Those center racing stripes on the new 2020 Ford Shelby Mustang GT500 can be awfully pricey. Here’s why Ford charges $10,000 for them.
Ford recently posted the configurator for the new GT500, which means you can now spec out and price the 760-horsepower supercharged Mustang of your dreams. And if you decide to go buck-wild and click every box with the biggest number, you’ll eventually wind up with a GT500 that costs over $107,000.
The GT500 starts at $73,995, and there aren’t that many extra options to select to push it over that six-figure mark. One of the big-ticket items is painted center racing stripes available in either black, blue, or white. Those will set you back $10,000 on their own.
Which seems like a lot for just a couple of lines down the center of your muscle car. Especially when you consider the fact that the vinyl racing stripes are just $1,000, and that the same vinyl stripes on the GT350 clock in at $495. So what’s the deal here?
To find out, Car And Driver sent Ford an email, and a Ford spokesperson responded to say that the painted stripes are so pricey due to the fact they’re all "hand-prepped, painted, and then clear-coated."
Supply and demand also had something to do with that $10,000 price. "Due to the specialized nature of the process, [Ford has] a very limited production capacity,” the spokesperson told them.
As for why the vinyl stripes cost twice as much on the GT500 than the GT350? No answer was given, but you can bet your next oil change that it was simply because the GT500 is a premium vehicle, and if you can afford to pay $75,000 for a Mustang, you can afford the extra $500 for a set of vinyl racing stripes. You can probably even afford the extra $9,500 to get them painted on.