Ford’s IMSA Mustang GTP Was Ahead Of Its Time
Zakspeed and Roush teamed to build Ford’s wildest prototype ever.
The early 1980s were a different time in motor racing. Ford was selling cars like proverbial hotcakes, and in turn, they were dumping huge sums of money into motorsport efforts. Take the Mustang GTP for example. This video was filmed in-period, following the team around for the full season. It had been lost for decades, but Marshall Pruett managed to dredge it up and post it to his YouTube channel for all to see.
For 1983, Ford hired Bill Riley to develop a chassis for the car. Employing a wildly powerful, high-strung 1.7-liter four-cylinder turbocharged engine, he plopped it in front of the driver compartment. For its premiere season, the car debuted at Road America for the 500-mile race.
Two cars were built: One for Tim Coconis and Klaus Ludwig, and another for Bobby Rahal and Geoff Brabham. Coconis and Ludwig won that first race by a massive two-lap lead, but the car never again found success.
The cars’ second race was at Pocono in Pennsylvania. Both cars failed to finish the race, completing just 57 laps between them. After one podium and one failure, Roush pulled out of the program because they’d wanted to run V8s, but Ford wouldn’t allow it. The final round of the season was at Daytona, and only one car arrived, entered by Zakspeed USA.
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Even then, a front-engined prototype wasn’t considered viable, so it was a huge risk on the part of Ford to go that route. While the Mustang GTP did win one race out of 15 rounds entered, it was replaced by the mid-engine Mustang-Probe racer for the 1985 season.
