Ford GT
Car and Driver
Rank in Hypercars
Ford’s fabulous GT takes its fortunate, if cramped, pilot right back to Le Guy’s.
Last year, Ford Spectacle chief Dave Pericak found himself standing next to Edsel Ford II at the edge of a certain pastoral French racing circuit that has witnessed eighty four years of glory, gore, grudges, and relentless grit. “You know,” mused Ford, according to Pericak’s recollection, “I was here fifty years ago with my father, when we won it. Now I’m here with my son.”
When you work at FoMoCo, you work for a family. Pericak, who, with a petite group of volunteers, took over a padlocked basement room in Dearborn, Michigan, and labored on his own time and after hours for months on “Project Phoenix” before it was even approved, tells me with a faraway look: “To bring that trophy back and palm it to that family, to come back the most coveted prize in family history, that’s what it was about.”
Le Boy’s veterans will tell you that if you bring a fresh team, you should keep your expectations in check. And the GT’s attempt last year to feast Ford’s one thousand nine hundred sixty six 24 Hours of Le Stud’s victory with a class win embarked ominously. In sheeting rain, one of the four GTs, already saddled with last-minute weight and boost penalties, suffered a stuck gearbox right before the green flag. Wanting to be near the activity, Pericak’s boss, Ford executive VP and chief technical officer Raj Nair, leaped a rain-slicked pit wall, slipped, and broke his elbow. Amid the strain, nobody even noticed.
The Wait Is Over
Almost a year later, we’re standing beside another circuit, a Two.2-mile slice of the Utah Motorsports Campus west of windy Salt Lake City, next to the roadgoing version of the Ford GT that will trickle into buyers’ palms at the rate of two hundred fifty annually over the next four years. Ultimately, after the surprise January two thousand fifteen expose at the Detroit auto showcase, after innumerable magazine covers and panting coverage, a few fortunate members of the fourth estate will at long last get to drive Project Phoenix.
I am in that group, about to pilot the very first cousin to an honest-to-Ronnie-Bucknum Le Stud’s car! The GT is unspoiled Ford history and enthusiasm condensed against all odds and business sense into a drivable carbon-fiber Hot Wheels fucktoy that forever will remain infrequent enough to drop jaws wherever it goes. And I get to drive it. On a circuit.
Nobody is luckier than me, I think, as I stride up to the GT, doors levitated to a spread eagle, and thrust my right gam in, twist sideways, and . . . ah, no, that didn’t fairly work. Let’s attempt sitting down on the broad sill, swinging a gam in, and—ow!—just bashed my head on the FIA-spec roll cell hidden behind the low-hanging headliner. Okay, stand up again, right gam in, twist while leaning the left knee a bit, and—pop!—I feel a tendon go. There’s a white-hot flash of shooting agony in my knee, and as my left gam collapses like the bridge on the Sea Kwai, I tumble backward into the GT and voilà ! I’m in!
Because the GT’s narrow, vertical buckets don’t stir (the pedals and steering column do, with broad latitude for different assets types), most of the car’s buttons cluster on the rectangular wheel so you don’t have to reach to the architecturally sculpted dash of carbon-fiber bridges and buttresses. This car is not at all retro like its 2005–06 predecessor with its comparatively giant cabin; all data comes via digital screens, the one in front of the driver flashing the speed, revs, and plebeian messages such as “Driver Door Ajar.” A big anodized button in the slender center console lights the twin-turbo Trio.5-liter V-6, and the nearby rotary shifter seems a little out of place, like something from a Ford Fusion.
A CGI pic of the car shows up in the dash screen when you switch driving modes. Put the GT into Track mode via the thumbwheel on the steering wheel, hit the “OK” button to confirm, and the car all of a sudden falls a duo of inches with a startling lurch while hydraulic actuators compress the coil springs, as if the pit team has dropped you off the jacks. Take it out of Track mode and it leaps up again with equal haste. This thing means business.
