It's got a rear mid mounted NA V8 going through a 6 speed manual gearbox powering the rear wheels. It is everything critics of the Corvette and the current GT say they want, and it's made in 2005. Sporting a handsomely retro look of its own, does the 2006 Ford GT prove that everything in the past was indeed better?
I can't speak of the general vibe in our weekly lobby as I wasn't there this week, but me personally, I find that driving the 2006 Ford GT is tiring.
The most apparent thing, and the thing that stayed the most prominent throughout my few test drives with the GT is the front end of the car feels rather floaty. Everything you attempt with the car, the front end will always be the limiting factor, and you'll be wrestling it at every turn, literally and figuratively. Mind you, this is a RMR car with 550HP (410kW) we're talking about here!
Braking for a corner, you have to slowly ease into the brake pedal to coax some neutrality back into the front end if the car is off neutral, such as when approaching the Andretti Hairpin of Laguna Seca—the car does squirm around quite a bit, after all. It's not quite pony car perilous, but it's not exactly 911 GT3 levels of tight, either. It forces drivers to be cognizant of where the weight of the car is at all times, and most importantly, to be gentle with it: slamming on the brakes like you would a racecar just causes the default Sport Hard tyres to start squealing at an alarming volume, massively elongating stopping distances even with ABS at default. I'd time travel into the future to buy the car to show you exactly what tyres it's supposed to come default with, along with its weight distribution, but the economy of the future has gone entirely down the crapper, and the world in its entirety with it. Don't blame me, blame human incompetence, greed, and divine karma.
*cough* Anyway, turn the GT into a corner, and you have to be intimately familiar with the exact whereabouts of the circumference of the front tyres' friction circles and be right on it at all times to get the front end to do anything, as the car feels completely nonchalant about turning unless they've weight over the front. The car's nose may not be heavy, per se, but it can feel incredibly inert without the right driving techniques. Even when powering out of a corner, throttle modulation is entirely for ensuring that the car doesn't understeer off the track and not at all for keeping the rear end in check. Certainly, there's more than enough power to break out the rear end shod with the same rubbish compound if you wish, as Vic will happily demonstrate to you, but if you're aiming for a fast lap, the rears will always be quite quiet. It simply isn't a car that is wont to slide, nor does it incentivise or reward drivers for doing so.
Thanks for your invaluable contribution every week to our club, Vic.
The mostly unwilling front end combined with its heavy steering makes the Ford GT is a proper workout to wrangle around a track, hence why I said it was tiring in the second paragraph. I could already feel my body hotting up and starting to sweat after just three laps of the relatively short Laguna Seca Raceway, and I really do wish it had a quicker steering rack (or god forbid me saying, a lighter steering) to help with that issue. Well, that, or a suspension setup that is just a tad rowdier, playful, with a bit of bite and knife edge to it to help it rotate into apexes. I get that there are barely more than 4,000 of these cars ever produced, each costing 145,000 USD when new in 2005 money, and thus no one wants the car to behave with that playful knife edge. It's just that, in the context of a video game, it's a bit... dull to drive as a result, especially when the car's famously delicious steering feel is completely lost in Gran Turismo.
Even though it's a powerful American V8, the driving experience of the GT really doesn't at all feel American to me. You have to be so clinical and measured in how you drive the car, setting it up for corners early and being technical with where you put weight on the car—a far cry from the slop- I mean, soft, showy, and explosive drives that I've come to associate with American cars. The engine is the one part of the car that feels properly American: ample low end torque, super satisfying to wring for every last rpm it can muster, and sounds properly mental throughout. And the styling of the car... ooh! Now THIS is how you do nostalgia in the modern day! Chef's kiss!
The Ford GT is a very unique car not just because it's a celebration of the company's centennium, not just because of who has owned one, but also because of how it drives. I daresay no American car drives quite like it, maybe not even the C8 Corvette, and certainly not its more modern counterpart. Having been put through some of the most prized pony cars of America's heyday, I can't agree at all that everything in the past is always better, but the 2005 Ford GT I think sits squarely in that sweet spot between the rowdy past and the sanitised future.
I just hope COTW has a better future.
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