Say hello to Ford’s 1,400bhp electric Mustang

Back in 1968 Ford built 50 special lightweight Mustangs specifically for drag racing. Some 40 years later it revived the practice, and most years since has built small batches of these fat-tyred, turn-key but non road-legal Mustangs. They’re called Cobra Jets, and they’re awesome.

Usually power comes from a big supercharged V8, but for the Cobra Jet 1400 Prototype Ford’s gone down a different route. Set to make its debut “later this year at a drag racing event”, the prototype eschews the V8 in favour of batteries and electric motors. We don’t know how many motors or how big the battery is, but Ford tells us this thing is good for 1,400bhp, 1,100lb ft of torque and a 1/4 -mile in the low eights at around 170mph. Which is very fast indeed.

Developed with help from specialised companies MLe Racecars, Watson Engineering, AEM EV and Cascadia, the prototype is a conveniently-timed one-off, set to make a splash the same year deliveries of Ford’s Mustang Mach-E road car are set to begin.

Global Director of Ford Performance Motorsports Mark Rushbrook said: “We saw the Cobra Jet 1400 project as an opportunity to start developing electric powertrains in a race car package that we already had a lot of experience with, so we had performance benchmarks we wanted to match and beat right now.

"This has been a fantastic project to work on, and we hope the first of many coming from our team at Ford Performance Motorsports."

What's that, "first of many"? What electric race car would you like to see Ford do next?