A few things you may not know about the Ford GT supercar
This, folks, is the car everyone’s been waiting for. McLaren’s 720S? Boring! Ferrari’s 488? Yesterday’s news. And Lamborghinis? Well, they’ve become so common, no one notices them anymore.
Nope, everywhere I go, all anyone — from pointy-head owners of traditional supercars to Mustang-loving Duck Dynasty loyalists — wants to know about is Ford’s new supercar. Is it fast? Is it as fast as it looks? Most importantly, is it as fast as a Ferrari? Indeed, that rivalry — Ford versus Ferrari — goes to the heart of the GT, which is, after all, a celebration of the Ford GT40, the car that decimated Maranello’s 330s at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans.
But, if you’re the motorheads I think you are, you already knew that. Well, then, here are a few things you might not know, have forgotten or really haven’t had time to think about.
The GT is really a race car that’s been (sort of ) civilized. Everything inside the GT was engineered for one thing and one thing only: to win Le Mans on the 50th anniversary of Ford’s greatest triumph, its seminal 1-2-3 sweep of the 1966 24 Hours by the famed Carroll Shel by fettled GT40s.
Everything about the GT’s chassis is state of the art. It’s where Ford spent the vast majority of its development dollars and what separates the GT from lesser supercars. By comparison, its 3.5-litre EcoBoost V-6 was lifted (but admittedly, tweaked) from an F-150. In fact, every GT, race and production versions alike, has an FIA-approved roll cage built into its carbon tub. By building the roll cage right into the chassis, Ford claims it was able to reduce the weight of the race car. But, says Jamal Hameedi, global performance car chief engineer, it actually made the street version heavier.
Ford had to deliver at least one production GT before the end of 2016. To qualify for the 2016 Le Mans race, Ford had to prove it had sold at least one GT before December 31. Otherwise, says Hameedi, it would have had to give the trophies back.
The company sold two: One to Bill Ford — you know, Henry’s great-grandson — and the other to Mark Fields, Ford’s president and CEO.
It’s more than just a supercar, however. Ford says the GT is a learning experience and the automaker is using the GT to glean experience that will allow it to mass-produce carbon-fibre cars in the future.
The GT is built in Canada. Actually, in Markham, Ont., not 10 kilometres from the Booth manse. Besides the GT, Multimatic has built one-off supercars (the De Macross GT1) and moulded all the carbon fibre for Aston Martin’s ultraexclusive One-77. But one of its main sidelines — the company is a major OEM parts supplier — is building high-tech Dynamic Suspension Spool Valve shock absorbers for race cars. And yes, the GT rides on a set of DSSV dampers.
Despite all this talk of performance, we still don’t know how fast the GT really is. In fact, nobody does. Indeed, anyone unequivocally stating they know how fast the Ford GT is compared with its supercar competition is full of bull patooties.
Other than stating the GT’s top speed is 347 km/h, Ford is releasing absolutely no acceleration data. Nothing. Nada.
Complicating the matter further, Ford launched the GT at Utah Motorsports Campus near Salt Lake City. It’s an absolutely lovely track, but perched in the Oquirrh Mountains, it is 1,354 metres above sea level. And elevation, as every gearhead knows, saps power. My back-ofthe napkin calculation estimates Utah’s cool, crisp — but less dense — mountain air sees the GT’s 3.5-L EcoBoost V-6 some 85 horsepower down on its claimed 647-hp peak. So, is the GT fast? You betcha! Is it faster than its competition? Um … there’s just no way to tell.
Lastly, the GT wasn’t even supposed to be, well, a GT. It was supposed to be a Mustang, a super-duper, extra-special Mustang. The original plan — code-named Project Silver — was to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1966 Le Mans sweep with an ultimate Mustang powered by the same 3.5-L turbocharged V6 that ended up in the GT. But to get the aerodynamics needed for the requisite performance, the darned thing started to look like, well, a Ferrari 458, a non-starter for Ford’s marketing mavens.
After the project was cancelled, executive vice-president and chief technical officer Raj Nair formed a small skunk works team (a dozen engineers and designers) that developed the GT on the sly. The GT — now aptly code-named Project Phoenix — was built in a basement storage room beneath Ford’s Product Development Center and completely disguised every time it rose from its underground lair, lest the senior execs who cancelled the Mustang Le Mans project got wind of Nair’s skulduggery.