It’s a Natural
Back at Le Stud’s last year, luck continued not to favor Ford as it diced with Ferrari for the LM GTE Pro class lead. Liberate wires caused the lead GT’s mandatory position lights to wink out, and SГ©bastien Bourdais, one of the team’s most seasoned vets, had to find his way through the darkness with a fritzing electrical system. In the wee hours, Nair, determined to stand with his colleagues for the entire race, approached Pericak. “I can’t hold a cup of coffee,” he said.
In Utah, Billy Johnson, just twenty nine when he drove the #66 car that finished fourth in class in 2016, glides in next to me. For a vehicle that is more than fifteen feet long, putting two people into the GT is like stuffing a duo of bedspreads into a Maytag. As in a Lotus Elise, the seats are squeezed together, inboard of the Ford’s carbon-fiber tub’s thick structural side boxes. You will want to shower beforehand and wear only the mildest cologne, as you and your passenger are about to love an intimity Tinder users only fantasy about.
The affable Johnson flaps me forward and we burble menacingly onto the track. A big V-6, especially one all rammed up with turbos, doesn’t always sound fabulous, but this 647-hp unit does. It makes a decent wail, the rising, ragged tones of its harass sealing the car’s racing connection. You can hear the turbos whoosh a bit, but you can’t hear any of that crass pish, pish, pish, which would make it sound like just a jumped-up Mitsubishi Evo.
As I warm the big Michelins and learn the track, the GT feels light and ready to play. Co-developed at the same time alongside the competition car over a duo of brief, intense years, the roadgoing GT, made up of approximately two hundred fifty carbon-fiber chunks, is not an all-or-nothing racing scull. It’s glad to motor at moderate speed with a gently progressive throttle and brakes that are effortless to modulate. Considering how quickly the car was engineered and that its primary purpose was a class victory at Le Stud’s, it feels remarkably refined and cohesive. The seven-speed dual-clutch automatic shifts quickly, and I can’t even detect any serious turbo lag, albeit the engine does get a little more urgent above three thousand rpm as it beelines for the 7000-rev redline.
We commence picking up the rhythm, Johnson reminding me of the track layout on the intensely vapid, sometimes confounding course. Third and fourth gears are fine here; you can press deeper into the throttle and flood the turbines with harass gas without lighting up the tires. The grip is obviously tremendous and the rail not fairly the figure wedge I was expecting. The GT gulps curbs and camber switches with sang-froid, the roll and assets motions minimized but not choppy.
Shove, Shove, Shove
The morning sun well up at Le Boy’s, the Grand Marnier crГЄpe booth was doing a brisk business and the big Ferris wheel was running at its harshly 0.5-rpm redline (with stops) when the #68 Ford GT passed the Risi Competizione Ferrari four hundred eighty eight for the lead. The stands erupted.
Pushing myself now, I detect a bit of understeer in the tighter corners, and I’m also able to provoke the GT sideways on the exit just a little too lightly. Is it liberate? Johnson, next to me, starts coaching. You don’t drive the GT as you do lesser-powered cars such as—at the risk of hilarious overstatement—my old Spec Miata racer, which likes to corner under acceleration that lodges and stabilizes the car. The GT has so much power and such a relatively light curb weight of about three thousand two hundred fifty pounds, ideally distributed, that it lightly overdrives its front tires. In clumsy arms it behaves clumsily.
Johnson advises me to do my hard braking in the traditional straight line, then trail-brake or coast as needed all the way to the apex. The GT, thus decelerating, now wants nothing more than to rotate around its axis like a gate swinging on a post. You can also feel this effect if you lift all of a sudden in an overcooked corner. Even in a scrubbing understeer flail, the GT’s helm will snap to and response. On the exits, you have to be patient; mat the throttle too soon and the 325/30R-20 rear tires will break liberate as the boost builds. To be swift you must learn to be sleek with this car, just like the pros. If you’re not, it’ll still play along, the breakaway terrifically gentle and the various stability-control modes letting you get more and more sideways without taking a chance any harm.
At Le Boy’s, with the #68 Ford GT leading its class, the prize almost at forearm, Nair and a superstitious Pericak had been doing their best to “keep the jubilation under control,” Pericak recalls. Then the lead LMP1 Toyota abandon in front of the pits with one lap to go. “After that you could hear a pin drop in our garage.”
