All this makes no sense to me. Our Ford GT was announced several years before actual production. There was a lot of hype, magazine articles on the prototypes, testing, repeated announcements and news releases etc..we all knew it was coming well in advance and were slobbering all over ourselves to get one. It was intentionally planned that way.
The Ford GT took a herculean effort with a myriad of suppliers to be able to be ready for delivery is a very short time.
We are now less then 3 weeks from a new Ford GT announcement with the car being ready for LeMans in June????? There has been not one shred of evidence of any new car, no specifics nothing, no spy shots, no leaks nothing. Doesn't make sense to me but hey, I don't profess to be an expert on the auto industry.
Is this new car going to run in the "prototype" class? Would have to since none have been produced to qualify for GT classes.
How has Ford kept such a secret in their involvement in the design and building of such a car ready to compete on the world stage for the first time at LeMans without any testing that anyone knows of before hand? While debuting a new at LeMans is a great opportunity it is also a great opportunity to get embarrassed if your ducks are not in a row. Seems like this new GT would have been tested and would be still in testing somewhere that would be seen and known about somewhere. I would think anyway.
Also, if this is a racing prototype it is likely years away from civilian production and DOT certification I would think.
This is not adding up to me.
Just saying.
Regardless of the timeline, if Ford plans on producing homologated street versions of a LeMans racecar, it would have to be the most well kept automotive secret of all time. Not a peep from anyone from Ford, no test mules roaming about, not one spy pic from any of the automotive paparazzi. Suppose it's possible for a skunkworks to keep a GT-class or LMP racecar under wraps since the team involved would be relatively small and contained. But I personally don't see how there could be any production car prototype ready for NAIAS without some shred of tangible evidence.
I've been saying this too, here and other places.... Glad to see someone else is seeing the gaps.
Didn't Ford build the GT40 in under a year from concept to race ready?
Well, they took a Lola and made the GT40 out of it, but it took Shelby another season to make it a winning car...
Secondly, it was a pure race vehicle without any of the now current safety and EPA regulations to meet. The NHTSA crash tests alone require the building of more than a handful of vehicles that most likely would be seen.
The GT40 street vehicles happened later. So what about the possibility they are taking existing race platform and making a steet version of it? Remember if they are serious about a racing win they are going to start with a by design racing platform and make a street car from it. As such you might not be very happy with the street results. With Ganassi now the Ford racing team they already have a car that could be "brought down" to street performance. Everyone wants to think that the new car will be a third generation GT40. I think that has almost no chance of happening. Remember that the GT40 gave way right away to new designs (the Porsche 917 among others). So as a GT class car, derived from the existing Ganassi platform could be the shortcut to getting something done in the next 6 months.
Whatever it is has been happening "any day now" for over a year. Firs it was last summer, then it was this fall, then SEMA, then LA (which yielded the new GT350 instead), now Detroit. Always tomorrow. So given the lead times for a truly homologated car to be ready for sale to the public in volumes of a minimum of 100 sold, built and delivered in time for 2015 runs (really, it has to run somewhere before Le Mans in 2016) the time is really almost out...
I still hope they can pull it off.