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Ford will develop hypercar program in-house


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https://racer.com/2025/09/25/ford-to-run-hypercar-program-in-house

 

A night and day difference from most brands in this class which outsource the development work to another company. Their reasons are it'll help them move faster, and they want it to have a more direct impact on future road performance cars. So maybe that means they're thinking of doing a new gt with the hybrid V8 from their hypercar or something like that. 

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49 minutes ago, jpd80 said:

MultiMac

 

3 minutes ago, 02MustangGT said:

Yep…”in house” with Multimatic.  Ford might as well acquire MM at this point for their engineers and technology.  


I see you guys didn’t read the article.  There is no Multimatic.

 

 

Quote

 

Rushbrook continued: “Every role needs to be filled, and that is no small task because we aren’t just filling the positions, we are building a team culture which mirrors that of Ford Racing: Passionate and driven by a need to be the best. We have at our global disposal not only advanced racing facilities in Dearborn, Michigan and Charlotte, North Carolina here in the United States, we have Red Bull Ford Powertrains and our Hypercar facilities in the UK as well.

“We also have our chassis partners at ORECA, who have decades of winning experience, who will also provide ongoing support to Ford Racing, including trackside support. These are assets that no one can match, and we are focused on staying at the forefront in facilities, technology and people.”

In addition to the support that the Ford Racing Hypercar team will receive from chassis partner ORECA, UK-based engineering and motorsport consultancy group Venture Engineering will provide technical and operational support.

 

 

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1 hour ago, akirby said:

I see you guys didn’t read the article.  There is no Multimatic

Ok, but Multimatic worked with Venture on the Ford GTE project so the connection remains.  So the point is, this hypercar program is not what I’d consider “in house” when Ford is partnering and outsourcing with companies such as Venture.  They’ve done the same for years with Multimatic, nothing new.  Could it be more “in house” than previous programs..sure.  

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2 hours ago, 02MustangGT said:

Ok, but Multimatic worked with Venture on the Ford GTE project so the connection remains.  So the point is, this hypercar program is not what I’d consider “in house” when Ford is partnering and outsourcing with companies such as Venture.  They’ve done the same for years with Multimatic, nothing new.  Could it be more “in house” than previous programs..sure.  


The difference is Ford is managing the project in house whereas in the past it was totally outsourced.   The headline even says Ford will RUN the HyperCar program.  Thats project and program management, not building chassis or engines and bringing that in house is a first.

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7 hours ago, 02MustangGT said:

Yep…”in house” with Multimatic.  Ford might as well acquire MM at this point for their engineers and technology.  

No, just keep with  in-house engineering team supported by MultiMac, don’t crush its  independent creativity.

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Ghia made some striking designs for their time, some like the 1954 Plymouth Explorer would work well today with little tweaking, IMO. Baffling sometimes why a manufacturer would spend the money to have a coach builder come up with an appealing design and then shelf it for a safe, inoffensive frumpy one.

1954 Plymouth Explorer by Ghia,  production 1954 Plymouth Belvedere:

1954_Plymouth_Explorer_Ghia_Sport_Coupe_fvr.jpg

sddefault.jpg

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2 hours ago, Motorpsychology said:

Ghia made some striking designs for their time, some like the 1954 Plymouth Explorer would work well today with little tweaking, IMO. Baffling sometimes why a manufacturer would spend the money to have a coach builder come up with an appealing design and then shelf it for a safe, inoffensive frumpy one.

1954 Plymouth Explorer by Ghia,  production 1954 Plymouth Belvedere:...

 

That '54  Ghia Plymouth is a good-looking car, but probably too radical for the times.  Exner did have a chance to flex his wings with the "Forward Look" styling of later years.  

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5 hours ago, DeluxeStang said:

It sounds like they had the option of going with Multimatic as a chassis supplier, but when with Oreca instead. That surprised the hell out of me. IDK if Multimatic will help develop other components. 


I assume the other partners had experience with Oreca like Red Bull.

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6 hours ago, DeluxeStang said:

It sounds like they had the option of going with Multimatic as a chassis supplier, but when with Oreca instead. That surprised the hell out of me. IDK if Multimatic will help develop other components. 

