FORD'S ENTRY TO THIS YEAR'S PIKES PEAK INTERNATIONAL HILL CLIMB WAS THE BEASTLY SUPER MUSTANG MACH-E. HOW COOL?
The clouds above Colorado recently got a little louder - well, faster. Ford Performance headed back to the 103rd running of the Broadmoor Pikes Peak International Hill Climb - one of the most extreme and demanding motorsport events on the planet - with a brand-new electric weapon: the Super Mustang Mach-E. And behind the wheel? None other than hillclimb maestro Romain Dumas, the current Pikes Peak record holder, was in for his tenth start on the mountain and third consecutive run with Ford. This time, it wasn’t a truck. Or a van. It was a leaner, sharper beast altogether. Co-developed with STARD Advanced Research and Development, the Super Mustang Mach-E was purpose-built to attack the 20 km, 156-turn course that climbs to a lung-crushing 4,302 metres. That’s serious altitude, where even breathing is a challenge - but this all-electric demon didn’t need oxygen. It feeds on volts. Lots of them. Under the skin are three STARD UHP 6-Phase motors delivering a combined 1,030+ kW, powered by 50 kWh of ultra-high-performance lithium-polymer NMC pouch cells. The voltage remains a monstrous 799V, but the whole setup shed a whopping 180 kg compared to last year’s F-150 Lightning SuperTruck. That’s huge when the road narrows, the corners tighten, and the edge of the world is just a heartbeat away. Performance? How about 710 kW of regen braking, 3,130 kg of downforce at 240 km/h, and a full suite of motorsport-grade components - carbon brakes, forged magnesium wheels, and sticky Pirelli P-Zeros. It’s engineered for violence in silence.
“This is the next step,” says Mark Rushbrook, Ford Performance’s global director. “We’re not just showing off. We’re gathering real-world data in the harshest possible environment to feed directly into future Ford EVs — from battery chemistry to cooling systems to power delivery.” Racing at Pikes Peak isn’t just about glory. It’s a laboratory perched above the clouds. Every corner is a test, every hairpin a lesson. That’s why Ford’s continued partnership with STARD is so crucial - the Austrian outfit remains instrumental in developing cutting-edge powertrain and control strategies for these electric monsters. The Mach-E carried race number 310 - a tribute to Dumas’ third Ford entry and his milestone tenth run at the Peak. After helping claim overall victory in 2024 with the Lightning SuperTruck, and setting benchmarks before that with SuperVan 4.2, Dumas was hungry to push the boundaries even further.
“This Mach-E is a very different animal,” says Dumas. “It’s agile, it’s aggressive, and we’re going all-out. I can’t wait to see how it performs when the altitude kicks in and things get real.”
Ford’s story with the mountain stretches back over a century - all the way to 1916, when a humble Model T made the climb. Fast forward to 2025, and the brand is still proving that innovation doesn’t always roar - sometimes it hums. Loudly. Click through to the Pikes Peak website for the official results on how this beast fared up the hill.
Take a look at the YouTube video from the Vision Effect TV crew as they take a look at the ridiculously-cool Super Mustang Mach-E being tested before it hit the Pikes Peak hill this past weekend: Ford to Challenge Pikes Peak with 1,421-HP Mach-E | Ford Super Mustang Mach-e Pikes Peak Race Car | Vision Effect TV
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