Ford GT
Source: Shutterstock
There was always talk of Ford getting back into the GT game. The GT40 had been such a hit in the fifties that it was thought maybe Ford should bring it back. Ford has now done it twice. During 2005 to 2006 the FORD GT generation 1 was sold and displayed. Ford later announced that they would be doing a new generation 2 of the Ford GT from 2016 onward to 2020 (expected). The first generation of the return of the Ford GT was a huge homage to the original. It took the vast majority of its styling cues from the car and merely modernized them. The second generation GT looks like someone from the future had a thing for the GT40 and created their own homage in the year 2200. It’s stunning.
Power
The styling was a natural successor and the power to go with it certainly wasn’t lacking. The new version had a mid-engine 5.4 liter V8 made entirely of aluminum. Naturally, it was supercharged as well. This version pumped out a sleek 560 horsepower and allowed the car to top out at 205 mph. It wasn’t just a high-end beast and managed to go 0-60 in only 3.3 seconds.
The second generation engine is abandoning the beautiful giant gas guzzling V8’s of the past and instead now uses one of Ford’s EcoBoost engines. It’s a twin turbo V6. However, it puts out a whopping 647 horsepower. Thanks to aluminum and carbon fiber construction, it’s one of the lightest sports cars to ever exist with that kind of giddy-up.
Source: Shutterstock
Hi, My Name Is Not GT40
Ford would have loved to have called their new generation sports cars GT40. However, they are unable to do that because they actually don’t own the license to the name anymore. Ford allowed a British company to make and sell a small number of handmade GT40’s during the 1980s. Any spare parts they had were sold on to an American company called Safir GT40 Spares, Limited. Since they were selling the spare parts, they licensed the name. When Ford got around to checking in with them on what it would cost to buy back the name, the company proposed a licensing agreement rather than a full on sale. Because of this, and the price of licensing was too high, they chose to simply call the remake the “GT” and use other numbers for variants like the GT70 and GT90.
