Thank Frankel it's Friday: Ford GT road cars past and future

Of course this is not the first time Ford has made road-going version of its sports-racing car. Back in the 1960s, when the original GT40 was laying waste to Ferrari’s ambitions in sports car racing, Ford thought a profitable little sideline lay in creating a few that could actually go out and be used in public.

Inconveniently and for all sorts of reasons, Ford could not just slap some plates on its racing car and let it loose on the highway and by the time what came to be known as the GT40 MkIII was ready, it was a radically different car indeed. 

Most fundamentally, it didn’t have the same highly tuned engine as the race car, Ford opting for the somewhat more durable 4.7-litre V8 found in its every day Mustang. Its 335bhp output was well over 100bhp shy of the race motor, but in a car as light as the MkIII, it would still produce performance likely to humble that of any Ferrari or Lamborghini in production.

The next difficult decision was to change the gearbox linkage to relocate the gear lever to the centre console – needed if the car was to be built with left as well as right-hand drive, a move seen as essential to secure sales in the all-important US market.

US safety regulations also insisted on a raised nose with four round headlights and vestigial bumpers front and rear. The need for at least some practicality mandated an extended tail under which a luggage box was fitted directly on top of the transmissions. Inside some concessions to luxury were made including full leather upholstery, but easily the most significant change to driver comfort was the softening off of the suspension and the fitment of wire wheels with narrow street tyres in place of the track car’s fat racing rubber. 

The car went into production in 1967 and immediately ran into trouble. At $18,500 it was hideously expensive, more even than the price of the racing car upon which it was based. The interior got hot very quickly, your luggage – cooked by the engine and gearbox – hotter still. The gearchange was awful and the fit, finish and general reliability nowhere near that required for one of the most expensive cars ever offered for sale. It tanked and after just seven units were built, slipped from the sales sheets.

What, then, was this curious road racing hybrid like to drive? Ford has one of the seven in the UK and once let me drive it. It was many years ago, but not the kind of experience you are likely to forget.

Sadly what I remember most was that it was almost impossible to squeeze my 6ft 4in frame into its tiny cabin and once I had I could barely drive it. Had it not been a GT40, I’d have given up. Doubled up and in some pain is perhaps most the best way to start an objective assessment but I was sufficiently clear-headed to realise the gearshift, while poor, was not quite as awful as I’d been led to believe and that, detuned or not, the engine was simply magnificent. Even then the GT40 felt unbelievably fast: when it was new it must have been like something from outer space.

But my most positive memory is of the steering, a perfectly accurate helm flooded with the kind of feel you just don’t get in road cars today.

But I seem to remember still concluding it was like a caged lion, claws clipped, teeth blunted, trapped in an environment far from that which it would have chosen and that, in particular, the necessary changes to the tyres and suspension has wrought terminal compromises upon the car.

I have the strongest feeling that the new Ford GT will be a rather different proposition in road-going form and that it will be properly adapted and developed for street use. Sometime in 2017, I hope to be able to let you know for sure.