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On Sept. 21, a little more than two years after the first production car rolled off the assembly line at the Special Vehicle Center in Wixom, Michigan, workers built the last Ford GT—a bright red one—destined for a customer in Canada.
Averaging about nine cars per day, the 60 assembly plant workers at Wixom built 4038 GTs; 3656 aimed at U.S. roads, 277 for Canada and 105 for Europe. The last 40 or so cars, all red and with slightly different bumpers to meet Canadian regulations, went to our northern neighbors.
Revealed as a concept at the 2002 Detroit auto show, the first GTs—paying homage to its ancestral cousin, the Ford GT40—were built in time for Ford’s centennial in the summer of 2003. One year later, on June 30, 2004, the first GT production car was built. From concept to production, the Ford GT was one of the fastest projects ever completed at Ford, said Fred Goodnow, engineering manager for the GT.
Speaking of speed, the 550-hp supercar was clocked at 211.89 mph at the Nardo test track in Italy. The GT making the run was a standard—if you can say standard when talking about the coachbuilt construction of the GT—car taken off the assembly line. All production cars are limited to 205 mph.
“We’re not going to see a project like this again soon,” Goodnow said. “If times were different, maybe we’d have a shot at continuing production or to see a derivative of some sort. But the company needs to focus its energies elsewhere right now.”
