Ford GT: The Best Kept Secret

Since the Ford GT is still such a rare sight, we wanted to take a look back to when we spoke to James Cottingham from DK Engineering about his Ford GT, the buying experience, what it was like to live with for two years and why there's so much more to it than you might think.

What makes the original GT40 so special?

In the world of automotive racing, the Ford GT40 is a legend. Everyone knows about the Ford vs Ferrari battle of the mid-60s when Ford was famously going to buy Ferrari from Enzo Ferrari until he changed his mind at the last minute, so Henry Ford decided he was going to go and beat Ferrari at Le Mans, which he did with the GT40. The original Mk1 GT40 was actually built in England and not many people acknowledge that.

I've owned a GT40 with a great friend of mine, Andrew Smith, for nearly 10 years. I've always had GT40s around me my whole life. Despite us being Ferrari specialists, there's always seemed to have been one in stock or in one of the collections we look after. I've always loved them, always wanted to race one and when the opportunity came along to buy one with Andrew, I jumped at the opportunity. Well, I say jumped, it took him a few times of getting me drunk to convince me, but we've had so much fun with that car.

Our car is chassis 1029 which was the Scuderia Bear car. It was owned by Bill McKelvy when it was new and raced at Sebring and Le Mans in 1966, although it didn't start the race at Le Mans because it had a big accident in qualifying and the original tub was written off, Andrew and I then restored the car about 10 years ago.

We've raced it all over the world; Goodwood Revival numerous times, Le Mans Classic a number of times and most famously on the Tour Auto in France which is the modern interpretation of the Tour de France. It's a five-day rally, 3,000km over 11 special stages which are flat out on closed roads and circuits. We won overall in 2017, and we would have won by seven minutes in 2018 but we broke the gearbox on the very last special stage which was a real shame. We would have won the event overall, so not just in the pre-66 category but in the pre-73 category as well which is a real achievement for a GT40.

It's a very well-known car and it has a great livery, it's silver with a Tricolore stripe, the number plate 1 MUF which everyone seems to remember for some reason, and when you take it to Le Mans, that's the place where you realise what a GT40 is all about. As soon as you go down the Mulsanne straight for the first time, you absolutely feel at home in that car- it's what it was built to do, to win that race. A couple of years ago, I remember racing down the Mulsanne straight in the middle of the night, four in the morning, pitch black, looking down at the digital speedo and it was reading just under 300km/h — it’s a real pinch yourself moment when you have the opportunity to do that. So yeah, it's a very special car for me.

What is it like to drive?

It's a pure race car, but actually, the first time we went to do our first special stage on the Tour Auto, everyone always said to us it's such a big car, it's so low, it's going to be a real handful, but it's such a strong, robust chassis and tub, it feels like whatever you throw at it, whether you hit speed bumps flat out or big undulations in the road, it just eats the road and absorbs it. It drives so well and you've got that amazing 289 V8 which these days are built to produce somewhere between 400 and 450bhp. As it goes up through that five-speed 'box, you just can't believe how much it continues to accelerate - there's no easing off. If you're going down the Hangar straight at Silverstone, you go into fifth gear and think the rate at which it accelerates is going to slow down slightly, but it just keeps pulling and pulling.

It's a tough, strong race car built to last 24 hours so it's a bit heavy and not everyone gets on with them, but once you grab it by the scruff of the neck and really own the car, it's an incredibly rewarding car to drive. It's a real race car so you sit very low, almost horizontal, you've got this big steering wheel, the gear lever on the sill, it's very different to other racing cars, but then on the road it is quite usable in a weird way. I mean it's noisy and it's very hot, but once you're going along it is a usable thing. I've gone on different events where I've driven it 100 miles in a day and 100 miles back and I can't hear anything by the end of it even though I've had ear defenders on the whole day, but it works.

They were always supposed to be 40 inches tall and these days I think they're probably a bit lower than 40 inches with the way we have them set up, and you're so low compared to everyone else on the road. Everyone hears it coming first and then they see it coming and they want to have a look, and I think that's probably why, alongside the Cobra, it's one of the most replicated cars ever. It's just that iconic, pure, perfect race car design. It was Eric Broadley's best, the guy behind Lola, it was his design originally and it's probably his all-time best design.

Have you ever owned a 2005 Ford GT?

I've had them in stock but never had one of my own, but all my friends who have had them have always raved about them, and when they've sold them they're always one of those cars they miss. The 2005 V8 interpretation of the GT40 was a great car. It was a very similar in design to the original, almost like a modern-day update. When it comes to bang for buck, they are such good value for money for what they give you and it still has a sense of occasion when you pull up in a 2005 Ford GT, it's a great car.

What attracted you to the new Ford GT?

When this Ford GT was released, what I loved about it is that it went racing first. It was a race car that they were going to build road cars of and had to for homologation purposes, but they went to Le Mans to win Le Mans. I was there that year and clearly all season they were sandbagging, and even in qualifying they were sandbagging, then when it came to the race. they were streets ahead of everyone else.

