Ford GT
The Pacific Coast Highway, Laguna Seca and the new aero-obsessed Ford GT. Just another humdrum day at the office...
Ollie gets to take the aero-obsessed US supercar to the PCH and Laguna Seca. Poor guy...
Here we are with the Ford GT. Low, isn’t it? Now don’t get distracted by the stripes, just come around to the back. Stand directly behind it, just mind your thighs against the exhausts – they’re a bit hot. Now take two paces back and sit down. Yes, I know we’re in a dusty car park on the Pacifc Coast Highway, but do as you’re told. It’ll be worth it. You’re now in the correct position to learn about the new Ford GT.
Today’s lesson is bonkers aero. What you see in front of you – pointing straight at you, in fact – are the menacing barrels of the twin exhausts. Imagine you’re behind it while it spears along this coast-draped masterpiece of a road, hot gases being blasted into your face. Either side of that, torrents of ambient air sweep through those gaping channels, ducted under wing-profle fying buttresses, compressed and shaped and then fowing of the back.
Your eyes are at the taper point, where the airfow fuses itself back together. From here you see up and through the car; it looks hollow. It looks like nothing else. Except maybe a pod racer. Or the Starship Enterprise. Those flmic teases are only enhanced by outriggers that house the rear wheels and lights.
And what fresh madness is this? Peer inside those round LEDs and you’ll see radiators – they vent air from the intercoolers behind. More air passes over the turbos and around the engine bay, subtly channelled in and out. Now look lower down, to the 11 carbon bars of the underfoor difuser, extracting and organising air that’s been sped up to reduce underbody pressure.
So as you sit there, imagine what the air is doing as the Ford GT heads into it. The air isn’t shredded or tattered, but carefully arranged and processed, peeled apart, teased into the right shapes and places, morphing through and around; used, then discarded. But discarded as carefully as it was collected in the frst place, the various streams fowing back together, probably a bit hotter, but as uninterrupted from their original path as possible. Free once again to be used to nature’s purpose out over the California coast.
So, lesson one: the Ford GT is not about downforce, but aero-efciency. You may now stand up and dust yourself down.
Have a wander around the GT, look at the shape of the central canopy – get it from the right angle (nose on, high up) and you’ll see the teardrop shape: two passengers ahead of one engine. It explains the V6, it explains the fxed seating position. Those allowed Ford to shrink the greenhouse, lower the frontal area, reduce the drag. How weird would it be if this bleeding-edge aero work was teamed with an old school big-banger V8?
It’s now late afternoon, and I’ve spent most of the day sat in this lay-by next to Bixby Bridge, watching Matt LeBlanc pound up and down. OK, that’s not strictly true – Ford brought a spare along as well, so I drove that to Monterey and back accompanied by Jamal Hameedi, the chief engineer of Ford Performance. This was valuable because I got chapter and verse on how the car came about (in the chicken and egg of which came frst, road or race, they both did – the versions were developed jointly, with both teams feeding in their needs and wants) while discovering two people ft better than I expected, and that the infotainment screen is simply lifted from the Fiesta.
Which is puzzling me slightly. Mainly because the seats aren’t very aggressive. You push a fap, the door pops up, you pull a toggle and the pedals slide back to meet you. The cabin is bare, naked carbon, the luxury layer is absent, two levers under the steering wheel control macro and micro adjustment, all of which says “racer”. But the seats are slightly soft with shallow thigh bolsters and mounted a touch high in relation to the rest of the cockpit. As an initial message it’s slightly confusing. I’d expected hard, sculpted buckets, but these make me concerned Ford is aiming the car at, well, a Ford buyer.
Fortunately I can’t fnd much other evidence of pandering. The 11-litre boot is smaller than most gloveboxes. There isn’t one of those. No cupholders either. Barely anywhere for a phone or wallet. But forget all that, because what matters is the way the cabin makes you feel, which aside from your comfy buttocks, is very, very eager to get going.
The Pacifc Coast Highway is weird. It’s Sunday afternoon, the views are stunning and we’re set for a perfect peachy sunset.
“It’s like I’ve entered dreamland, or maybe California is just one big film set and it’s been locked down for us”
The TV crew have wrapped, the road’s been reopened, but still, at 5pm, everyone evaporates. It’s like I’ve entered dreamland, or maybe California is just one big flm set and tonight it’s been locked down for us. So I go for a drive. Not hard, just letting the car fnd its own pace.
The GT doesn’t seek speed unless you demand it, doesn’t run away with you or leave you clinging on. Instead it moves with you very naturally, seeming to concentrate on communicating all the sweeps and ducks of this magnifcent road. Pedals and steering respond smoothly and evenly, it corners without efort, it feels lithe and athletic, unstressed, happy with whatever pace I choose. Sunset isn’t a time for forcing the pace, or screeching about, is it? The GT tunes itself into sunset.
One thing: it is very positive on the road. Very. It’s like the suspension is rose-jointed, the engine rigidly mounted to the carbon chassis, as if all rubber was banished from its construction. It zizzes and chatters, so although it’s content to move gently, I wouldn’t call it relaxing. Comfortable? Hmm. The suspension is clearly beautifully damped, and has a lovely dexterity which speaks of long wishbones, but the movements are tiny and taut. This, and occasional jabs of the throttle to provoke the V6, merely serve to heighten anticipation for tomorrow – Laguna Seca day.
The light fades and we head back north. I angle the door mirror so I can enjoy the view through the gap between buttress and body as orange fades to purple, to black. I’m surprised the transmission has creep built in, but admire how smoothly it pulls away, that visibility is good, that it’s calm and quiet around town.
