Remember back in September when cops in Avon, Colorado busted two Ford GT prototypes for doing 101 mph in a 50 mph zone? Well, we just got word that all the charges against those drivers have been dropped, and everyone is pals again. The reason why? “New facts came to light.”
We found this out via Ford spokesman Mike Levine on Twitter:
All good, right? Zero charges, no hard feelings. I was still curious about those “new facts,” so I contacted Mike directly. He’s a nice guy. He gave me an official statement:
“We take safe driving seriously and expect our test drivers to obey the traffic laws on public roads. We are pleased that all facts came to light, and the drivers testing the new GTs in Colorado have been exonerated.”
That still didn’t really explain what those “facts” were, so I pressed a little more. I was told that:
“Data downloaded from the cars supported the fact that the drivers were not driving at the stated speed.”
It’s not saying what speeds were being driven, but, whatever, it looks like that was good enough for the cops. I left messages with the Chief of Police of Avon, Colorado, and I’ll update if they get back to me with any interesting details.
But, for now, it looks like everyone’s in the clear. I mean, even if they weren’t, it’d be hard to blame somebody for going more than 50 mph in a Ford GT on a pretty empty country road. I’d be a hypocrite if I got too high-and-mighty about this.
I should mention that some commenters pointed out this stretch of road is not really all that empty, and there’s a good reason why the speed limit drops to 50 MPH there. We also really have no idea how or why the GT test drivers got their speeding charges dropped. I can’t really safely speculate without more information, but I see in the comments everyone else is managing that just fine.
More importantly, though, I did manage to squeeze out some dramatic new information about a super-secret upcoming rebirth of a legendary Ford nameplate, and how that vehicle will use the GT’s platform:
Ford Courier GT. You heard it here first, people. That’s going to be one hell of a compact pickup.