The Ford GT40 was already a winner when it arrived at the Circuit de la Sarthe for the 1966 LM24. The first win in a 24-hour endurance race came a few months earlier at Daytona, where co-riders Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby led almost every lap and beat the competition by nearly 30 miles. Sjoen Le Mans ’66? You will know the story.
It is this win that drives the new Ford GT Heritage Edition. The white, red and bare carbon fiber, complete with the number 98, is a tribute to the red / white / black painted car that Miles and Ruby overcame to Florida more than 50 years ago. It also gets gold forged alloy wheels (though you can upgrade to carbon rims), red Alcantara upholstery and red anodized flappy paddles.
Numbers will be strictly limited – as if the Ford GT would not be hard enough to get though – and prices high. Along with the Heritage Edition, Ford has also announced a ‘Studio Collection’ graphics package that ‘should draw your eye to some of the GT’s most prominent features’. Only 40 cars will get it, built this year and next before GT production expands in 2022 for good.
Both Heritage and Studio Collection cars are mechanically unadjusted, so you look at a twin-turbocharged V6 with 660bhp. One of them takes you in love? Nice as the Heritage Edition is, we would be seduced by stripping the paint off altogether and leaving carbon.
