Mustang Cobra Jet 1400

from Muscle Car Plus June-July 2020

Smokey & the Bandit Trans-AM

Electrifying

Story by Benjamin Yong, photos courtesy of Ford

Only two years after the Ford Mustang Cobra Jet made headlines with the release of the 50th anniversary edition, the tarmac-ripping drag car born in the 1960s is back — this time, minus an engine.

What the newest version, dubbed the Cobra Jet 1400, does have are four (!) electric motors pushing more than net 1,400 horsepower and 1,100 lb-ft of torque.

Electrification is nothing new at Ford, having made plug-in hybrids and EVs for over a decade, the latest being the Mustang Mach-E SUV slated for release in late 2020. But why a one-off muscle car model? “Why not?” quips global director of Ford Icons Dave Pericak in a telephone interview.

“Because as you look to developing new technology and new control systems, we want to leverage our performance team and our racing in order to push the limit and see how far we can go. Really push things way further than even a production vehicle might do so that we can learn and then bring that learning back into our production vehicles,” says Pericak, who also led the development of the GT road car as well as both the fifth and sixth generations of Mustang.

What’s interesting about the 1400 is how much it’s got in common with its internal combustion cousin. The body, three-speed automatic transmission and torque converter all stay the same, albeit everything has been beefed up to handle all the massive amounts of additional power.

The blue oval company enlisted the help of some industry professionals to achieve this impressive feat. Partners include MLe Racecars for build and tuning, Watson Engineering for chassis and roll cage, AEM EV for software, and Cascadia for the motors, which Pericak says, while not high-volume units, are still considered “off the shelf.”

There isn’t any public data available on powertrain or battery specifics, other than the motors are set up in a two

by-two configuration stacked on top of one another, and linked to a summing gearbox mated to the transmission. Projected quarter-mile performance is rated in the low-eight-second range at speeds greater than 273 km/h.

On the design side, Ford has always been good at balancing the fine line between creating aesthetically pleasing electric vehicles that don’t look too “green,” whether we’re talking about a Ford Fusion Energi or a Ford Focus Electric of days past. And it’s done the job admirably again here.

There are no huge exterior changes to report really, other than an update to the livery: purists need not worry as the iconic snake still rises up from the rear quarter panel.

“The whole idea behind it was to keep it very recognizable as a Cobra Jet but put a little modern twist to it. So when you look at it, you want to be able to see, ‘Oh there’s something unique here.’ We just played around with the graphics giving you an idea that this thing’s a bit different. For example, the “E” in the name is actually blue to signal the electricity,” says Pericak.

Fans of the iconic pony car may remember another zero emissions concept exists. The Mustang Lithium, a stick-shift 900- horse, 1,000 lb-ft of torque monster built by battery systems experts Webasto, debuted at SEMA in Las Vegas back in November and was covered in an earlier issue of Muscle Car Plus.

More information should be available when the Ford Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 officially debuts at a scheduled NHRA event later in the year. And if you haven’t yet, go check out the Ford Performance channel on YouTube for a teaser of the EV in action.