2021 Heritage Edition Teaser | Ford GT | Ford Performance

DBK said:

The politics of the dealer body are their own planet, but to me I would say that that could just be construed as a dealer selling cars. Outside of the automatic qualifiers, not a ton of dealers have gotten one that I'm aware of.

Given how many of the remaining cars are ostensibly slated for the EU, I would say there is near zero chance they don't have to send more cars into the U.S. before it's over. I'm not an optimist at this point about how those will be handled though.

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DBK said:

For like the 11 millionth time (luckily I'm bored this fine morning), this is both completely and provably false. That's not remotely close to what actually happened but it has become the apocryphal tale of Ford GT allocations. I don't even know what the percentage was in the second round, but just about 70% of the allocations originally made went to people solely because they owned 2005/2006 GTs. The remainder were mostly dealers, big fleet customers, technical and racing partners (NASCAR/IMSA), a smattering of collectors. The "social" category was virtually non-existent.

I've asked like 50,000 times and nobody ever responds. Show me, out of 1,350 allocations, a nice round 13 people that got an allocation because they are a social media influencer. Should be easy based on the widespread notion that's who was given an allocation. Realistically it's mainly Shmee and Jordan Maron, and honestly, both those ****ers deserve a trophy for what they've done with their cars. Shmee especially, and Ford doesn't do the guy any favors despite the fact he is a walking, talking advertisement for the car.

The truth is the vast majority of GTs in the U.S went to boring old people you will never see that own old Ford GTs. Period. That's who owns expensive collections of Fords, that's who owns the 05/06 for the most part, and that's who has $500-600k laying around to pay for a car.



He didn't have anything to do with it.

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13COBRA said:

Can't wait to get denied for a 5th time on my application.

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Great Asp said:

I know four people that were denied, you can be No 5!

It's frustrating to know how the system really works, but as with a lot of things, you have to know someone, or have naked pics of them.

E

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BigPoppa said:

<sigh>

First, the selection process was and still is a secret. Where did you get those figures?

Here's what Road and Track found:
Here Are the Notable People Ford Accepted and Rejected for GT Ownership

This particular article from The Drive even quotes Henry Ford III as basically saying exactly what i already pointed out:
Everything You Need to Know About the Ford GT Ownership Application Process

Literally 30 seconds to find this information.....with sources.

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DBK said:

The "just about 70%" was based on a publicly published quote direct from Raj (who also had his car delivered to me) when he was still President of the Americas, from an internal Ford newsletter (you can see here). It was actually exactly 69% Ford GT owners in Round 1. That alone nukes the "aka social media influencers" thing, given the demo of your average GT owner.

That number also did not include people who owned a GT but were awarded the allocation on the basis of qualifying out of category that was not "GT Owner." Jack Roush would be granted a car based on the Racing category, despite owning a GT. Same for dealers that qualified automatically based on specific sales metrics, like a Galpin. 87% of the overall total were Ford owners.

Those articles do not conflict with what I wrote. I'm just sayin, you don't even have to take my word for it; the vast majority of the cars went to people that own prior gen GTs, and a super tiny handful went to people notable for social media.

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Tob said:

I'd like to know more about the failed Mustang homologation effort for Le Mans.

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DBK said:

Very similar to GT. Rationale was to integrate launch of global Mustang with celebration of 66 Le Mans win by racing the new global product. They did all the typical shit, engineering/feasability/biz case. Car was pretty gnarly looking, wide monster with a terrible frontal area for high speed endurance racing (which ended up not really mattering anyways due to BoP). Would have needed a lot of waivers (which, again, ended up not really mattering based on all the shenanigans in IMSA/WEC). Carbon car, same powertrain, front engine, done by MM. Would have been at least $250k each, but if I recall the unit count was a lot lower. Got shot down pretty far along. There was executive support for the program when it was ongoing that vaporized when it came time to press the go button.

I was super happy when they killed it because I thought it was extremely no-brainer obvious they should do a Ford GT. That said, the time spent on Silver, and then the time in between Silver being nuked at Phoenix actually "officially" starting cost the GT program a lot. There were learnings from Silver applied to PHX but the dead time in between put GT way behind the gun.

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DBK said:

Car was pretty gnarly looking, wide monster with a terrible frontal area for high speed endurance racing...

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