Inside Ford’s private off-road track where it tests its wildest electric machines

Silent, clean, and calm, most EVs are lovely to drive. They’re easier on the environment and are less likely to increase your stress levels than traditional cars, too. But if you’re the sort of driver who’s looking to get your adrenaline pumping without burning any gasoline, you haven’t had many options. 

That’s something Ford is looking to change with its latest high-performance special edition, the Mach-E Rally. After a few exclusive laps spent sliding one around Ford’s private, purpose-built, off-road course in Michigan, I can attest that this is a machine that lives up to its name.

But Ford’s mission to spice up its EV efforts has resulted in some other, much wilder machines in some unusual shapes, so-called “demonstrators” that offer levels of performance so outrageous they’re decidedly illegal for the street. It’s a dual-pronged approach to bolstering the company’s electrified efforts, but in many ways, it’s just a continuation of the same theme that the company has been singing since its earliest days.

SuperTruck

In June of this year, a Ford F-150 Lightning pulled up to the starting grid at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. This harrowing road has been challenging cars and drivers since 1916, with one simple goal: get to the top faster than anyone else.

And that’s exactly what Ford’s all-electric entry did, screaming from start to finish in a time of eight minutes and 53 seconds, more than 10 seconds quicker than the next-fastest competitor. That’s a remarkable feat for a truck, made more incredible by the fact that Ford’s entry, dubbed the SuperTruck, lurched to a halt just a few feet after the start. It stood still for 26 seconds while pilot Romain Dumas ran through the reboot sequence. 

“Luckily, Romain had been studying the process of what to do in case that happened the night before,” said David Root, exterior designer on the F-150 Lightning SuperTruck. “He knew exactly what to do.”

That Dumas still won the event after standing still for half a minute shows the dominance of a truck that looks like something out of a video game. And that’s because it was — spiritually, at least. SuperTruck design manager Anthony Meyer admitted to me that he drew inspiration from the epic, big-winged Suzuki Escudo that dominated Gran Turismo 2.

That wild look is possible because the SuperTruck shares nothing with the road-going F-150 Lightning. Built on a custom frame with three high-performance motors delivering over 1,600 horsepower, it’s what the brand calls a “demonstrator.” That is, a high-power, high-performance machine designed to impress, not necessarily to compete.

“We didn’t feel there was the right full-electric racing series to participate in,” said Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford Performance, the company’s racing division. “Because we’re not restricted by rules. We can do whatever we want, we can learn whatever we want, and we can tell whatever spectacle or story we want.”

While the Pikes Peak event does have rules defining the various categories of cars that compete every year, in the event’s Open class, most of those regulations are in the name of driver safety. Beyond creating a safe car that had a passing resemblance to the road-going F-150, Ford’s team was free to do more or less whatever they wanted. That enabled the team to create something wild, all in the name of raising the profile of its road-going EVs. 

Electric spectacle

While EV demonstrators are just one facet of Ford’s motorsports efforts, they’re an increasingly important part of the company’s marketing efforts.

It started with 2020’s Mustang Cobra Jet 1400, a 1,400-horsepower dragster designed to run the quarter mile in eight seconds, quicker even than the astonishingly fast Lucid Air Sapphire. That was followed closely by the equally powerful Mustang Mach-E 1400.

The bulk of Ford’s motorsports efforts, however, are still focused on internal combustion — more specifically, on the controlled explosions that happen under the hood of a Ford Mustang coupe. Ford’s sports car, which celebrated its 60th anniversary this year, competes in everything from Le Mans to NASCAR to the National Hot Rod Association, disparate series with vastly different demands.

It’s all in pursuit of the age-old adage “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday,” the adage that says success on the race track leads to success at the dealership.

To better make that connection, Ford has a long history of motorsports-themed Mustang special editions. Models like the Shelby GT350, Boss 302, and Cobra R all have their roots in racing. This year, though, saw a special edition of a different color when Ford released its first performance edition of that other Mustang: the Mustang Mach-E Rally. Like many of those pony cars that came before, the Rally had to earn its stripes at the hands of Ford’s torture testers.

Testing ground

Many of Ford’s road-going machines, and plenty of its track-oriented ones, whet their teeth in a rather unassuming place: Michigan Proving Grounds, better known as MPG. Located in Romeo, Michigan, a rural village with a population of less than 4,000, and situated 45 miles north of Detroit, it’s one of several test facilities Ford operates around the world. 

MPG headquarters is a tired-looking building full of low, dark cubicles. The only color in the place comes from the array of motorsports posters on the wall, some signed by Ford greats. One, showing a Ford Fiesta rally car sliding sideways through the gravel, carries the dedication: “To MPG - Thanks for Everything! -Ken Block 43”

It’s a bit depressing inside, but that’s fine because the real magic happens outside. That building’s backyard is a 4,000-acre edifice to automotive excellence, criss-crossed by roads and paths suitable for evaluating every vehicle Ford makes — plus some choice offerings from the competition, too.