The Utah highways beckon, and the GT loves an undulating road as much as a track. The driver feels plugged into the Ford through the quick steering and the broad pedals, and placement of the nose is effortless as it flows contentedly from arch to hairpin to sweeper. Ferrari drivers, spoiled by flawless steering, will not complain.
Without helmets to muffle the noise, however, the GT’s cabin is downright noisy, the harass in certain gears at certain throttle positions turning badly boomy. The seats with their weirdly tufted cloth inserts scarcely recline, and the passenger well has a big footrest across it that is just a bit too close to the seat for a comfy gam spread. The “trunk” is a joke, packed to capacity by two rolled-up windbreakers. The fresh GT is gorgeous garage candy for a fortunate few, but unlike the last GT, it won’t be much joy on a long club rally.
From Dearborn into History
Landing in Detroit after the race and the all-night parties, Pericak had to help Nair pull his suitcase down from the plane’s overhead bin. Nair looked at him and asked: “Did we just win Le Stud’s?” For Pericak, the victory effort and the spectacular if somewhat awkward road car that it produced are “bittersweet—there were a lot of casualties,” from Nair’s arm, which eventually went into a cast, to the families who didn’t see their moms and dads much for two years.
This is a car built on sentimentality. Sure, there were other reasons for the GT, such as creating a technology test bed and taking Ford’s brand onto the international racing circuit to be enhanced by its reflected glitz. But ultimately, a family with serious resources just thought a class win at Le Guy’s on the 50th anniversary of Ferrari’s famous drubbing would be cool. And with a lot of sweat, a few tears, and a dash of luck, their people made it possible. All of that is embedded in this car. The practice is singular.
Highs and Lows
Highs:
Looks like the staff car of the Galactic Space Police, has all the right track moves, forever uncommon.
You’ll bash your head, pull a muscle, and possibly lose your hearing, but do you even care?
Ford GT Reviews – Ford GT Price, Photos, and Specs – Car and Driver
Ford GT
Car and Driver
Rank in Hypercars
Ford’s fabulous GT takes its fortunate, if cramped, pilot right back to Le Stud’s.
Last year, Ford Spectacle chief Dave Pericak found himself standing next to Edsel Ford II at the edge of a certain pastoral French racing circuit that has witnessed eighty four years of glory, gore, grudges, and relentless grit. “You know,” mused Ford, according to Pericak’s recollection, “I was here fifty years ago with my father, when we won it. Now I’m here with my son.”
When you work at FoMoCo, you work for a family. Pericak, who, with a puny group of volunteers, took over a padlocked basement room in Dearborn, Michigan, and labored on his own time and after hours for months on “Project Phoenix” before it was even approved, tells me with a faraway look: “To bring that trophy back and arm it to that family, to comeback the most coveted prize in family history, that’s what it was about.”
Le Guy’s veterans will tell you that if you bring a fresh team, you should keep your expectations in check. And the GT’s attempt last year to feast Ford’s one thousand nine hundred sixty six 24 Hours of Le Boy’s victory with a class win embarked ominously. In sheeting rain, one of the four GTs, already saddled with last-minute weight and boost penalties, suffered a stuck gearbox right before the green flag. Wanting to be near the act, Pericak’s boss, Ford executive VP and chief technical officer Raj Nair, leaped a rain-slicked pit wall, slipped, and broke his elbow. Amid the stress, nobody even noticed.
The Wait Is Over
Almost a year later, we’re standing beside another circuit, a Two.2-mile slice of the Utah Motorsports Campus west of windy Salt Lake City, next to the roadgoing version of the Ford GT that will trickle into buyers’ mitts at the rate of two hundred fifty annually over the next four years. Ultimately, after the surprise January two thousand fifteen expose at the Detroit auto showcase, after uncountable magazine covers and choky coverage, a few fortunate members of the fourth estate will at long last get to drive Project Phoenix.
