2017 Ford GT first drive: Hoo baby! IS THIS THE BEST ROAD-GOING RACER EVER?

[GUCCI-]

 

Are you one of those guys who says to anyone who will listen, “I want a race car for the street, man!” Well, Ford has finally made your car. The Ford GT is perhaps the closest any carmaker has ever come to making a race car that can be driven through actual city streets without treating its driver like a trucker treats a slice of teriyaki-flavored beef jerky.

Hoo baby!

The GT’s origins, as you probably know, go back a half-century to Henry Ford II's dictate to a surprised (or maybe "stunned" works better here) Dan Gurney and Carroll Shelby, who were summoned to the towering company headquarters near Detroit and told to go to Le Mans and, paraphrasing here, “Just win, baby.”

And win that GT40 did, four times at Le Mans from 1966 to 1969. Ford sold street versions of the GT, but mostly so it would meet homologation requirements for racing. Forty or so years later, Ford made another GT, but, as impressive as that one was, it was just for the street, not the track. Now Ford has come full circle, celebrating the 50th anniversary of its first Le Mans victory with yet another new GT, and, lucky for us and for anyone with $450,000, Ford is making 1,000 street cars.

I got to drive one. And not just on the street, though I did muddle through some country ranchland out in the desert, west of Salt Lake City. No, I got five laps around the west loop of what used to be called Miller Motorsports Park (now Utah Motorsports Campus) and then, using my vast experience at press-program weaseling, weaseled another five laps at the end of the day when all the other schmoes had long since gotten into their airport limos.

Heh heh heh. 

Ford GT interior
The Ford GT's interior is both spartan and over-the-top.
So how was it? In the words of one great writer, “Hoo baby!”

Our first stint behind the wheel (we can say “stint” because it’s a race car) was not on the track but on the streets of remotest Utah. Specifically, south of beautiful suburban Tooele. Into the GT they poured us. Climbing into the car is not as awkward a task as it is with an original GT40, but it’s not for the overly large. The door swings up and out, but not as far as some drivers might prefer. Short, skinny jockeys are at an advantage here.

Once your keister is planted, you’ll find the seat itself does not slide back and forth; it’s fixed. If you’re tall you can still fit, but if you have the freakish, fish-like torso with which I’ve been saddled, you will have a tougher time. If I slid all the way back in the seat and then sat straight up, I’d need a Gurney bubble, even without a helmet. But again, my torso belongs in a circus sideshow. Normal human beings should be fine. Indeed, no one (else) there that day who climbed inside a GT had any problem.

Once inside you start adjusting things. The pedals slide up and back to the appropriate length via a simple mechanical slider. The wheel adjusts into any position you might want. Then consider the interior: Ford says it’s stark like a race car; you might say it’s unfinished like a concept car. The Ferrari 488 and even any of the McLarens are a bit more comfortably livable. Our Ford GT had a huge orange dash pad like something out of a Googie-style restaurant from the ’50s. The color choice was a bit loud. But you’re in a Ford GT, man, quit yer gripin’.

Push the red button to start the 3.5-liter V6 right behind your neck bone and, “Blat, voom!” what a great sound it makes. Not so loud your neighbors will convene the condo owners’ association, as it might be if it were a 7.0-liter V8, but just loud enough to make your ears happy.

The Getrag seven-speed dual-clutch transaxle kicks into “D” via a shift knob on the center console (that might save space, but it wouldn’t have been our first choice of shifter). After that, the paddles behind the suede steering wheel move the gears up and down, or you can let it shift for you. And off we went.

Ford GT track beauty shot
While it can handle the road, the Ford GT is a car bred for the racetrack.
The Execution

Let us stop here for a moment to praise the suspension, which is a thing of wonder. The GT rides on unequal-length upper and lower control arms with pushrod/rocker-activated torsion bar/coil springs controlled by electronically adjustable DSSV (Dynamic Suspensions Spool Valve) dampers from Multimatic. The ride height hydraulically raises or lowers about two inches (and can be raised even more in front when you approach a steep driveway). The setup allows for two spring rates and a number of damper settings. On the steering wheel you can select from five settings for the electro-hydraulic-mechanical suspension: Wet, Normal, Sport, Track and VMax.

We set out in Normal mode on small-town city streets. Here it is not what you would necessarily call overly comfy but I could certainly live with it. The McLaren and especially the Ferrari are just a wee bit more “civilized” on city streets. I got to a little bit of a twisty mountain pass section and the car felt good enough in corners though I wasn’t pushing it hard at all. Hard pushing would come soon enough.

