Ford probably could have laid it on a bit less thick with the paid advertising to the various online automotive blogs. I'm sure Rick Hendrick will buy 15 of them and YouTubers will buy them for videos where they have a shocked face and an arrow pointing at it and a bunch of "first editions" will sell to people on respirators for a million dollars for charity so they can write it off; and then the "derived from the GT3 car" nonsense will largely be forgotten as soon as the Zora or ZR-1 or whatever the hell the halo C8 will be called comes out and actually is able to compete with top tier 911s and Ferraris.
Shoutout to the guy in the Jalopnik comments section acting like everyone should have their mind blown by the fascinating concepts of "transaxles" and "pushrods" though. I'm not sure if he's gaslighting people or he legitimately thinks 50:50 weight distributions with front engine cars are impossible dark magic.
I saw that guy. This is a low budget,
potential high return project for Ford in the grand scheme of things. The fact that they are outsourcing most of the tricky stuff kind of tells you that. It certainly isn't a supercar. GM has been doing transaxle Corvettes since 1997...Porsche has been doing it
since 1976 ...it's not particularly special. Pushrod suspension is rare (it isn't on mountain bikes!) not because it's some dark art, but because the packaging is terrible for road cars - but people DIY it all the time. If the car does have 50:50 weight distribution
and an engine that weighs 550lbs, I doubt it's a particularly light car overall. I would be surprised if its more than 200-300lbs lighter than the GT500. Remember Ford's
all carbon-fiber GT weighed 3100lbs. If they can get a steel-chassis Mustang, larger than a Honda CR-V, with a much larger engine to be within 600lbs of that I would be genuinely shocked.
This car is in weird territory. It likely won't be a faster car than a GT3 RS around a track and a 296 GTB is likely miles faster and more usable on the road. This car has flipped the "supercar-killer" concept on it's head. Instead of being a budget car that has supercar-rivaling performance, it's a muscle car that has super-car rivaling price. It's weird. For 300k at Mclaren your budget gets you not just carbon body panels, but a whole carbon monocoque and an engine that doesn't have its roots in $35,000 Mustangs.
We both know that these cars will have the most luxuriously soft media release, where they'll be dolled out to a handful of their
favorite youtubers to run staged races filled with shocked expressions and yelling.
Don't get me wrong, this thing is cool and the performance seems exotic. But the GT500 was also crazy fast and cost 3.75x less money. Somebody should DIY a time attack GT500 with a $15k budget to see how much your $300k really gets you, marginally, in the performance department...I would guess not a lot. I guess what I'm getting at is the GT500 at $80k with 760hp and a dual clutch gearbox is a lot more interesting of a proposition than basically that same car + some carbon body panels and fancy rear suspension for
$220,000 more money. I don't think even
Hennessey would charge that much for this car.
www.gtplanet.net
