Ford is undergoing a necessary rebranding, ditching the “Ford Performance” moniker in favor of the more evocative Ford Racing. This strategic move underscores the company’s high-profile partnership with Red Bull in Formula 1. The ambition runs deeper: Ford finally wants an in-house performance division that can stand toe-to-toe with the prestigious lunacy of Mercedes-AMG or BMW M. The long-gone Special Vehicle Team (SVT) never quite managed it, and “Ford Performance” felt like an afterthought.
Now, we have a firm date for the first glimpse of the division’s intentions. January 15, 2026, at the Detroit Auto Show. Ford has emphatically promised an exclusive preview of a “brand-new Ford Racing production road car”.
The company’s press release screams: “The excitement doesn’t stop with our track and off-road warriors. You’ll also get an exclusive sneak peek at a brand-new Ford Racing production road car. The track is our ultimate proving ground, where we rapidly develop what will soon be under the hood and in the chassis of your next Ford”.
The question, naturally, is what exactly “brand-new” means. It means street-legal, and presumably orderable. But the fact that Ford specifically highlighted the debut of a “Ford Racing production car” strongly suggests a highly tuned variant of an existing model.
The first suspect is the truly “all-new” concept, a high-performance Baja Super Truck. It’s either entirely coincidental that Ford’s announcement featured photos of its Dakar rally beast, the Raptor T1+. CEO Jim Farley has previously mused aloud about building a “gravel supercar”. A road-going version of the Raptor T1 could be that elusive, completely new vehicle.
The second possibility is slightly more mundane, a hopped-up Mustang GTD package. Prototypes of the GTD have been spotted testing at the Nürburgring with enhanced aerodynamics and a new supercharger. Launching a high-spec performance package based on this track development is exactly what Ford Racing has done historically. However, calling an upgraded Mustang GTD “brand-new” would be stretching the definition of truth past its breaking point.