It is an out-and-out race car with a proper carbon tub. Everything is very special and when you look at the way it's designed, the cockpit is absolutely tiny for aero. If you have two people in there, it's really small, but that's because it's a race car, and then they built the road car.

There are two ways of going about it and quite often manufacturers sit in the middle. A 458 or 488, for me, as a road car is very much in the middle. It's a car they built to appeal to all markets and then they built a race car which was very successful, and you have your softer version and your hardcore version. The GT was built as a race car and then turned into a road car and it has no storage, it has a tiny fuel tank, all the stuff people like Clarkson complain about but that's what makes it so great, that's why I love that car.

When they announced they were going to build the road cars, it was clear they were going to be very exclusive, and actually Andrew and I were on the Tour Auto and we got talking about it, then when we got back we sent in a video of ourselves doing the special stage in our original car. I think it was about six months later it came through that we had got a car-we were really lucky!

Little did we know how special it was going to be, that in 2018 they delivered just 80 cars to Europe, only 12 of those were UK cars and they haven't delivered a single car in 2019 or 2020. They say there's a second batch coming but I'm fairly sceptical that there actually is, because as I understand it, they're having lots of emissions problems, so I think we've got ourselves a very rare and special car.

That isn't the reason I haven't done enough miles in it, it's more because last year I was just so busy racing and going to concours events and auctions and all the stuff we do with work, whereas this year I've done so many more miles because I haven't had anything to do at the weekend, and I've gone to a couple of events in the car so it's been nice to get some mileage under its belt.

Tell us about the spec.

In terms of specification, Ford adopted something quite interesting and quite revolutionary, and I actually think it's the future of ordering new cars. I don't necessarily see the future in brand-new car showrooms. I think with CGI and VR, people will perhaps go into a booth somewhere and they'll spec the car that way, they'll put the goggles on, look around and say no I don't want that I want this, and it is happening within dealerships, so at some point people are going to ask why we need these new car dealerships, they're just a facility to deliver cars, and that's how Ford delivered these cars in the UK.

A lot of the bits are built here in the UK; the interior is made in the UK, the lights are made in the UK. Some of the people who own these various businesses making parts happen to be customers of mine, and just coincidentally, I've gone to their businesses and realised they're making all these bits, and they're shipped out to Multimatic in Canada where the cars are built.

Multimatic also have a facility here to service the car but there is no dealership, so we actually did the ordering of the car online, and you're only given a very limited number of specifications. You had four interior options, five exterior options and then there were caliper choices,. sports exhaust and stuff like that, so you couldn't personalise the cars massively, which for us was a bit of a problem because we couldn't have the stripe to match our GT40.

So, we went for the modern grey which I think is Liquid Grey, we went for the Light Speed interior which is the higher spec interior with the blue Alcantara and leather seats, and originally we went for red calipers to match the original car which had red spinners, but we decided in the end to go for blue calipers because it just wasn't going to look right. I'm really pleased with the way it came out, and then when it came to the UK, we put the stripe on with vinyl and PPF'd over it which you can do these days, and obviously it can come off if ever we want it to.

The spec is very much a modern interpretation of chassis 1029, the original GT40 we have, and it works really well. Having them as a pair, when people see them, they get it, and how often can you do that? I'm always surprised with F12 TDFS that people didn't copy the original liveries of Tour de Frances, apart from the car we had, the 0585 homage; everyone loved that and I can't understand why people didn't do it more, but each to their own I guess.

What was the buying process like?

Once we'd ordered the GT, the buying process was pretty straightforward in terms of deposit, then when the car was about to arrive we had to pay the balance of course, but they delivered the car to us with a Ford concierge service, which I think is the future. Quite often I will sell cars and never meet the guy I've sold it to, we'll just deliver the car to them in our truck. If it's a first-time purchase or a more complicated car, I'll go along and do the handover.

That's exactly what Ford did, because I guess they see their clients as being busy, plus they don't have anywhere salubrious to hand it over, they don't have anywhere like Maranello to hand the car over, no one wants to go to Ford Dagenham to go and pick up their Ford GT. So, they delivered it to us and handed the car over properly with someone who knew the car inside out, talked us through all the controls and all the stuff that came with it and it was very useful, because I never read the instruction manual for anything, so I actually knew right from the start how everything works, and it was a good way to do it.

They have this concierge system so when it came to servicing the car, they picked it up and it went to Multimatic, was serviced there then came back and they dealt with all the little niggly things like our number plate falling off, which was our fault for not fitting it properly. It's been a very easy process, and you definitely feel exclusive. You realise there are only 12 cars in the UK and they're looking after them in this tiny sort of bubble, it's very good.

How long have you owned it?

We’ve had the car since late 2018. We've used it mainly on the road to just go to and from race meetings and things like that although it's proved a little bit impractical because it basically has no boot.

