NEW FORD GT
On track in Henry’s latest supercar
WHEN YOU SEE it up close and personal for the very first time, what mesmerises you about the new Ford GT is how long and low it is to the ground. And just how achingly beautiful it is, full stop.
Its proportions are similar to those of the original GT40, yes, but the whole thing has been scaled up by a good 15% in every direction this time. And the curves of the original have been replaced by much sharper, more obviously defined edges that add technical sophistication, as well as a deeper sense of menace.
The overall effect is absolutely stunning. You look at this car, and you just smile. Arguably, though, it’s what lies beneath the GT’s new carbonfibre skin that is most impressive of all, because Ford really has gone to town with the car’s specification; even more so than it did with the last GT, launched for 2005 to celebrate the company’s centenary and stir up interest in its heritage.
This time the motivation is even more compelling. In 1966 Ford won at Le Mans with the GT40, famously putting one over Enzo Ferrari in the process. So 50 years later it wanted to celebrate that victory by going back to the famous 24-hour race – and doing the same thing all over again.
Initially Ford’s engineers thought they might do this with a Mustang, but then dropped the idea pretty quickly and decided to go with an all-new version of the GT. And so, late in 2013, they began to design a bespoke racing car to take back to Le Mans – to compete against the Ferraris, Aston Martins, Porsches and Corvettes – with the idea of producing a road car in tandem with the racing project. And, thus, the all-new Ford GT was born.
Which is why, fundamentally, it really is a racing car at heart – something we’ll come back to later. The GT features a full carbonfibre tub with inboard pushrod suspension at both ends. The seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox is integrated into the rear suspension, just as it is in any serious mid-engined racing car. And the engine itself is a 3.5-litre twin-turbo V6 (the last GT used a supercharged V8) with a pure competition background, producing 638bhp at 6250rpm and 550lb ft at 5900rpm. All-up, it weighs less than 1400kg dry.
The GT’s brakes feature massive carbon-ceramic discs at each corner, and as you’d expect it is as slippery as they
come through the air, with a tiny frontal area even beside a Ferrari or a McLaren, plus a suitably 22nd Century aerodynamic package that’s controlled by electronics to provide less drag and more downforce than just about any other car at this price. It even has an airbrake that deploys during big stops, which is again computer-controlled to provide assistance only when it’s genuinely needed.
Ah yes, the price. Initial rumours suggested an asking price of around £320,000, and that there will be only 500 examples made available by Ford worldwide, produced over two years. But approximately eight seconds after it was unveiled at the North American Auto Show in 2015, the world of supercars went into apoplexy and Ford received more than 8000 requests to place an order.
So what we’ve ended up with is a price of £450,000 and a promise from Ford that it will build a further 500 cars, making a total run of 1000 new GTs over the next three years, around 40 of which will come to the UK. And the buying criteria are somewhat strict, designed to reward loyalty to the brand and to the GT specifically.
Even so, if you bought one of the last-generation GTs but have since sold it, no dice: no new GT for you; that’s how strict they’re being. To get a tick in the box for a new GT you need to be either one of Ford’s bigger US dealers, or a private punter who has bought and still owns a string of previous fast Fords. Or the Sultan of Brunei, who always gets one. Actually no, he usually gets about ten, but that’s fine because, well, he’s the Sultan of Brunei. SO WHAT’S IT LIKE to drive, the all-new, not-veryavailable Ford GT? Utterly wonderful in most respects, much as you’d expect it to be, but with a few key caveats thrown in that might well surprise you, because they certainly did me.
You climb into the car via a semi-dihedral door, and because it’s so low you basically just aim your legs towards the footwell and your backside at the seat, then let go. The seat base is integrated into the tub and is fixed, so to get comfortable you need to move the pedals and wheel towards or away from you, in exactly the same way you do in a LaFerrari (or a 1960s Marcos 1800). Except that in the GT the seatback moves as well, meaning anyone of any shape or size can get comfortable behind the car’s surprisingly big, square-edged steering wheel, which is, of course, festooned with the obligatory sea of buttons. I counted 16 in total.
Visibility forwards is excellent, panoramic even, although the view directly rearwards is pretty poor – but who cares? The big mirrors that take the width of the car to over 2.2 metres (!) provide a decent enough view of what you’re leaving behind.
The GT has five different drive modes, ranging from Wet to V max, with Normal, Sport and Track sitting in between. To begin with, it’s suggested that I try it in Sport, given that we are at a track just outside Salt Lake City. I have six laps in this car to try to get to know it, then a longer period to drive it on the road. This is not a time to mess about, so I thumb the starter button and, when the biggish V6 catches after a second or so on the starter motor, there is an almighty cacophony from behind. Even at idle the GT is magnificently loud, in a genuine ‘Jeez, I wasn’t expecting THAT!’ kind of way.
A man from Ford called Dan is sitting next to me, and he suggests that I should scroll the circular drive selector (down where the gearlever might normally be) around to D, then select manual. A big number one appears within the dashboard when I pull the right-hand paddle towards me, and when I release the brake and press a little harder on the throttle we’re away, simple as that.
The ride is firm but beautifully damped as we rumble out of the pitlane and on to the circuit proper. But the dominant sensations are the noise, and the subsequent eruption of acceleration that occurs when I select second, then third and put my foot down. At anything above 3500rpm the GT is heroically loud, even more so from within than outside.
The steering is quite weighty but ultra-direct, and, although there’s slight body roll on turn-in, the actual body control is fantastic, the grip and bite from both ends extraordinary. And the way it stops is just ridiculous, as is the way it goes when I open it up properly for the first time down the back straight.
The GT is one of those rare cars in which you need to pick your moment before opening it right up, even in a dead straight line, so vast is the amount of energy that’s unleashed when you depress the long-travel accelerator all the way to the floor. And although there is anti-lag software built into the engine (in both Sport and Track
‘THE GT IS MAGNIFICENTLY LOUD, IN A GENUINE “JEEZ, I WASN’T EXPECTING THAT!” KIND OF WAY’
modes), there is still some of that good old-fashioned floor-it-and-wait, which makes the process of controlling the flow of energy that much more exciting.
After three laps I come back into the pits, engage Track mode – which drops the ride height by 50mm in one single, dramatic, quarter-second thump – then go back out again. And discover a car that has even more body control, a lot less body roll (the roll stiffness goes up by 100% in Track mode), and which stops and steers and changes gear – and therefore drives – with even greater clarity and conviction.
In Track mode the GT feels utterly magnificent – on a track, anyway. To all intents and purposes it feels like a racing car, a very well-sorted racing car at that. And I climb out of it after another three laps feeling dazed, slightly confused but entirely elated as a result.
The only problem is that, on the road route I drive it on a little later, I find the GT to be surprisingly unrefined, and not especially pleasant to be in, period. It rides quite well if you select Comfort on the electronic dampers, true enough. But otherwise it feels too big, too wide, too noisy and, ultimately, too much like a road-legalised racing car to be genuinely usable on the public road.
You can put up with it for a while, for sure, but for a longer drive I suspect the GT would drive you nuts on UK tarmac. Plus it has the smallest boot in the history of the motor car, and a fuel range that is the wrong side of ridiculous.
Overall, though, you’ve got to love the new Ford GT, even if, at heart, it is little more than a racing car with numberplates. To look at and to drive – on a track, especially – there really is nothing else quite like it.