I’m gonna level with you: Ford called me this morning and wondered why the hell we have’t responded to their pitch about the new Ford Mustang GTD. Expecting to hear some carefully crafted words about how the car is going to showcase Ford’s incredible engineering prowess via state-of-the-art dampers and blah blah blah, I still listened because Ford’s PR reps are actually really cool folks. But then, it turned out, the pitch was about something I believe in quite strongly: Cars should do whatever they can to show people how things work.
It’s one of the things I love most about the secod-gen Toyota Prius, whose name I tried scrubbing after it was smeared for decades by the car community. That old Prius features a screen that shows the driver when the motor is working, when the gasoline engine is working, when regenerative braking is working — it helps the driver understand how the system behaves, and that’s a great thing. I love when automakers include features to help people learn how their car actually functions.
Here’s that Prius screen I’m talking about. It’s called the “Energy Monitor”:
Anyway, back to this Ford Mustang GTD, the absurd race car-inspired supercar that Ford is building alongside Multimatic. It’s an 800 horsepower carbon fiber “race car for the road,” as Ford puts it, and its suspension is wild, as our in-house engineer Huibert Mees shows in the clip below:
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Ford, knowing what I and pretty much all engineers have known since birth — that hardware is sexy — has decided to make that suspension visible from inside the cabin, which is just cool in my view. Here’s Ford explaining its two-foot by 10-inch window in the back of the cabin:
“The rear suspension is designed for purpose, but it’s also just a beautiful thing to look at,” said Jim Owens, Mustang GTD marketing manager. “It would have been a shame for us to hide it away never to be seen. With the suspension window, owners can admire the blue and gold accents on the dampers without removing the tech panel, and the passenger can literally watch the suspension in action.”
Measuring roughly 24 inches wide by 10 inches tall and made of polycarbonate with a scratch-resistant coating added to both sides, the suspension window puts the hard work of the engineering teams on display like a finely crafted precision timepiece.
“With a car as capable as Mustang GTD, we had to do something that’s just plain cool and owners will appreciate,” said Owens.
Here’s a look at some stills of this window, along with a video below that:
Here’s a bit about the suspension, via Ford’s press release:
The Mustang GTD’s inboard rear suspension – where the shocks and springs sit low and between the rear wheels rather than in line and above them – is yet another example of Ford bringing learnings from the track to the road. Combined with a strong, stiff, and weight-efficient motorsport-style tubular subframe, the track-derived DNA on display in the Mustang GTD’s rear end is impossible to ignore. Multimatic’s proprietary Adaptive Spool Valve dampers, meanwhile, go beyond what’s allowed in the world of racing.
Capable of going from their softest to firmest setting in just 15 milliseconds – six times quicker than the human eye can blink – the ASV dampers continuously adapt based on the drive mode, road surface, and driver inputs to maximize the Michelin tires’ contact with the road.
[…]
Each damper has two springs, and when driving on the street, they work together to allow a comfortable ride. Activating the driver-selectable Track mode hydraulically compresses one of the springs, nearly doubling the spring rate overall and lowering the vehicle approximately 40 millimeters (about 1.6 inches) to maximize capability on the track.
The stiffer spring rate aids mechanical grip, but just like on a race car, firmer springs improve aerodynamic grip, too. As the Mustang GTD’s active aerodynamics press down on the car at high speeds, the firmer spring rates of Track mode counter aerodynamic squat and help keep the tires’ contact patch as broad as possible while accelerating, braking, and cornering.
OK, not a bad pitch from Ford, here. We’d have covered this regardless; anyone slapping a window into a car’s body just to show people how things work? That gets a big things up from me.
I hate ford, but I love this.
This is the kind of thinks that makes me wonder why Ford gets so much hate. Sure, they put the Mustang name on a lame EV crossover, but other than that, they just keep constantly bringing fun and somewhat handsome vehicles.
I suspect a lot of it has to do with the fact that those fun vehicles keep getting recalled because Quality hasn’t been Job 1 for a long time at Ford. Even something I love like the GT 350 apparently has serious reliability issues. A lot of people got burned by PowerShift transmissions too.
Fair enough. I myself had a Focus with PowerShift… but I guess I just love Ford too much.
This feature is cool. So cool it gets a “things up” from DT.
I love the cars where the company decides to say fuck the budget and let the engineers & designers make something cool* – there’s always a kind of glee that comes through in the end product that’s so often lacking in other cars. I’m not a Mustang guy, but the world needs more of this kind of joy.
*yeah yeah it’s never fully “fuck the budget”, but they turn that slider way up
Oh man I love inboard suspension setups. One of the most satisfying moments of my engineering education way back when was seeing the suspension work for the first time on the rolling chassis of our formula SAE car senior year.
Another publication made their headline about the zip ties you can see on the driver’s side suspension through that window – but they’re just there to hold a thermocouple connector in place. I think it is admirable that the engineers at Ford are clearly doing instrumented testing even on their (literal) show pony.
A track car like this is a toy, so why not add some fun toy stuff? They threw out the rear seats to add inboard pushrod actuated suspension for Reasons, so why not stick a window there? It would just be a stretch of blank carpet otherwise. I think this is a welcome injection of levity into a car whose entire reason for existence is to be fun (and competitive, I suppose, but that’s part of the fun).
