Driven: The £420,000 Ford GT

It was a small, crack team of Ford designers and engineers that created the outline design for the new GT supercar, in secret, hidden away in a basement within Ford HQ. This was a genuine skunk-works project, one created after Ford realised the racing Mustang it originally wanted to make was never going to win anything.

The Ford GT already has: last year, it won the Le Mans 24 Hours race, at a canter. Like the original Ford GT40, this is a car that was designed primarily to go racing, and take on the Porsches, Aston Martins and Ferraris that currently dominate the LMP GTE racing class. But the rules dictate you must make road-going version too. So here we are, with a 4.8 metre long, 2 metre wide machine that sits barely 1 metre high. For the record, the ‘40’ in GT40 referenced its height, in inches. The 2017 GT? 41.8 inches.

It’s based around a carbonfibre tub, like in a racer. Also like a racer, there’s an integrated roll cage, and a 3.5-litre V6 twin-turbo Ecoboost engine. Track cars get a sequential gearbox: the road-going one has a seven-speed dual-clutch paddleshifter. It puts out 647bhp and does 0-60mph in 2.8sec, so it’s fast. Yet the engine is also 60% the same as the Ecoboost in the Ford F-150 pickup. Racing really may improve the breed.

In so many ways, this new GT is an engineering masterpiece. The rear wing moves under computer-controlled logic. Exotic suspension has two types of spring at each corner – one for road use, the other for track use; the latter sees the ride height drop 50mm and the spring rate double, for ultra-stiff control. Even the carbonfibre dashboard is a structural element.

Inside, the seats are fixed: you get comfortable by moving the pedals and steering wheel instead. It feels super-low, naturally, but visibility is good and, once underway, the steering manageable. Sure, the engine is vocal and the race-derived interior echoes, while some of the plastics reveal the car’s low volume nature by being remarkably low-rent, but you’ll quickly forget all this when you notice just how amazing the ride quality actually is.

Composure is little short of miraculous – it’s genuinely astonishing. It’s roll-free yet compliant, all body movements are amazingly well controlled: altogether, it’s a highlight the likes of which you rarely encounter in any car.

And the handling is equally jaw-dropping, right? Well, surprisingly, it does not reach quite the same highs out on the road. While the steering is meaty and linear, there’s not as much feel there as you’d like. There’s an abundance of grip, so it’s hard to feel much on-the-limit excitement. The brakes are a bit too sharp and, generally, there isn’t anything like the purity you get in a Porsche 911 GT3.

The engine, too, is certainly quick, but it’s also gruff and unsophisticated. The noise lacks the breeding of an Aston Martin, trading more on honest effectiveness than all-round audible delights. More admirable is the lack of turbo lag, the sheer intensity of kick you get from 5500rpm to 7000rpm, and the fact it feels every bit as a sub-3.0sec 0-60mph time suggests.

Where the GT really comes alike is on the racetrack. Drop the suspension, start attacking kerbs with vigour, and it feels reassuring and confidence-inspiring within the first half a lap. It’s adjustable, balanced, and rewards the sort of textbook-correct driving that racers all subscribe to with a generally immense experience that we can well believe, as Ford claims, is faster than a McLaren 675LT.

Ford has sold every one of the 1000 GTs it’s going to build over the next four years. It really doesn’t matter that it’s not as good on the road as we’d perhaps want it to be: nobody will be making or breaking a sale based upon this. What does matter is that Ford has created it at all, been brave enough to make a car to go racing with and then convert it for use on the road – in numbers far higher than it ever needed to.

As with the original GT40, the new Ford GT is a genuine racing car for the road and, even at a price approaching half a million pounds, is a ridiculously desirable machine that’s good on the road, immense on the track and, overall, really quite miraculous. The secret is out: the Ford GT is exceptional.

Price £420,000

On sale Now

Location Utah

Engine V6, 3497cc, twin-turbo, petrol

Power 647bhp at 6250rpm

Torque 550Ib ft at 5900rpm

Gearbox 7-spd dual-clutch automatic

Kerb weight 1385kg (dry)

0-60mph 2.8sec

Top speed 216mph

Economy 14mpg (est)

CO2/tax band na