National Post (National Edition)

Things you may not know about Ford’s GT

- DAVID BOOTH Driving.ca

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.

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? 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. These will give you just a little more perspectiv­e on what promises to be the greatest sports car ever to wear the Blue Oval.

The GT is really a race car that’s been (sort of) civilized. Everything inside the GT — the sleek aerodynami­c body that resembles an airplane’s fuselage, the superhigh-tech suspension, the computer-controlled rear wing — 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 Shelbyfett­led 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 V6 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. In other words, unlike other performanc­e cars — yes, even supercars — the GT was designed to win races first, and the everyday needs of us proles was secondary.

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. Both were in red, white and blue “Victory” livery. Both now sit in the lobby of Ford’s Dearborn, Mich. headquarte­rs, along with the 2016 Le Mans-winning GT.

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. That’s why, unlike McLaren, which boasts that its carbon-fibre tub is one giant moulding, Ford is actually proud of the fact its chassis has about 40 different pieces of carbon fibre. Yes that makes it heavier (all the resin needed to bond all those carbon fibre bits together does impose a weight penalty) but, says Hameedi, it makes the manufactur­ing process strikingly similar to what happens when a convention­al steel unibody car comes together. That’s a learning experience the chief engineer thinks will pay dividends when carbon fibre goes mainstream.

The GT is built in Canada. Actually, in Markham, Ont. 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 hightech Dynamic Suspension Spool Valve shock absorbers for race cars. And yes, the GT rides on a set of DSSV dampers.

Here’s a detail specifical­ly for the nerds: Each corner of that high-tech suspension rides on two springs, one a traditiona­l coil, the other a high-strength torsion bar. When the suspension is lowered for Track mode — to 70 millimetre­s off the ground, barely 10 mm higher than the full-blown Le Mans race car — the computers “lock” out the coil so only the stiff torsion bar is working.

Why is this a big deal? Many performanc­e cars offer adjustable suspension damping but, says Hameedi, the GT is the only supercar to be able to increase its spring rate on demand, the stiffer suspension reducing roll during the high-speed cornering allowed by the incredible aerodynami­c downforce.

And yet another one for the gearheads: Besides adding considerab­le rigidity to the chassis structure, the rear buttress — that wing-like appendage connecting the rear fender to the GT’s main fuselage, er, body — is actually part of the engine’s intake system. Hidden in that sleek, knife-edged strut is the tube connecting the turbocharg­ed V6’s intercoole­rs to the intake plenum. So yes, the Ford GT’s body is technicall­y part of the engine’s intake manifold.

We still don’t know how fast the GT really is. Nobody does. 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.

Lastly, the GT wasn’t even supposed to be a GT. It was supposed to be a super-duper, extra-special Mustang. The original plan — codenamed 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 — the super ’Stang would have cost US$250,000, another thing that “didn’t align with Mustang sensibilit­ies” — executive vicepresid­ent and chief technical officer Raj Nair formed a small skunk works team 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 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.

 ?? FORD ?? View of the rear of the 2018 Ford GT, with its twin-turbo 3.5-litre EcoBoost V6.
FORD View of the rear of the 2018 Ford GT, with its twin-turbo 3.5-litre EcoBoost V6.

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