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| Road Test: Ford GT (2004-) |
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| Exotic Sports |
by: Andrew Frankel |
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Ford GT Gallery
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| PERFORMANCE RATING: |
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It's no good simply knowing the stats - 0-60mph in 3.8sec, 0-100mph in 8.3sec, a likely top speed of 200mph - because until you know the nature of that performance you cannot understand this car. This is not a machine that has you searching for the right gear before its potential can be unleashed. This, you have to remember, is an American car and the one thing the Americans appreciate better than any other nation on earth is the value of twisting force, or torque. When you accelerate, it is torque that chucks you forward, which is why it has 500lb ft of the stuff or, to put it another way, nearly double that of Ferrari's 360.
And it is also why if you put your foot down in a Ford GT it just goes - any speed, any gear, any time. The word 'relentless' could have been coined to describe the way the GT accelerates to simply massive speeds, punctuated only by brief pauses to let the accurate but slightly slow gearbox find another ratio. But even this is not much of a problem: if your chosen gait is anywhere between 40-140mph, you only need third and fourth. Only when you hit the disappointingly overdriven sixth gear does the thrust tail off but, as it will do 200mph in fifth, this is rarely too much of an inconvenience.
And the noise? Slightly disappointing on the one I drove, thanks to the need for its exhaust to subscribe to Federal regulations. The quality is there - a deep, growling V8 thunder - but it's just not loud enough. Put this to its engineers however and they smile, say they appreciate the problem and are working on it. Off the record indications point to an aftermarket exhaust kit that bypasses the regs (and the silencers) and should blow your ears off.
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Introduction A little over 40 years ago, Ford very nearly bought Ferrari before the... |
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