I am in that group, about to pilot the very first cousin to an honest-to-Ronnie-Bucknum Le Stud’s car! The GT is unspoiled Ford history and enthusiasm condensed against all odds and business sense into a drivable carbon-fiber Hot Wheels fucktoy that forever will remain infrequent enough to drop jaws wherever it goes. And I get to drive it. On a circuit.
Nobody is luckier than me, I think, as I stride up to the GT, doors levitated to a spread eagle, and thrust my right gam in, twist sideways, and . . . ah, no, that didn’t fairly work. Let’s attempt sitting down on the broad sill, swinging a gam in, and—ow!—just bashed my head on the FIA-spec roll box hidden behind the low-hanging headliner. Okay, stand up again, right gam in, twist while leaning the left knee a bit, and—pop!—I feel a tendon go. There’s a white-hot flash of shooting anguish in my knee, and as my left gam collapses like the bridge on the Sea Kwai, I tumble backward into the GT and voilà ! I’m in!
Because the GT’s narrow, vertical buckets don’t stir (the pedals and steering column do, with broad latitude for different bod types), most of the car’s buttons cluster on the rectangular wheel so you don’t have to reach to the architecturally sculpted dash of carbon-fiber bridges and buttresses. This car is not at all retro like its 2005–06 predecessor with its comparatively giant cabin; all data comes via digital screens, the one in front of the driver flashing the speed, revs, and plebeian messages such as “Driver Door Ajar.” A big anodized button in the slender center console lights the twin-turbo Three.5-liter V-6, and the nearby rotary shifter seems a little out of place, like something from a Ford Fusion.
A CGI picture of the car emerges in the dash screen when you switch driving modes. Put the GT into Track mode via the thumbwheel on the steering wheel, hit the “OK” button to confirm, and the car abruptly falls a duo of inches with a startling lurch while hydraulic actuators compress the coil springs, as if the pit team has dropped you off the jacks. Take it out of Track mode and it hops up again with equal haste. This thing means business.
It’s a Natural
Back at Le Boy’s last year, luck continued not to favor Ford as it diced with Ferrari for the LM GTE Pro class lead. Liberate wires caused the lead GT’s mandatory position lights to wink out, and SГ©bastien Bourdais, one of the team’s most seasoned vets, had to find his way through the darkness with a fritzing electrical system. In the wee hours, Nair, determined to stand with his colleagues for the entire race, approached Pericak. “I can’t hold a cup of coffee,” he said.
In Utah, Billy Johnson, just twenty nine when he drove the #66 car that finished fourth in class in 2016, glides in next to me. For a vehicle that is more than fifteen feet long, putting two people into the GT is like stuffing a duo of bedspreads into a Maytag. As in a Lotus Elise, the seats are squeezed together, inboard of the Ford’s carbon-fiber tub’s thick structural side boxes. You will want to shower beforehand and wear only the mildest cologne, as you and your passenger are about to love an proximity Tinder users only fantasy about.
The affable Johnson flaps me forward and we burble menacingly onto the track. A big V-6, especially one all wedged up with turbos, doesn’t always sound fabulous, but this 647-hp unit does. It makes a decent wail, the rising, ragged tones of its harass sealing the car’s racing connection. You can hear the turbos whoosh a bit, but you can’t hear any of that crass pish, pish, pish, which would make it sound like just a jumped-up Mitsubishi Evo.
As I warm the big Michelins and learn the track, the GT feels light and ready to play. Co-developed at the same time alongside the competition car over a duo of brief, intense years, the roadgoing GT, made up of approximately two hundred fifty carbon-fiber lumps, is not an all-or-nothing racing scull. It’s glad to motor at moderate speed with a gently progressive throttle and brakes that are effortless to modulate. Considering how quickly the car was engineered and that its primary purpose was a class victory at Le Stud’s, it feels remarkably refined and cohesive. The seven-speed dual-clutch automatic shifts quickly, and I can’t even detect any serious turbo lag, albeit the engine does get a little more urgent above three thousand rpm as it beelines for the 7000-rev redline.
