Ford Mustang GTD HMI
HMI Design
Global Design Director
Joel Piaskowski
Design Manager (GTD / GT3)
Anthony Colard
HMI / Digital design lead
Craig Sandvig
Ford Font
Antenna is a humanist-inflected grotesque: open apertures, a double-storey `a`, humanist proportions that stay legible at the small label sizes an instrument cluster demands. This is a typographic system designed to survive being read at a glance in a Focus or an F-150.
The GTD's cluster is not one fixed typographic system as the graphics are rendered live in Unreal Engine, each cluster theme. Normal, Sport, Track, Calm, and the "Fox Body '87–'93" retro mode carries its own numeral treatment and dial styling. The Fox Body theme in particular pastes a 1980s segmented-LCD aesthetic over the same panel, right down to the blocky, pixel-era digits.
Ford Mustang GTD HMI Details
The interior
In truth, at roughly $325,000, you're sitting in a very familiar $40,000 cockpit, Ford spent the homologation budget on a 6:52 Nürburgring lap rather than a bespoke dashboard, which is hard to argue with and impossible not to notice. The money lands where your hands do: titanium paddles with a cold, precise click, a 3D-printed titanium shift bezel, Recaros, suede. And one genuine masterstroke, the rear seats replaced by a Lexan window onto the inboard dampers stroking away as the car loads up.
Ergonomics
The screen layout is proven Mustang, cluster ahead, central display angled driver-wards and the GTD's smartest ergonomic call costs nothing to render: drive modes on red toggles on the steering wheel, Sport-to-Track in a thumb flick while certain rivals are still wading through a touchscreen. Track mode engages from stationary because it physically drops the car ~40mm and reconfigures the suspension an actual transformation rather than a badge changing colour, though you'll want to remember that before the out-lap. Front-axle lift and Track Apps get physical buttons, correctly. It's been noted that Auto Upshift could announce itself more clearly in the cluster, the sort of one-line fix OTA updates were invented for.
The interface
Both screens are rendered live in Unreal Engine, under Craig Sandvig's Digital Product Design team, and the render budget goes where it should: the drive modes, each with its own personality acted out by a live 3D model of your car. Select Track and the virtual Mustang hurtles round a circuit; Drag Strip squares it up to the staging tree. The custom mode builder is the best bit, drag the 3D car around like you're browsing your Forza garage, the model visibly reflecting your damper, steering, engine and exhaust settings as you dial them in. You configure the car by manipulating a picture of the car, and the picture never lies about the state you've built. It's the clearest production case yet of a games engine doing real HMI work rather than rendering fish on the options screen.
Around the modes: ten cluster views, five full themes, including a Fox Body retro skin, the cheapest time machine Ford has ever sold, plus the Track Apps suite (lap timer, launch control, line-lock, drag timers) where a GTD owner will actually live. SYNC 4 takes everything secondary, OTA (Over The Air) keeps the lot fresh, and because the cluster is a render target rather than a set of dials, new modes ship as content for the life of the car.
Verdict
The GTD is excellent in atoms and bits, and knows which job belongs to which. Atoms: titanium paddles, wheel toggles, and that Lexan window, the most honest interface in the car, zero latency, infinite resolution, no subscription required. Bits: a games engine turning the drive modes from a settings list into a responsive 3D model of the actual car, an idea the rest of the industry will be copying within a generation, and Ford shipped it first, in a Mustang. The signpost for the gallery: render engines have left the concept stand, and the GTD is proof they work at speed.
HMI Gallery
Image source: media.ford.com & fordpresskits.com & Marc Urbano | Car & Driver
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HMI Gallery is a collection of case studies showcasing the features, functionality, fonts and iconography of digital interface design in high performance vehicles.
Curated by Ben Morris
Digital Creative