The car spends the night in the bowels of the Marriott Hotel in Monterey. This is Ford’s base, and with the GT’s international launch still three months away (we’re the frst people in the world, outside the factory to drive the car), the engineers are protective of their baby. Photographer Rowan, videographer Neil Carey and I watch it being put to bed, then have a stumble around the underground car park. In a darkened recess we discover a black McLaren 675LT on Michigan plates.
We eat dinner with the engineers at the Turn 12 diner. It’s motorsport memorabilia central, inspired by the track nearby. The mood is relaxed as the TV show has fnished flming, so for tomorrow the crew shrinks from 30 to just us three. We talk about rivals to the GT, and Hameedi admits they started benchmarking against the 458 Speciale, but then got their hands on a 675LT. We talk about the work Multimatic has done on the long-wishbone suspension and active set-up. We don’t talk downforce fgures, because Ford won’t – that might allow rival teams to calculate how much downforce the racing version produces.
The pit lane at Laguna Seca. For the next seven hours, the track is ours, but at 2pm Ford insists we’re gone. I suspect they’ll be running lap times on the GT and 675LT. Right now, I’m more concerned about Track mode. It takes a McLaren P1 30 seconds to suck itself down and stick its wing up. You’ll have seen footage of the GT doing it. It feels even more mad when you’re sat in it – it’s the heightened sense of anticipation. A suggestion that the good-natured GT you knew last night is no more.
We’re now just 41.7 inches tall and the wheels have disappeared inside the arches. I’m not sure how it’s actually able to steer. The simplicity of the cockpit now makes more sense, the presence of cruise and sound controls on the wheel seems superfuous, somehow diluting your enjoyment of the slatted metal paddles and knurled thumb controls.
No matter, as I move up the pit lane I’m instantly aware of a condensed, focused energy. No slack, no slop, just this delicious sense of being strapped to a very honed, precisely engineered machine. Again, I call the seat into question. But my position in the car is faultless, X marking the spot drawn in diagonals between the four wheels. It may have two seats, but I feel almost perfectly
central, shunted inwards, backside equidistant from front and rear axles and about four inches of the deck.
It’s like being the conductor of an orchestra – you’re not only perfectly positioned to feel what’s happening, but also to give instruction. So, when you add in superb hydraulic steering, an ultra-low centre of gravity, tautly controlled movements, superb aero stability and stunning brake power, it comes together as a harmonious whole. It does your bidding. And almost fawlessly, too.
What of the engine, though? Well, for a V6 it’s certainly impressive. Noise is… well, there’s more quantity than quality. Power is… plentiful. It’s not as charismatic as a V8, lacks the ultra-visceral make-it-stop delivery of the 675LT, but blends very well with the chassis. And that’s the thing. You very quickly become aware that the GT is a chassis car, not an engine car. The V6 is there to provide acceleration and to do that as efectively and responsively as it can, but you get your thrills, your value for money, from the handling, the cornering, the suspension.
Once in Track mode, lag is practically eradicated by an anti-lag system, but the power delivery itself is a bit one-dimensional. From both aural and acceleration perspectives there’s not much point seeking out the 7,000rpm red line – the good work has been done by 5,500rpm and the gears are closely stacked enough that the next one in the chamber will force you onwards with plentiful urge. It punches very hard indeed, but it’s nothing the chassis can’t handle, so very quickly you feel
confdent using a lot of the power, knowing the brakes, steering and suspension will do what you ask them to.
This set-up is what impressed me most. Around Laguna Seca I could build a rhythm so quickly and easily: there’s little weight transfer, so braking into corners doesn’t destabilise the GT, there’s a slight warning push of understeer at the apex, but that’s neutralised by power and suspension geometry, so you exit fat, fast and fearless. It handles heroically well, because the lines of communication are so clear and the behaviour so predictable.
The Ford GT made Laguna Seca glorious. The Corkscrew should be super nerve-racking, but the blind braking zone held no fears, and it pitched in hard, fat and accurate, drove itself down the clif, skooshed the carbon splitter in the compression, and carried a dizzying amount of speed onwards to Rainey Curve and the addictive camber at Turn 10. There’s no downtime anywhere as 647bhp hits the straights hard and clean, no energy wasted thanks to the dif apportioning torque beautifully and the grip generated by 325-width tyres and aero pressure. Small mention here for the seats, which have better lateral support than I expected.
But what’s more, it wasn’t just efcient but exciting. All those sensations: it was joyful, exuberant, made me want to whoop and sing my way round the circuit. And when we did some skids for the camera, proved to be as delicately balanced beyond the limit as at the limit. That may seem irrelevant, but it’s the sign of a well set-up car when throttle, steering, back axle and suspension prove to be so biddable.
That the Ford GT is better balanced than a McLaren 675LT I have no doubt. I don’t think its engine is as eye-popping as the McLaren’s, but as a package it’s right up there. It’s a pure driver’s car, a faithful representation of a road-going racing car and true to its origins. If it looked less radical, I think Ford would struggle to justify the £320,000 asking price, but that’s the point. This is what it looks like, and it looks like this because aero said so.
Time to go. The temptation to lurk behind a tree while Ford battles McLaren is strong, but I’ve seen and experienced enough today. I’ll let that particular mystery live on a little longer. Right now I’m just happy the Ford GT is every bit as good as I hoped.
ÒIt made me want to whoop and sing my way around the circuitÓ