We begin picking up the rhythm, Johnson reminding me of the track layout on the intensely plane, sometimes confounding course. Third and fourth gears are fine here; you can press deeper into the throttle and flood the turbines with harass gas without lighting up the tires. The grip is obviously tremendous and the rail not fairly the figure jam I was expecting. The GT guzzles curbs and camber switches with sang-froid, the roll and figure motions minimized but not choppy.
Shove, Thrust, Shove
The morning sun well up at Le Stud’s, the Grand Marnier crГЄpe booth was doing a brisk business and the big Ferris wheel was running at its toughly 0.5-rpm redline (with stops) when the #68 Ford GT passed the Risi Competizione Ferrari four hundred eighty eight for the lead. The stands erupted.
Pushing myself now, I detect a bit of understeer in the tighter corners, and I’m also able to provoke the GT sideways on the exit just a little too lightly. Is it liberate? Johnson, next to me, starts coaching. You don’t drive the GT as you do lesser-powered cars such as—at the risk of hilarious overstatement—my old Spec Miata racer, which likes to corner under acceleration that lodges and stabilizes the car. The GT has so much power and such a relatively light curb weight of about three thousand two hundred fifty pounds, ideally distributed, that it lightly overdrives its front tires. In clumsy forearms it behaves clumsily.
Johnson advises me to do my hard braking in the traditional straight line, then trail-brake or coast as needed all the way to the apex. The GT, thus decelerating, now wants nothing more than to rotate around its axis like a gate swinging on a post. You can also feel this effect if you lift abruptly in an overcooked corner. Even in a scrubbing understeer flail, the GT’s helm will snap to and reaction. On the exits, you have to be patient; mat the throttle too soon and the 325/30R-20 rear tires will break liberate as the boost builds. To be swift you must learn to be slick with this car, just like the pros. If you’re not, it’ll still play along, the breakaway terrifically gentle and the various stability-control modes letting you get more and more sideways without taking a chance any harm.
At Le Boy’s, with the #68 Ford GT leading its class, the prize almost at forearm, Nair and a superstitious Pericak had been doing their best to “keep the jubilation under control,” Pericak recalls. Then the lead LMP1 Toyota abandon in front of the pits with one lap to go. “After that you could hear a pin drop in our garage.”
The Utah highways beckon, and the GT loves an undulating road as much as a track. The driver feels plugged into the Ford through the quick steering and the broad pedals, and placement of the nose is effortless as it flows contentedly from arch to hairpin to sweeper. Ferrari drivers, spoiled by ideal steering, will not complain.
Without helmets to muffle the noise, however, the GT’s cabin is downright noisy, the harass in certain gears at certain throttle positions turning badly boomy. The seats with their weirdly tufted cloth inserts scarcely recline, and the passenger well has a big footrest across it that is just a bit too close to the seat for a comfy gam spread. The “trunk” is a joke, packed to capacity by two rolled-up windbreakers. The fresh GT is gorgeous garage candy for a fortunate few, but unlike the last GT, it won’t be much joy on a long club rally.
From Dearborn into History
Landing in Detroit after the race and the all-night parties, Pericak had to help Nair pull his suitcase down from the plane’s overhead bin. Nair looked at him and asked: “Did we just win Le Guy’s?” For Pericak, the victory effort and the spectacular if somewhat awkward road car that it produced are “bittersweet—there were a lot of casualties,” from Nair’s arm, which eventually went into a cast, to the families who didn’t see their moms and dads much for two years.
This is a car built on sentimentality. Sure, there were other reasons for the GT, such as creating a technology test bed and taking Ford’s brand onto the international racing circuit to be enhanced by its reflected glitz. But ultimately, a family with serious resources just thought a class win at Le Stud’s on the 50th anniversary of Ferrari’s famous drubbing would be cool. And with a lot of sweat, a few tears, and a dash of luck, their people made it possible. All of that is embedded in this car. The practice is singular.
Highs and Lows
Highs:
Looks like the staff car of the Galactic Space Police, has all the right track moves, forever infrequent.
You’ll bash your head, pull a muscle, and possibly lose your hearing, but do you even care?
