By Nick Syn

THE TROUBLE WITH the local car industry is history. As in we don’t have much of it, relatively speaking. As such, marketing departments have to import history wholesale, creating a problem with context. This is the deeper reason why Ferrari t-shirts outsell Ferrari cars.

But what if instead of fantasies of the champagne sunsets and caviar dreams variety, you were sold a working-class one? Would it still work? The Ferrari connection is an important one in this story, as the working-class dream in this case is the Ford GT.

Or more specifically, the Ford GT40. In the late 1950s, Ford made steps to try to wrest dominance of the international motor racing scene away from the European manufacturers, specifically Ferrari. At the time, Ferrari practically owned the famed 24 hour Le Mans endurance race, and the easiest way to get Ford’s foot in the door was to buy the Prancing Horse.

However, Enzo Ferrari had insisted on assuming control over Ford’s racing activities as a condition of the purchase agreement, and Ford refused, scuppering the deal. If they couldn’t buy a Le Mans winning team, the only course of action left to Ford was to build a car that could beat anything a Le Mans winning team could throw at it.

It took a few tries but in 1966, a GT40 ended Ferrari’s six year winning streak, and Ford went on to dominate Le Mans for the remainder of the 1960s, all the while enduring a good deal of snobbery from the substantially riled European teams.

This leads us to that which forms the core of the GT40’s appeal, the total lack of snobbery, and it’s a quality that the GT40’s spiritual successor, the GT, makes devastatingly full use of. This has to be the world’s first, and only unpretentious supercar, a paradox that works effortlessly, and in the process adding immeasurably to the GT’s appeal.

It’s not all good news though, the fact that it’s only available in left-hand drive constitutes one major downer, that and the fact that even it were, it’d most likely cost a mighty bundle working-class origins or no.

This particular Ford GT also happens to be the only example in Asia. Really. No one in Japan or Hong Kong or anywhere else in this neck of the globe has managed to get their paws on another example. And local car nuts have Say Kwee Neng, managing director of Regent Motors, to thank for this.

According to Mr Say, “The GT is part of Ford’s rich heritage and it was important to us to have it in the new showroom. We’ve specced it to the maximum too, basically it’s got all the bells and whistles. It’s also testament to the strength of Ford’s commitment to the local market that they’ve bent over backwards just to give us the car,” adds Mr Say.

STYLING
UPON FIRST GLANCE, the GT bears more than a passing resemblance to the GT40. In reality the two cars are substantially different. The GT40’s form is a good deal more feminine, its curves softer and the overall shape more meek, if a Le Mans winning car can be referenced thus.

In comparison, the GT is substantially more muscular, the lines far more determinedly resolved and the result is one of the most devastatingly good-looking cars ever built.

PERFORMANCE
THE GT SCORCHES from standstill to 100km/h in a scant 3.8 seconds, and on to 160km/h in a scarcely believable 8.3 seconds. The top speed has yet to be independently verified but it should easily exceed 300km/h.

In keeping with the whole, honest, no-frills sensibility, the GT comes equipped with a six-speed manual gearbox, eschewing the fashionable semi-automatic gearboxes that its rivals feature. This means that only proper drivers need apply, which again adds no end to the GT’s raw appeal.

ENGINEERING
FORD MENTIONS THAT its engineers took the GT from concept to production in just 16 months, but it did actually take a bit longer. Still, the development period remains impressively short by any standards. The GT is based on an aluminium chassis, with aluminium suspension components, the bodyshell and motor are also fashioned from the lightweight metal.

The motor is 5.4-litre V8 from Ford’s modular range, and it attains its mammoth 558bhp output with the help of a supercharger. Apart from the aluminium construction, there is very little that’s exotic about the engine’s construction, certainly BMW’s new Valvetronic straight-sixes comfortably eclipse the GT’s lump in terms of tech cred.

But again, therein lies the GT’s appeal.

INTERIOR
THE GT’S CABIN is a winning mix of retro styling and Ford parts bin raiding. You sit very low, almost reclined in fact, on sculpted carbon fibre bucket seats with ventilation holes to cool your bum. Much like those on the original car. The instruments are arranged in horizontal fashion along a lengthy binnacle. They’re all analogue, with the tachometer situated right in front of you.

The transmission tunnel is magnesium alloy, and the air-conditioning controls live down by your elbow, behind the gear lever itself which is angled towards the driver. The interior is charmingly workman-like, a place to get on with business more than anything else. As befitting the GT’s racecar for the road credentials, boot space is practically non-existent.