Look what showed up at our car show........

Not a Triumph but the owner claimed it to be an original '66 GT40.......

NICE!!!!!

When I was little (born in 63) my best friend's father had this funny looking white car with blue stripes parked in their garage....it was an orginal GT40. They also had a 29 Ford Woody Wagon.....ahh, to be young again!

TR4 said:

Not a Triumph but the owner claimed it to be an original '66 GT40.......

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...and original ones used the same bonnet latches as found on Heralds, Spitfires, etc. So there IS a Triumph connection!

The original name of the car was the GT40. It measured 40 inches high - to the top of the roof. Ford could not use that name (possibly because it belongs to someone else ?) but the moderm FORD GT cars are not 40" high. They measure 44 inches to to roof. I can visualize experts out on the show field with measuring tapes to know for sure if it's an original GT40 or a new FORD GT.

BTW, a TR3A with the top up measures 48".

Now that was when
Racin was Racin

Actually, the original name of the car was just the "Ford GT" The 40 moniker does apply to its height and the term GT40 stuck with it from very early on. But to Ford, it was always the "Ford GT" When they made the retro 'supercar' they wanted to name it "GT40", regardless of its height this time, because of the instant recognition. After-all, GT40 was much more recognizable than "Ford GT". But since they had never copyrighted the "GT40" name, someone else beat them to it. I read that the person who did copyright it wanted some extravagant amount (in the millions) from Ford for the name. So Ford told him to take a hike. Incedentally, outside the US, the new "Ford GT" is/was marketed as the "GT40".

At least that is what Carroll Shelby told me last December.

Also, for those that care, GT350 and GT500 had nothing to do with horsepower ratings. The 350 was how many feet it was between buildings at Shelby American in California. 500 seemed the next logical step above 350. Simple and dumb but that's how Carroll swears the designations were made. :wink:

Lotus Europa - 42 1/2 inches high. Lotus GT42 and 1/2 does not have quite the same ring.

I believe the new Ford GT is 10% larger all-round, height, width, length compared to the original. A 1.1:1 scale model.

Rob.

Don Elliott said:

The original name of the car was the GT40. It measured 40 inches high - to the top of the roof.

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Is thaqt with or without the Gurney bump?

So my wife, who was in the insurance business, calls me up one day and asks what a Ford GT is; one of her clients has one, wants to insure it, but my wife can't find it in the Kelley Blue Book. "Ford GT could be a lot of cars, I say, what year is it?" She calls me back, "1966, Ford GT, that's all I know"....

WOW, (if it is what I think it is), ask your client if it's low to the ground..... wife calls back, "yeah, real low, deceased husband's car, parked in garage for over 10 years, what's it worth? "250K? I say, maybe less, maybe a lot more, does she want to sell? Have her call Hagerty; too obscure for State Farm."

Seems the old client didn't know anything about it, but did know it was worth big bucks, and appreciated being sent to the right people....

Man, that thing still looks modern now as it did back then! It's gotta be worth about a cool $1 million... no?

Even though the new cars do a marvelous job “capturing the spirit” of the older ones and have the same styling “language” or whatever the heck the designers want to call it, the differences between the original cars (engineered from the ground up for racing at LeMans) and the new ones (purely a street car) are huge. (And when they sit side by side you really see just how big the new ones are in comparison.)

Everything about them feels the same, but everything is different.





Dan don’t need no bubble in the new one!





PC.

On ya Dan, those Gurney-Weslake heads for the Mustang were horspower on a stick.

There's a red ex USA GT40 with the Gurney (helmet) bump running around here in the Historics. Don't know if Dan drove it...maybe though, as who else was that tall ?.

I climbed down into one as a youth. Horrible thing...intractable, uncomfortable driving as if in bed, hot as billio with no air, hopeless to park, so the friend who owned it,(just a 289, not the 427 side-oiler)flogged it as a dead loss for a road car. He also had one of the 16 genuine 1957 XKSS Jags in his umteen car garage - what a blast that was.

Viv.

Of course Superformance now makes a GT40 replica that is almost Identical to the original. they claim that 80% of the parts between the two are interchangable. Peter Brock (the designer of the original) had a heavy hand in the design of this one.

...cept the superformance has roll up windows. good addition for a daily driver.

Banjo said:

Of course Superformance now makes a GT40 replica that is almost Identical to the original. they claim that 80% of the parts between the two are interchangable. Peter Brock (the designer of the original) had a heavy hand in the design of this one.

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Banjo, I think you mean the Cobra Daytona Coupe. Peter Brock didn't have anything to do with the design of the GT40 but he did design the Daytona Coupe. Eric Broadley at Lola working with Ford Advanced Vehicles in Slough (England) designed the original Ford GT (GT40). Basically, the GT40 is a re-design of the Lola Mk6. Hence, the very British connection with the GT40.