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Ford GT - World's Coolest Car or... just another Ford?
Are you kidding? The Ford GT is by far the coolest car on planet Earth. Forget your fancy Ferraris, with their high-revving powerplants and balletic reflexes. Highlight and delete your laser-guided Porsches, with their bullet-proof engines and surgically precise handling. Lose your Lamborghini, move your Maserati, vanish your Viper and ashcan your Aston. If we’re talking about straight up and down cool-- a car’s ability to make you the center of the known universe-- the Ford GT is it.
![]() When I tested the Ford GT against the Ferrari Enzo, Lamborghini Murcielago and Porsche Carrera GT, slack-jawed onlookers paid proper reverence to the hyper-exotics. But it was the Ford GT that stole their hearts. There’s something about the Ford’s nostalgic shape (an aesthetic echo of the LeMans-winning, Ferrari-spanking GT40) and dramatic detailing (chiselled rear-facing air vents in the hood, curvaceous rear haunches, dinner plate rear lights, etc.) that earn it both respect and devotion. The GT is the one supercar an average Joe can envision owning, driving and thrashing. When you lower yourself onto the GT’s perforated seats, the blue-collar funkiness continues. The cabin features elegant, easy-to-read gauges, with just the right amount of bling. The GT's designers' decision to place the rev counter dead ahead, with the speedo positioned on the far right of the instrument stack (angled towards the driver), typifies the combination of fuctional and funky. The massive toggle switches are bit over-the-top, but props to The Blue Oval Boys for putting some spizzarkle into an otherwise functional environment. Overall, the ergonomics are excellent-- provided you accept the well-established Gumball principle: what is behind you is not important.
![]() Fire-up the GT's 5.7-liter supercharged V8, pop the six-speed into first, and the supercar's Ford genes are immediately apparent. Even though there’s 500hp and 500lbs. ft. of torque lurking behind your shoulders and underfoot, Ford’s range topper burbles around town as easily as one of the company’s proletarian products. Well, not exactly. Anyone with a drop of petrol in their veins won’t be able to resist giving those horses a bit of a poke with their right foot-- instantly creating a stampede of mythic proportions. The Ford GT is so brutally fast that it takes a few dozen miles of high-speed sprints before your brain can form the neurological pathways needed to process the stream of information entering your eyeballs. In other words, before you can assess where there is, you’re there. To say the mechanical din accompanying the rush through hyperspace is a bit distracting is like saying it’s difficult to discuss philosophy in the face of a tornado. Once the GT's supercharger howl is subsumed by a NASCAR roar, at around 4000rpms, your entire body is pummeled by a basso profundo bellow. Nice work, if you can get it…
![]() Need some numbers? How about zero to sixty in a kidney pulverizing 3.3 seconds? Or, for the more highway-oriented driver, how does zero to 150mph in 19.1 seconds, or 170mph in 23 seconds, grab you? I’ll tell you how it grabs you: like a Rottweiler on a very bad (good?) day. Did I mention that the Ford GT will continue its accelerative assault without hesitation or deviation to a few mph past the 200mph mark? It’s one of those funny pieces of information that can get a Nevada driver into some big trouble-- if you know what I mean. And that’s just straight line stuff. Throw the GT into a corner at speed and you’ll soon discover that there’s nothing to fear except fear itself. (Mind you, there’s a lot of that to go around, what with no traction control and enough low-end thrust to get you seriously sideways in each and every gear.) The Ford GT grips the tarmac with sufficient tenacity that only a true nutcase would ever discover what happens next. Four wheel drift. In fact, a colleague of mine drifted the GT six inches from a cliff, but I reckon that’s because he didn’t sacrifice his adrenal glands to the Gods of opposite lock. In any case, fast in and “flame-on!” out is the only sensible technique for tackling the twisties.
![]() Yes, the Ford GT has had some recall “issues”. Sure, it lacks the pedigree (and the price) of its foreign competition. But you can’t seriously expect the world’s coolest car to come without a few minor drawbacks. The fact that you still can’t buy a Ford GT for list price some two years after its introduction tells you that this car is so damn cool it will never go out of style. Beat that Mr. Exotic.
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