Ford Australia and its new Supercars partner Triple Eight Race Engineering could team up to offer an official motorsport-themed Mustang special edition, or even a hotter Ranger Raptor.
According to motorsport website Speedcafe.com, Ford and Triple Eight have had early discussions on a road car collaboration and it could lead to multiple homegrown street-legal models.
The Australian motor racing landscape was rocked late last month by news that the powerhouse Supercars race team will dump General Motors after 16 years and defect back to the Blue Oval for the 2026 season.
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At the time of the announcement, it was made clear the rekindled relationship between Ford and T8 would stretch beyond Supercars, and during the opening round of the 2025 championship in Sydney on the weekend Ford Australia president Andrew Birkic confirmed to Speedcafe that early discussions about potential automotive market projects have taken place.
“They are first and foremost an engineering company that is a very good race team, so there’s no reason why not,” said Mr Birkic when asked about a potential off-track alliance between Ford and Triple Eight.
“What that looks like we don’t know, but certainly we have an open mind.”
In addition to its Walkinshaw Performance aftermarket sister brand, last year Walkinshaw Automotive released a Walkinshaw-branded Ranger limited edition, and Walkinshaw’s engineering team helped develop Ford’s official Ranger Raptor entry for its Finke Desert Race debut.
But Ford’s relationship with Walkinshaw Andretti United will cease at the end of the current Supercars season and Mr Birkic made it clear that Triple Eight would pick up where WAU leaves off.
“We’ve done Finke and WAU has helped us in certain areas,” he said. “Obviously, they’re moving onto another camp, so we do see opportunities for Triple Eight.”
Asked whether discussions have already taken place, Mr Birkic told Speedcafe: “Just in terms of at a higher level, what have they got, what are we looking for? We’ll see how that pans out.”
Potential tie-ups between Ford and Triple Eight beyond motorsport, in which logical extensions could comprise co-operations in GT and off-road racing, could include anything from T8-branded road cars to behind-the-scenes engineering work supporting Ford’s ongoing vehicle design and engineering work in Australia.
A Triple Eight-engineered Mustang wouldn’t be Australia’s first locally developed, motorsport-themed version of the famous Ford pony car.
Current Ford Supercars teams Tickford Racing and Dick Johnson Racing have joined Walkinshaw to work on Ford road car projects in the past, and DJR helped produce Scott McLaughlin and Dick Johnson-branded Mustang limited editions alongside Herrod Performance, which produced the R-SPEC for Ford in 2020.
Tickford also sells performance packs for Mustangs and Rangers.
For its part, the Brisbane-based Triple Eight outfit, which has already undertaken projects in the aerospace and (during COVID) medical industries, is keen to further expand its design and manufacturing capabilities beyond motorsport.
The first of them in the general automotive area was a recent collaboration with Queensland-based Toyota diesel tuning company Just Autos, in which Triple Eight developed an aftermarket intake solution for Toyota LandCruiser 300 Series vehicles.
Triple Eight fielded Ford Falcons over 2003-2009, before switching to Holden when Ford withdrew its funding as part of wider motorsport budget cuts.
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