Track-only Ford GT gets higher top speed, 800 hp
67 cars to be built as a tribute to 1967 original
The Ford GT Mk IV has just made its debut on track. The circuit-only supercar is a more aggressive version of the latest Ford GT built by Canada’s Multimatic to be a limited tribute to the original race winner.
We first saw the Ford GT Mk IV late last year. Ford revealed renderings that focused on its long tail bodywork and 800 hp EcoBoost V6 making it significantly quicker than the now out-of-production roadgoing GT. But seeing it in real conditions is a whole different story.
It’s on the track at the Velocity Invitational at Sonoma Raceway in California. The event is a luxury motorsports festival featuring music, drivers, racing, and, well, the GT MK IV.
Multimatic, the car’s builder, posted the photos to Facebook. The company said:
“Every surface shape, scoop, vent, inlet, and aesthetic feature of the Mk IV was designed to meet extreme cooling and downforce targets, and the overall design plays a balancing act between the various performance needs of the new car. The challenge was to ensure that the DNA of the new GT platform, as well as ties to the 1967 Le Mans winning icon it honours, was not lost in the search for optimum performance.”
The original Mk IV was the 1967 version of the GT40 that raced and won Le Mans. The car had a 7.0L V8 and longer bodywork to help boost the car’s top speed on the track’s straights. The efforts worked.
They should work quite well on the new car, too, though only 67 buyers will ever get to find out. No word from Ford on when the cars will start making their way to buyers, though deliveries were originally announced to begin last spring. Or just how fast the cars will be when they take to the circuit.