Wow, the price just got a lot more expensive….

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17 minutes ago, akirby said:


It’s a hypercar.  Doesn’t get any more expensive outside of F1.

Silly me, I thought this was going to be like Corvette going after Supercars moment for Ford.

In reality, they will probably build a thousand examples at $2 million each and rake in a tidy profit.

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11 minutes ago, jpd80 said:

Silly me, I thought this was going to be like Corvette going after Supercars moment for Ford.

In reality, they will probably build a thousand examples at $2 million each and rake in a tidy profit.


It’s not a street car.  It’s for IMSA/WEC endurance racing including LeMans.

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29 minutes ago, jpd80 said:

Silly me, I thought this was going to be like Corvette going after Supercars moment for Ford.

In reality, they will probably build a thousand examples at $2 million each and rake in a tidy profit.

 

17 minutes ago, akirby said:


It’s not a street car.  It’s for IMSA/WEC endurance racing including LeMans.

To be fair, I find it VERY likely that this means Ford is planning some next gen Ford GT with the road legal variant of this V8 hybrid, as well as some potential design cues, and aero learnings. Kinda like how Ferrari's latest halo model uses the powertrain from their racing hypercar in IMSA and WEC. 

 

Because they're pushing the motorsports to consumer car connection super hard. If this was just a case of them wanting to have a lineage between racing and something like a mustang, they're already getting that with GT3. If they're pushing it a lot further than GT3, it would be logical for that to manifest in something that goes beyond the mustang in terms of what consumers can buy for road use. 

 

Like imagine a next gen Ford GT that was almost closer to an American take on a Valkyrie, super advanced areo, but with an American hybridized V8, and a direct connection to Ford going back to race in the top level of prototype racing, a repeat of Ford v. Ferrari all over again. Could you imagine? Ford could charge 2-3 million for these cars and still sell like 500 of them, especially if Ford won overall at le mans for the first time in over 60 years. 

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26 minutes ago, akirby said:


It’s not a street car.  It’s for IMSA/WEC endurance racing including LeMans.

Oh and thanks, now I get it now this is a real race car, I see that this news has been around

since January so things must be progressing well if there’s been a recent update.

 

 

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51 minutes ago, jpd80 said:

Silly me, I thought this was going to be like Corvette going after Supercars moment for Ford.

In reality, they will probably build a thousand examples at $2 million each and rake in a tidy profit.

We've seen how flexible modern platforms can be, especially when engineered from the beginning to be flexible, just look at c2, or CE1. I've long been a proponent of Ford doing a proper c8 rival with a more affordable mid-engine vehicle, I just believe it's a profitable, brand building segment that makes a lot of sense to get into, especially for a brand like Ford that's making this very strong pivot to enthusiast vehicles. 

 

But as some people have pointed out, engineering a stand-alone high performance platform would be super inefficient. But what if Ford developed a mid-engine platform designed from the begging to be super flexible, and accommodate different price points, use cases, and performance levels?

 

Like Ford wants to do this off-road supercar. Why not develop a new supercar platform, use it to make like a new RS 200 that could serve as Ford's affordable mid-engine offering, you go after the c8, but because the RS 200 is off-road oriented, it's highly differentiated, and not stepping on the toes of road centered performance cars like the mustang. Then you take that same mid-engine base, and evolve the areo, give it a new suspension centered around road going performance, and make a new gt inspired by prototype racing and F1. 

 

One platform base for a more affordable mid-engine vehicle, and a super high end one.

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21 hours ago, jpd80 said:

Oh and thanks, now I get it now this is a real race car, I see that this news has been around

since January so things must be progressing well if there’s been a recent update.

 

 

When you start including regular vehicles under the ford racing name, it’s hard to know what’s a race car and what’s a regular car.

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On 9/26/2025 at 6:08 PM, twintornados said:

What would really be nice is if Ford worked with Italian design house Ghia once again. 

 

There is no Ghia design house anymore. Ford acquired the Ghia studio in the late 1970s and it became Ford design studio Turin. The studio was closed in 2002 as part of cost cutting. 

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