This Sleek Sportscar Could Have Been The First Ford GT40!

There’s nothing like a good racing movie to beat quarantine blues. Sadly, this genre of movies rarely gets filmed, and this made me appreciate movies such as Rush and Ford v Ferrari all the more. If you’ve seen the latter, you might already be well versed in the rivalry between Ford and Ferrari at the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The movie, starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale (above), brings to life the dangers associated with racing in the 60s and shows the evolution of arguably one of the most famous race cars, the Ford GT40. But what it failed to mention was that Ford had plans to build a road-going version of the race car for the well-heeled petrolhead.

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That’s right. The road-going car was Ford’s plan to defeat Ferrari in the high stakes game of performance cars. 57 years later, Ford Performance has shared some of the oldest ever design sketches of the GT40! The sketches are a part of what is called the GT Program, a confidential document that was circulated among Ford employees outlining how the Blue Oval planned to beat Ferrari after being famously snubbed by Il Commendatore Enzo Ferrari himself. This document is said to be the result of a nine-day study that was meant to “serve as a basis for discussion in the concept stages” of the GT program. 

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A closer look at the sketches reveals the date stamp: June 12, 1963, 21 days after negotiations to acquire Ferrari fell through. It also gives you a fair idea of how far the design evolved before the first GT40 MkI hit the race track. 

Apart from details of the race car, the document also contained information about the road-going car’s design and mechanicals. It was supposed to share the same chassis and mid-engine layout as the Ford GT40. Now, some of you may already know what the ‘40’ in the name stands for: the overall height of the car in inches. The road car was designed to be taller by six inches to accommodate… wait for it… the driver’s hat! It was also a bit longer and heavier than the race car. This version even had one of the coolest styling elements in car design: a sharp nose with pop-up headlights! 

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A few days after the sketches were drawn up, Ford built a clay model of the car. This version bore more resemblance to the final race car. The clay render also received ‘cheese grater’ style side air intakes that would later become iconic in the Ferrari Testarossa. In my eyes, the car in the sketches and the clay render look a lot sleeker than the finished product. One could even go as far as to say that it looks a bit like Marcelo Gandini’s Lamborghini Miura thanks to the wraparound windshield and thin A-pillars.

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The only bits that seemed to have made it to the race car were the angled rear glass cover for the engine bay and the centrally-mounted tailpipes.

The sketches also reveal other interesting details such as the spare tyre mounted at the front to counter the weight of the engine at the rear and a bubble canopy roof with doors that opened upwards instead of the almost-conventional ones on the race car. Other changes over the race car included a softer suspension setup, more sound insulation, and a 4.7-litre V8 from the Ford Fairlane.

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Although this version of the road car never materialised, Ford used most of these design elements minus the roof in what was the very first car to bear the Mustang name, the 1962 Ford Mustang I concept. Sadly, chief executive of the Mustang project Lee Iacocca and his team opted for a more economical front-engine layout for the pony car. But that’s a story for another time.