec TR-9080 eight-speed dual-clutch transmission, with pulls completed in fifth gear. What stands out isn’t just peak power, but how that power is delivered.
The GTD makes over 500 lb-ft astonishingly early and carries a thick, flat wave of torque through the midrange before stretching hard all the way to redline. That’s the kind of delivery that makes a car feel violent everywhere, not just during a headline dyno pull. And that’s where the comparison to the old Shelby GT500 gets interesting.
On the same dyno, a Carbon Fiber Track Pack GT500 previously recorded 677.9 rear-wheel horsepower (506 kW) and 566.2 lb-ft (768 Nm) of torque. Even allowing for drivetrain loss corrections, the GTD is still in another league, with roughly 75 more horsepower and 43 more lb-ft at the wheels.
That gap matters, but the broader torque delivery matters even more. And that’s especially true for Dark Horse SC buyers because they get access to almost the exact same engine as the GTD, but for a lot less cash.
