So Ford has built a custom 1,400 hp Mustang Mach-E to race up one mountain once. Why did they do this? What are the benefits of building such an extreme car for one race only? Have they done this before? And what is the mountain in question?

Ever see the movie Ford v Ferrari? That’s your clue. Racing is glamorous, perhaps because it is dangerous. It is dangerous because it involves making extreme cars and pushing them to their limits, and sometimes far beyond. Ford v Ferrari was about building a car to win at Le Mans, a 24-hour endurance race. However, the Super Mustang was built for the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, a timed race only 12.42 miles long, but one that takes under ten minutes for a winning performance. Different races and different demands, but they have the same outcomes — the cutting-edge technology developed to compete with the best in the world today will be in the car you drive tomorrow.

Racing is not just glamour and daring. Today’s racing technology will evolve into tomorrow’s electric production cars, with critical developments of the battery, motors, regen brakes, suspension, aerodynamics, and more.

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The Pikes Peak Super Mustang

Taking the Mach-E to new heights

The specific demands of Pikes Peak, and two previous years of running extreme EV racers up that mountain determined Ford’s design criteria for the Super Mustang. Although based on the popular Mustang Mach-E EV, the Super Mustang is a much wilder horse than the road-legal version you can buy. Everything about this Mustang is focused on power, grip, weight, and brakes.

Massive power

The Super Mustang uses three STARD UHP 6-Phase motors to produce over 1,400 hp. STARD is an Austrian EV racing research and development specialist. The high-performance batteries operate at 799V, but STARD managed to lose over 260 pounds of weight, with regenerative braking of 710 kW.

Upside down

Ford did not reveal the Super Mustang’s weight, but it should be significantly less than the standard Mach-E’s 4,800 lbs. With 6,900 pounds of downforce at 150 mph, this car could technically drive upside down on the roof of a tunnel without falling off.

Pikes Peak, with all those tight turns and often nasty weather, requires good brakes and a lot of grip on the road. Carbon brakes, forged magnesium wheels, and Pirelli P-Zero tires work with the downforce to keep this car glued to the curvy track.

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Supervan and supertruck

The first two mad designs

This Mustang is Ford’s third successful EV entry in this grueling race in three years, and — despite its outlandish looks and OTT aerodynamics — the most normal Ford EV to race there. In 2023, Ford entered an electric Transit van that won its class, and last year, an F-150 Lightning, Ford’s EV version of its best-selling truck that broke the record time and won overall.

Both vehicles were somewhat modified, to say the least. The body panels were almost entirely made from carbon fiber, and the chassis made super strong and very light. Both van and truck were driven by Romain Dumas, who also drove the Super Mustang. Dumas has won at Pikes Peak several times before, as well as at Le Mans, 24 Hours Nürburgring, and 24 Hours Spa.

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Pikes Peak

A brutal challenge

Hill climb racing is a very specialized competition, and Pikes Peak in Colorado is probably the most challenging of them all. The first challenge is the altitude. At over 14,000 ft above sea level, air is already thin enough to make normal car engines wheeze.

The big problem is that the race starts lower and gains over 4,700 ft before reaching the top. This massive gain in altitude is reached in only 12.4 miles, and the drop in air pressure is part of the challenge of hill climbing. To overcome this, racers use turbos to keep the pressure up, and lately, EVs — which require no air to run.

Sharp turns and sheer cliffs

In its 4,700 ft climb, Pikes Peak snakes up the mountain with 156 tight curves, often with steep cliffs and no guardrails. Racers often hit speeds of over 140 mph between the curves. 2025 was the 103rd running of this iconic race, which Ford first entered in 1916 with a Model T.

In the early days, the race road was rough gravel, with paving starting in the 1980s and finishing in 2011. Yet the winning time in the first race was 21 minutes, less than 14 minutes more than the record time set in 2018.

Second place, but…

The Super Mustang, despite its hectic engineering, came second overall this year. While there are no guarantees in a race like this, this result was probably influenced by the race being shortened and finishing at a much lower altitude, negating the EVs competitive advantage.

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The Ford Mustang Mach-E

Bestselling Mustang

Ford

Let’s take a step back to the Ford Mustang, the iconic American muscle car that inspired an entire class of similar cars. Ford Mustangs have appeared in many movies, including several of the James Bond classics.

The Ford Mustang was launched in 1964 and defined performance coupes and convertibles up to the present. It is the longest-running Ford nameplate, reaching 10m sales in 2018. So Ford made a huge gamble when it launched the Mustang Mach-E, a dedicated EV in a low-slung SUV format, in 2021. This gamble paid off, because last year, the Mach-E outsold the ICE Mustang by a considerable margin. The top trim Mach-E is pretty spicy with 348 hp and 3.3 seconds to reach 60 mph, so a 1,400 hp version is a huge step up.

You will probably never see a 1,400 hp street Mach-E, but could this Super Mustang inspire Ford to bring out a really spicy Mach-E? I live in hope.