BOWMANVILLE, ONT. — The spiralling cost of replacing a damaged mirror or a scraped bumper may get under your skin, but many car owners would be floored by the $75,000 (U.S.) price tag on Ford's part number M-FR500-S.
Then again, just add gas and the M-FR500-S's new owner is ready to compete in the Ford Racing Mustang Challenge for the Miller Cup.
"We just took the performance part to the extreme," says Jamie Allison, Ford Racing Performance Group manager. "It's not a car — it's not street-legal. So, you just order it through the parts counter at a Ford dealership."
Build at Ford's facility in Flat Rock, Mich., the FR500-S Mustang is the company's first production-line race car. The cars don't get any frills, skipping the radio, air conditioning, and other comfort-item stops on the production line in favour of things such as roll cages and beefier suspensions.
FR500-S race cars built for the Ford Racing Mustang Challenge for the Miller Cup await their new owners at Miller Motorsports Park. (Jeremy Henrie/Miller Motorsports)
All of the cars' 4.6-litre, fuel-injected V-8 engines are sent to NASCAR's Roush Industries to ensure that each motor produces within four horsepower of the advertised 325 ponies.
Racers can't change much on the Mustangs; most of the tuning takes the form of tire pressures, shock settings, and tire angles. The rest is tightly controlled by the series so every driver has equal equipment.
At roughly $150,000, which covers the car as well as travel costs for the eight-race season, the Mustang Challenge is a relatively inexpensive first step on a ladder to more demanding competition, such as the Grand American Koni Challenge.
While the 20 drivers now competing in the series purchased their race cars, Ford announced an "arrive and drive" program last week that will see two more racers join the field in rented Mustangs this weekend at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio.
Andrew Caddell of Graham, Wash., won the first two rounds of the series, including last weekend's race at the Mosport International Raceway near Bowmanville, Ont.
The Mustang Challenge is also designed for all ranges of talent, including drivers who want to get their first competition experience. This year, it has about a half-dozen competitors who had not raced cars previously.
"Overall, the positive is that you get groups of drivers with similar skills. There are five or six of us at the front who are all pretty quick and we kind of run at a little different speed than maybe the next six. And then there's another six, so there's a race for everyone," says driver Jamie Sloane, who has competed in the Koni Challenge.
"I think the bang for your buck is pretty good — you are getting a great car and they drive great."
The series grew from a performance driving school at Utah's Miller Motorsport Park that used Mustangs. Ford executives liked what they saw on a visit last year and things moved quickly from there.
"Ford decided to go forward with it last July and they built the cars while I started the series from scratch," says Lynda Randall, Miller Cup series director.
"The basic car setup that Ford has come up and developed though their engineering department is good. And, I want to make sure this is a fun and equal series."
The Mustang Challenge's purpose can be compared to one that Formula BMW serves in open-wheel racing, although that series usually features hungry young drivers moving up to cars from go-karts.
Fans looking for the inside story about getting the series off the ground and the progression throughout the season can tune into a three-part miniseries that will be broadcast on the Discovery Channel later this year. The crew filmed a number of segments at Mosport last weekend as the Mustang Challenge made its only appearance outside the United States.
The exposure also helps Ford sell some cars, which is usually the point of participating in any racing effort.
"At the end of the day, we are Ford Motor Co. and we are in the business of creating fun-to-drive cars. This series for Mustang this is really an extension of what we do," Allison says.
"It's a marketing program at some levels but it's really a business opportunity that we feel will pay lots of dividends."
