The Ford Mustang GTD debuted well over a year ago as the ultimate road-going pony car, one that offers up more performance than any model that has preceded it over the past 60 years. The Mustang GTD will also be sold in a variety of global markets aside from the U.S., including Mexico and Europe, though it will cost considerably more in many of those places. However, interestingly enough, it seems as if the Ford Mustang GTD won’t be available for customers in Australia to purchase, even though other versions of the Mustang already are.
According to CarExpert, the Ford Mustang GTD won’t be sold in Australia for a fairly simple reason – it’s being built exclusively in left-hand drive format, even though lesser versions of the pony car are produced in both left- and right-hand drive for several markets. Turns out, a limited budget and the extreme track focus of the Mustang GTD are what prompted Ford to stick with left-hand drive only, according to Greg Goodall, FoMoCo’s Chief Program Engineer for the Ford Mustang GTD.
“That’s a difficult question to answer,” Goodall said when asked why Ford decided not to develop a RHD version of the GTD. “There’s a finite amount of money, there’s a finite amount of time. We really needed to have the team focused on delivering a single variant that was just everything it could be. The right-hand drive [version] just isn’t something that we were able to accomplish. We’re really proud of what we have and we hope that Australians can get to drive it somehow, because we care about you, but unfortunately there’s just no right-hand version at this time.”
Meanwhile, the Ford Mustang GTD just became the very first vehicle from an American brand to complete a lap at the Nurburgring in under seven minutes, as Multimatic Motorsports driver Dirk Müller piloted the pony car to a certified lap time of 6:57:685. That’s also the fifth-fastest time posted by a stock production sports car at the track, according to official records, and the GTD is just the sixth vehicle in that class to break the seven-minute barrier as well.
Comment
First you say the Mustang GTD will be sold in the UK, then that there will be no right-hand version. Hello, UK has left-hand traffic, like Australia. And Thailand and Japan for that matter.