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'Leaked' video teases a drift-modified Mustang Mach-E

The footage is from the North Carolina Center for Automotive Research.

Carolina Guy

Ford’s all-electric Mustang Mach-E hasn’t rolled out yet, but someone is working on a special one-off, judging by a video posted to YouTube a few days ago. As noted by Autoblog and Jalopnik, this stripped down machine is obviously a Mach-E, but with body panels removed in the front and rear, seemingly to make room for extra cooling and suspension bits as well as a roll cage and extremely thick tires.

It needs those, because the video — posted by a user who only goes by “Carolina Guy” but seems to have impeccable timing and a suspiciously good ability to frame the action — shows the vehicle burning rubber on a skidpad with a few donuts. Road & Track pointed out that an F-150 appears briefly that looks like one customized by RTR Vehicles, and could indicate that this is a test vehicle for Vaughn Gittin Jr. Gittin is a likely choice to appear in a promotion, as he drives Mustang in the Formula D series, and helped introduce its 2010 revision to the world.

Mach-E
Carolina Guy

So what’s the purpose of a heavily-modified EV? Hopefully anything it teases trickles down to regular buyers providing some competition for Tesla’s Track Mode, but we’ll have to wait and see since this version doesn’t appear anywhere on the list of available pre-order options — we checked. Ford declined to comment on “speculation” about its test vehicles, so for now there’s just the video.