Then I found myself out of the hills and onto the longest, flattest, straightest, emptiest stretch of desert highway possibly anywhere on Earth. With the suspension in Vmax mode, lowered 2 inches, and with all aerodynamics optimized for speed, I did what any red-blooded American would have done in this situation and floored it. The GT then made the following wildly powerful sounds:

Quote -- Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (shift), waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (shift), waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa -- unquote. The sonorous cacophony went on for another four gears. The speedo climbed. The gears changed. The scenery blurred. My flapping pie hole opened up like that guy in the rocket-sled film. I had in the passenger seat, for once, a co-driver for whom this was not at all terrifying. The fool trusted me. So as the digital speedo climbed past 100, 120, 130, 140, I saw no reason not to keep going. Finally, at well north of 150 mph, with what appeared might be a slight curve coming up over the horizon, I figured I better ease off. The GT was perfectly happy at those speeds -- not a jiggle, not a hiccup, nothing. 

Ford GT engine shot
A quick glance through the back window will show you the Ford GT's 3.5-liter Ecoboost V6.
The fabulous new Ford GT’s top speed is listed at 216 mph, and I have no reason whatsoever to doubt that. In fact, I think it might be a bit conservative. If only Utah were bigger, I could have found out myself.

We pulled back into the track, and soon enough I was out on the circuit, with the track’s driving school president, Dan McKeever (son of Fast Lane driving school founder Danny McKeever, Elliott Forbes-Robinson’s nephew, etc. etc.) riding shotgun. Right away you see this car is a race car first and a street car a distant second. It is completely in its element on the track.

This car was made for racetracks: Its smooth, even power delivery combines with absolutely flat cornering to encourage faster and faster laps. Under stress, it sends no shudders or unforeseen misalignments to the driver, there is no wandering around under heavy braking (I’m looking at you, McLaren 650S!). Power delivery from the 3.5-liter V6 is a dream; there’s so much of it seemingly anywhere on the tach, you don’t worry at all about it. But you do want to shift just because the shifter is so smooth. Power eases off for a nanosecond between shifts without interrupting that even, smooth acceleration. There’s no hard slam back into the seats at shifts -- just easy, smooth power.

The four-wheel carbon-ceramic brakes never gave a hint of fade, though the feel was perhaps just a little more muted than the binders in the 488 or a 650S/675LT.

So, like I said, I weaseled my way into another track session: five more laps with instructor McKeever. The second session was faster than the first. The car felt even better. I still had to slouch down in the seat as I did before, but it was entirely tolerable for five or six laps. Shifts seemed to be getting even smoother in my second stint. I didn’t even feel them. You could hear the mechanical marching of engine parts stepping to their cacophonic cadences right behind your sweaty head. This was not a quiet engine at full wail on the track. Consumer Reports would fault it for “loudness and harshness of sound.”

Maybe. And it is loud and harsh, but in a glorious way only a race engine can be. It sounds like a much bigger displacement than it is. It’s only 3.5 liters packed into a V6. That’s small, but it has all the power you’ll want. Nail the throttle and off it roars, bang up through the gears or down through them and hear it brappity-brappity-brapp all the way through the box. Such a cool sound. Such a great car. Hoo lawd! 

Ford GT rear end
The Ford GT's sculpted design came from wind tunnel testing. While attractive, it is designed to create as much downforce as possible.
The Verdict

This Ford GT has raced and won (its class, anyway) at Le Mans. So it already accomplished what it was made to do. The next step is to sell 1,000 of them. Ford has almost done that, too. The first 750 are taken, at $450,000 each, and Ford will no doubt make easy work of the next 250 that can be ordered early next year.

By some bizarre twist of automotive fate, I had just spent the four days immediately prior to our Ford GT drive behind the wheel of a Ferrari 488 Spider. I had also fairly recently driven a bunch of original-design Ford GTs made by Superformance in South Africa and sold in the U.S. by our pal Lance Stander’s Hillbank Motors down in Irvine. Those cars are built almost exactly like the original GT40s were 50 years ago, right down to the Gulf livery. I have also lately driven several McLarens, another sales competitor.

So which is best? The new Ford GT is the best on the track, though you would have a splendidly track-blasting time in any of them. The Ferrari is also superb on a track and on a mountain road while being the most comfortable of the group. The McLaren is hard to fault but is perhaps just barely less refined than the Ferrari. And those original GT40s? They are also fun but take a lot more involvement from the driver -- they are authentic links to a powerful racing past.

Should you buy a new Ford GT? Do you have a half-million bucks? If so, and if you have access to a racetrack (specifically, a road course) and if you do not have the freakish torso of a giant sea bass, then definitely, yes. Sign up at fordgt.com. We also suggest a move to Tooele, Utah.