The GT just doesn’t cut it anymore. What you want is the D. Gotta get the D.
That suspension is giving off big D energy but it might be a little stiff. Something something pushrod.
I can’t get over the fact that they use zip ties to hold the wiring together and proudly present this in a glass window. This looks so unfinished, it’s ridiculous. Also I’m super surprised, that, as an engineer, you’re not even picking up on this David.
Crap, I really like that. Do I actually WANT a Mustang now? I think I might actually want a Mustang now. Wait it’s how much? Nevermind then.
That fucks big time.
Yeah that’s an awesome feature, regardless of how difficult it is to watch in action. Does give off a shake weight vibe though.
The Prius energy monitor was pretty cool, if simple. It was fun to watch as a passenger, and reminded you of how novel the powertrain was at the time, considering the rest of the driving experience wasn’t so special.
It was a hell of a lot better than what most brands were doing at the time, where all you would get was a light or some sort of graphic showing how “eco” your driving was in the moment. Once you realized it was basically just displaying whether or not you were hitting the accelerator, the novelty wore off fast.
I saw their booth at Laguna Seca on the release weekend. Very cool tech, however, the engine is still installed in the wrong end of the car.
The window gives a great hack mechanic view of the many zip ties used to keep wires/hoses getting tangled up or damaged from rubbing on stuff.
While Typically I’d dunk on Ford for a lazy wire routing/management system, the zip-tied connectors look to be K-Type Thermocouple connectors which are probably being used for checking temps on various parts of the shock bodies for production validation. Hey at least they used orange ones to blend in! Let’s forget that orange is for High Voltage use only and this car doesn’t have any hybrid/EV components in it.
Awesome idea. Enjoyed that.
When I built the 6-person pedal (only) powered Shamancycle I deliberately showed the drive gearing underneath by using expanded metal. The kids could ride on top of the expanded metal and watch the bicycle chains and gear sets on the single drive shaft to the Tacoma rear end as they moved along underneath them. The wings bank when the steering wheel is turned and that mechanism is also exposed for viewing. The whole bicycling chains and gears from the VW bug steering box up to the steering wheel and up to the Ackermann-based wing movement mechanism. The kids love it! And adults too! the Shamancyle website shows some overviews, but no details of the mechanisms. Not my website, but by the artist in charge Phoebe Legere.
https://www.shamancycle.com/
On a lesser note, I’ve always been a fan of when Ford exposes instead of hides the exhaust piping on its vehicles. Really gives this cool touch of “racer functional” to even everyday stuff.
The final gen Taurus had this – from the rear, you could easily see the pipes snaking downward toward the middle of the car. The Explorer had this setup too.
Yup, that’s definitely cool.
I’ve always been a big fan of the transparent electronics like CD players and Game Boys of my childhood and I think we need more of that in cars too. The suspension window is awesome but why stop there?
Years ago, I saw a Honda Accord at a car show with clear coolant pipes and the owner left it idling so you could watch the coolant flow through the pipes. I want those too and it also may have the added benefit of giving you an easy way to check if the cooling system is bled and to check for restrictions in the system. Also, clear valve covers too even though the effect may be ruined by how much oil splashes around up there in overhead cam engines.
I feel as though all the clear plastics I’ve seen would be too brittle for a valve cover. That’d be cool as hell, but (I know there are materials engineers around here) all the clear stuff is either super brittle or softens at car operating temps.
I know clear acrylic tubing is a thing for PCs but that’s much less stress in just about every way.
I’m not a materials engineer, but I am a Mechanical Engineer, and I’d assume based on experience with polymers that even if a certain clear plastic would work in theory, the thermal cycling would degrade performance extremely rapidly. Lots of modern cars use plastic oil pans and I believe valve covers (looking at you VW), but they are very often FRP types with a large percentage of fiberglass infill which provides a ton of thermal and structural stability.
All that said, plastics are very much not my specialty, so I’m sure there could be a certain plastic that may work for an application like this, but odds are it would be obscenely expensive, or have a fatal flaw that would significantly reduce lifespan.
What??!! This is awesome – if I were in the passenger seat of one of these, I can’t see looking at anything but that suspension working. Probably wreck my neck but so be it.
I have no cynicism. This is just plain cool as hell. I love it.
I wonder if their initial primary purpose of this is for easy access to the suspension for repairs or really to showcase the parts.
If they designed anything for ease of access on a racecar for the street it would be a surprise.
Or in the case of “race car with the bare minimum changes for street use” they’d likely have components easily accessible so race crews can rip it apart as quickly as possible trackside. I strongly doubt that’s the case here though
I’m reminded of the dealer demonstrator hoods that Ford made in 1954 to show off the new Y-block:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48618859733_860a121480_c.jpg
didn’t DT’s jeep already have that? Organic to boot too, no plexiglass needed
Isn’t this traditionally the function of rust? I’ve had several cars where I can see the suspension.
Okay, that is the goofiest, most inspiring thing they could do here. There’s no need for it. It won’t help any function. But it’s cool and shows off something exciting. I like it.