You may remember the story from the movie. In 1966 Ford entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the GT40 MkII. Drivers Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon drove the GT40 to overall victory followed by… another two Ford GT40 MkIIs. Fifty years after that victory, Ford wanted to compete again for victory at Le Mans as a tribute.
Ford made a pact with Multimatic founder Larry Holt. Together they built a Ford GT with a twin-turbo V6. This car was entered for the LM GTE-Pro classification. After 24 hours of racing, the Ford GT of Sébastien Bourdais, Joey Hand and Dirk Müller crossed the line first in the GTE class.
The number 68 Ford GT takes class victory | Photo: © Ford
The victory and the hype that surrounded the Ford GT led Ford to make a street-legal version of the GT. To this day, street versions of the Ford GT are sold for many millions. But did you know that the street GT should never have seen the light of day? Yes really. Ford boss Jim Farley explains it to us.
Ford wanted to participate in Le Mans in 2016 with the Mustang
Jim Farley: “When we decided to make the Mustang global – by selling it all over the world with right- and left-hand drive – on the previous generation, we knew that the 50th anniversary of Le Mans winning was coming. We started discussing internally about winning Le Mans with the Mustang.’
So Ford teamed up with Multimatic and asked IMSA what a Mustang would need to have a shot at winning. “Multimatic started with a lot of simulations and it became clear that we couldn’t really win with the silhouette of a Mustang. We would become too dependent on the ACO and the French regulators’, says Farley.
So the plan had to be changed. “We designed the Ford GT, but the original idea was never to have a new GT. We wanted to win Le Mans with the Mustang,” Farley admits. So there is also a good chance that the GT with V6 would never have seen the light of day if Ford had started racing with the Mustang. The world could have looked so different.
2023-09-03 17:08:03
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