We've been to a few events but I'd love to get it on track at some point; I don't usually do track days because of all the racing I do, but the next time I'm invited to a track day I'll definitely take someone up on that opportunity and take the GT. The design of it is very much a raw racing car for the road and everyone says it's pretty good on the road but take it to the track and it's incredible.

What is it like to drive and own?

To summarise the drive, it's very firm and it's very planted. You have your different modes, Sport and Track, and you obviously want to have it in Track because it looks lower and you've got the big wing up but it becomes a bit unwieldy in that situation whenever you go over bumps. In Sport though, because of that complicated suspension, it's incredibly compliant, it just rides Broads really well.

It has a very clever gearbox; it's a seven-speed double-clutch, it's fast through the gears but it's always thinking for you and always has the right gears selected. It's almost like a seamless single-clutch system, and what I mean by that is it's not too seamless like a double-clutch system usually is; it still has a slight rawness to it but it always knows what you're about to do.

For long journeys on the motorway, it's super comfortable. It's got all the Ford navigation, radio, all that sort of stuff, even if it doesn't have cubby holes and things to put your sunglasses in.

Despite the comfort, it comes alive when you throw it around country roads. It's got such amazing traction, steering input is a little on the heavy side but I quite like that from a racing-style car, tremendously good brakes and also the seating position is just fantastic. You're sitting in it like a race car and you barely have any adjustment on the seat at all bar a bit of recline, and you move the pedals to get to where you want.

It's a really narrow cockpit but it has these really big mirrors which don't look big from the outside, but once you're in it you have really good visibility, and it's got a reversing camera, so it's an easy car to get on with. It does do A to B. no matter what the road very well, and ground clearance isn't necessarily an issue because it has the different suspension heights depending on what mode you're in.

I'd say the biggest criticism of it is that you can't leave it in track mode while it's turned off. I hate that! You go to turn it off and it just pops up, which is a bit of a party trick, but then when it's parked there you want it to look mean and cool, and instead, it doesn't look as good as it could do. It kind of annoys me but it's a silly little thing.

What I think is surprising about the Ford GT is that it sits in a bracket that doesn't really exist at the moment for other car manufacturers. It's not a hypercar, but it's way above a supercar. Maybe the new SF90 Stradale is going to fill that bracket as well and obviously they'll do incredibly well but they'll build a million of them.

It's the sort of thing where, if you turn up to something like an SCD event, there won't be another one there. It has heritage behind it, it's a Le Mans winning chassis and it was built as a race car to be a road car, and it's the third generation of a great series of cars, probably one of the most iconic race cars ever. I think even people who don't necessarily know a lot about racing know what a GT40 is.

It's got so much going for it. It's already built into that brand, and yes it has a Ford badge, but that's kind of part of the attraction of it. It's not your obvious Italian, it's not over-styled, it's very much form follows function, and that's why it looks like it does and why it looks so good, because it was developed from such a great racing car.

It's in a bracket at about £600,000 new if you were lucky enough to get one, between £700,000 and £800,000 today if you buy one second-hand, and I've had a lot of people really surprised at how much the car is, but then when you work from the other end and compare it to other cars that are out there, it's actually quite good value. Don't forget that the 2005 car was just an updated version of a 40-year-old design with a supercharger, they didn't do much more to it, whereas this is a proper carbon tub, very very special, very very trick.

It really is a special occasion car, partly because it's slightly compromised in its usability because it's big and it doesn't have a long-range fuel tank or a big boot and cubby holes. It's got to be the right occasion for the car so you do tend to use it a bit less than you would. When I had a 599 GTO, I'd jump in it any time, rain, snow, whatever, loads of bags in the boot, race kit and it would do everything so well.

The Ford isn't that car, it's not a grand tourer that's been made a bit more sporty, it's a race car for the road, so it's always special when you get in it and it's always surprising. It's never quite what you expect or what you remember, especially because it's got the V6 which a lot of people say is a shame, but it's such a clever engine and it was part of the reason they did so well at Le Mans.

I think they were actually quite ahead of their time in the way they designed the car, the way they put the bits together and the spec sheet of it. It's the way things are going-lightweight cars with small-capacity turbocharged engines, and it's really clever. If you look at those venturi ducts on the back, they're doing something. the rear wings and the massive haunches, and they're not buttresses like on a 599 that just look cool, they've got the radiators in them so they have to be there, and they give the car support, rigidity and strength. Even the brake lights, they're hollow in the centre because they let air out, they do something — the car is so well designed.

Are there cars available for sale and is it possible to find one?

Yes, of course there are cars out there that people will sell for a premium. Do I think it's worth it? Absolutely. I think the Ford GT, like the F40, is an iconic car, and what's always held the F40 back is that there are a few too many of them, until you try and find a really good car. The difference with the Ford GT is that it's an extremely rare car and they've got so much behind them heritage-wise and technology-wise. It's compromised in its usability but it's always a special occasion, much like an F40.

So you can buy a car out there and they're a really good thing to have. Rather than the millions people are paying for certain other cars from other manufacturers, I'd have a Ford GT and an F40 and something else any day of the week.