Each night as I wander the city streets alone, consumed with thoughts of my own mortality and the wasted time I’ll never get back, I attempt to distract myself by pondering this instead: was the new Ford GT a success? On one hand, it feels mostly famous for the drama around its sales and re-sales. On the other hand, it won at Le Mans. So that’s good! Either way, it’s coming to an end soon like we all eventually will, and it’s going out with an expensive bang.
Behold! The Ford GT MkII, a track-only special edition that will put you out just $1.2 million. Only 45 of these will be made. I am considering buying two of them.
So what does more than doubling the price of a standard Ford GT get you here? According to Ford, technology, aero, braking and more all derived from the GT’s wins in the FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, but without any of those pesky “regulations” that force the race cars to play nice with each other. And with a street car, there’s all sorts of other rules they have to meet that don’t apply here either.
Here’s how Ford couched it:
“The true off-the-hook performance capability of the GT hasn’t yet been fully showcased,” said Multimatic’s Chief Technical Officer, Larry Holt. “The road car is obviously limited by the many global homologation requirements that it must comply with, and the race car suffers from the restriction of the dreaded Balance of Performance, resulting in it being 150 horsepower down to the road car. The Mk II answers the regularly asked question of how would the car perform with all the limitations lifted: the answer is spectacularly.”
In other words, this is a Ford GT race car when the gloves come off.
You get a new front racing splitter, rear wing, louvres and dive planes, all good for 400 percent more downforce than the Ford GT. You also get Michelin Pilot Sport racing tires, a 200-pound weight reduction, an all-racing suspension with a fixed ride height and a water-spray engine cooling system. The passenger seat is optional; the Sparco racing seat with a six-point racing harness is not.
The GT MkII also jams out 700 horsepower from its 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6, up from about 650 in the regular GT. That makes this the most powerful GT available, period. The only downside, besides that astronomical price tag, is that this car is track-only—it is not street legal. Then again, if you can afford a $1.2 million car, you can afford to have other people drive you around.
If you’re interested in ordering one, you can do so directly with its builder, Multimatic, on this website.
