2017 Ford GT: 5 Awesome Stuff About It

Its Recent History Is Fascinating

No. We aren’t going to re-tell the whole Ferrari-Ford ego clash of the 1960s. That’s like watching a Spiderman origin story in a summer blockbuster every 5 years. We are going to talk about the recent history involving the development of the 2017 Ford GT.

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Ford had been planning to get back to Le Mans for some time. Its intention to do so with a reworked Mustang didn’t work out as the car wasn’t up for the daunting task. So a small team of designers and engineers was put together and they came up with the idea to field an all-new Ford GT which will be purpose-built for the role.

The cars were built and tested in high levels of secrecy. Once they were up for the task, these cars went on to compete in Le Mans 2016 and clinched victories in the GTE class for production cars. Meanwhile, Ford also unveiled the concept version of the Ford GT road car in auto shows, starting with the 2015 Detroit Motor Show.

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Ford had one more hurdle to clear. The model which was fielded had to be sold as a proper road car in 2016. Or else they risked losing every trophy that they had clinched. Two production versions of the car being sold to Ford head honchos Bill Ford and Mark Fields in 2016 itself and that addressed a part of the problem. The rules had to be bent a bit though by Le Mans since Ford didn’t meet the regulation of building a minimum of 100 units in the year in which the GT competed. Anyway, all said and done, Ford gets to keep the trophies.