First, there were cars. Then, there was racing. Innovation thrives on competition, that innate need to be the best, the fastest. Speed is the ultimate goal. Every lap is a push toward the next victory, the next record. From the very beginning Ford worked toward that goal.

In 1903, Barney Oldfield took a Ford 999 to the Indiana State Fairground’s clay oval. He wasn’t seeking validation, already holding the title of a record breaking lap from his previous race. Even the best strive to do better, and Oldfield did just that with an incredible speed of 60 mph, a feat no one had done before on a circular one mile track.

Modern vehicles make it seem easy. The focus today is not if a car can go 60 mph - it’s how quickly it can get to that speed. The Ford 999 was a shell. No safety measures, no fancy build, just raw speed and a man who wanted to go fast. 123 years ago Oldfield claimed one of Ford’s first speed records, but it wouldn’t be the last.

Only a year later Henry Ford himself set out to prove his claim that a four-cylinder engine could break the world’s speed record. He was thinking bigger, faster. On icy Lake St. Clair the Ford 999 made an actual flying lap as it hit a bulge that sent it into the air before going through the course with a 39.4 second mile. There in New Baltimore, Mich. at 91.37 mph, Henry Ford set the first speed record of 1904. He was the fastest man in the world.

Think fast. Think Ford. 83 years later we were still looking for the next record. It came in the form of Bill Elliott and the Ford Thunderbird, both NASCAR legends. In 1987 it broke the qualifying speed record going 212.809 mph around the track in Talladega, Ala. That record would become unbeatable due to NASCAR’s engine restrictions, ensuring Ford will likely forever be the quickest in that category.

Getting to that top speed can be difficult. It requires the right car, the right setup, and the right driver. That speed dedicated effort was shown in a 1989 Thunderbird with a NASCAR chassis piloted by Lyn St. James, the first woman to surpass 200 mph on a closed course. In 1988 she was back for more, going 212.435 mph to mark the fastest lap by a woman on an oval track. Still, she wanted more. So the next day she broke it again, this time with a speed of 212.577 mph.

That habit of breaking speed records is no thing of the past. Frédéric Vervisch’s recent stint at the famed Nürburgring positioned Ford as the fastest American OEM to ring around the Nordschleife. The GT Mk IV finished the 12.9 miles of legendary German asphalt in just over six minutes (6:15.977). That also makes it the fastest Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) powered vehicle.

We didn’t just come for one record at the Nürburgring. The Mustang GTD Competition became the first car from an American brand to lap the track in under seven minutes. In 2025 Dirk Müller showed what it was capable of with a time of 6:52.072. That wasn’t enough for Ford. This year we came for more. Beating its own record, the Mustang GTD Competition went 6:40.835.

If there was ever a question of whether Ford was only capable of making fast ICE vehicles, there isn’t anymore. Just look at the Mustang Cobra Jet 2200, the newest electric speed racer to hit the track and blow everyone away. The fastest EV drag racer shot through the quarter mile with a top speed of 222 mph.

It’s evident we pride ourselves on speed across all categories. From the Ford 999 that was almost all engine, to the Mustang Cobra Jet 2200 with no internal combustion engine at all. We don’t chase records for the accolades, we do so for the learning. Record setting is a real world laboratory to push the known limits of efficiency, reliability and outright performance that we then fed straight into the next generation of Ford production vehicles. We make records and then we break them again, for 125 years. That is why we are America’s Race Team.

Alexa Sutton is a former communications intern at Ford.