There, you’ll find asphalt smooth and rough, steep and shallow, plus endless dirt trails and off-road sections. Despite all that, there was nothing quite right for the development of the Mach-E Rally.

“We surveyed all these tracks on these 4,000 acres that we already had. And we looked at the other proving grounds, in Arizona, and in Germany, and nothing was quite rallycross,” said Jay Kistler, vehicle engineering supervisor for the Mustang Mach-E.

The Mach-E Rally is dedicated to the sport of rallying, the age-old pursuit of going fast over any conditions. But rallycross is a specific flavor of that pursuit. In the American sense, a rallycross is generally a rural affair, an amateur event where people slide their Subarus around traffic cones placed on pastures or gravel parking lots. Each competitor gets multiple runs through the day; at the end, the driver with the lowest cumulative time wins.

Nearly any car with a functional suspension can compete and survive so long as its drivers aren’t too precious about their paint. But, not all will survive. As the day goes on, it’s not uncommon for courses to start to deteriorate. As the ruts get deeper, the risk of damage increases.

Rallycrossing is not easy on cars. Serious competitors invest in suspension to provide extra compliance, ground clearance, and durability for the rougher courses. Aluminum skid plates are also commonplace to save oil pans, exhausts, and differentials from damage. Without these basic upgrades, competitors who drive hard are asking for trouble.

To replicate the conditions a rallycrosser is likely to find on an average Saturday, Ford’s development team did what any racer with a fast car and 4,000 acres of playground would do: they made their own course.

The result is a short, dirt and gravel circuit with interconnected loops to provide variety. After a few revisions and expansions, executed at a cost that nobody was willing to disclose, the Mach-E team had its perfect testing ground. 

The goal was 500 hours of serious testing. “Full send, all the time,” Anthony Magagnoli, off-road attribute engineer at Ford and one of the test drivers, said. 

“Full send” is rally parlance for driving as hard as possible without an ounce of mechanical sympathy. A car that could survive 500 hours without breaking anything was the goal. The team reckoned that would equate to 10 years’ worth of competition.

That’s an impressive feat considering many cars don’t make it 10 minutes at a rallycross without losing bodywork. Indeed, things didn’t start so well for the Mach-E. 

“In the first 50 miles of us originally trying this, we had a lot of parts falling off the vehicle,” Ford’s Kistler said.

“None of them were, like, structural-type things,” Chris Berchin added, off-road attribute engineer and an avid rallycrosser responsible for many of those 500 hours. “It was this trim piece fell off, this shield fell off... the majority of the car was solid.”

The team redesigned the Mach-E’s bodywork by upgrading the strut tops, the part of the suspension most likely to fail under hard compression. But the bulk of the car survived without issue. 

The result was a rally-hardened machine. At the car’s recent media launch, where dozens of ham-fisted journalists slid the thing around in the gravel and the mud for days, there wasn’t a single failure. 

Sell on Monday?

It’s safe to say that Ford’s EV efforts are in question at the moment. The Blue Oval recently revised its EV outlook again, canceling a planned three-row electric SUV and shuffling dates for other, unannounced products. Despite sales of electric cars continuing to climb, there’s a perceived softness in the market, a bit of smoke being fanned furiously by a curiously dedicated group of American EV haters.

On its own, the Mach-E Rally won’t do much to change their minds. Rallycross is a wonderful pursuit, truly among the most fun things you can do on four wheels, but it’s hardly mainstream. Various series have tried and failed, including the Red Bull Global Rallycross, which folded in 2018, and the Americas Rallycross Championship, which picked up from there before shuttering in 2019. 

Still, sometimes it’s in chasing the niches that mainstream success can be found. Hyundai is following much the same lead to spice up its electrification efforts with the Ioniq 5 N, which comes complete with fake shifting noises and endless performance-oriented sliders on its touchscreen. Nissan also makes a limited-edition, high-performance Nismo flavor of its Ariya SUV — but only in Japan for now.

Adding a dose of aspirational potential to an everyday product is a tried and true way of wooing American consumers, one that’s worked for the Mustang for ages. Indeed, it’s hard to look at the Mach-E Rally’s rally-style wheels, big wing, and running lights without getting some bad ideas about hooning your way down the closest gravel road. 

It’s similar antics that gave Henry Ford some ideas of his own. “It goes way back to 1901, with Henry Ford winning a race. I definitely believe that ultimately led to the formation of our company in 1903,” Mark Rushbrook said. 

Appropriately, that 1901 race took place on the dirt.