This is on point. The GT is somewhat similar in concept as the LFA, just better executed. Ford did the heavy lifting and contracted out the production. I’m sure they looked at how much money Toyota lost (think carbon fiber loom) on the LFA and decided to pass on in house production. No way Ford would have been able to keep the GT secret if it was an outsourced product start to finish.If you just want some info and ignore trolling...
I went to Rolex 24 with Garen Nicoghosian. Picked him up in Tampa in the GT and gave him the opportunity to spend a couple hundred miles in the car. He was the exterior design manager on the car. That basement studio at the Ford Product Development Center in Dearborn you've seen in all the stories; that's where he worked on the car basically 24/7 dating back to 2014. If you know anything about Project Silver, he worked on that too dating back to 2012, I believe. A lot of the stuff from Project Silver made its way to PHX. If I had to say what guy did most of the day to day minutaie on the design of the car from, it would be him. Surfaces, materials, shapes, etc all of it. 350 miles in a car with a guy who did all that stuff...you will hear stories about all of it.
Chris Svensson is in charge of all design of all cars in North America. Craig Metros is in charge of all exterior design. Svensson->Metros->Nicoghosian. Before Metros came back to the U.S, an Australian guy named Todd Willing had that job. There's a lot of people involved in the design of the car, but all of those guys personally put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into the GT in that studio. I don't pay as much attention to interior stuff but I know somewhat of the interior counterpart to Nicoghosian was a guy named Bill Mangan, who also did most of the interior theme stuff on the 05.
You can't really pin one guy on the design of a car, so I would say those 5 names are the most important names in the process. I would also say that you can't really assign any credit to anything on this car without ultimately getting to Raj Nair, who was the VP in charge of every product Ford builds around the world at the time. This car is his, and his hands are all over it no matter what the topic.
MM was used on production of the car because they've been a Ford technical partner for a long time and the whole racing thing. Multimatic nearly built the 05/06 GT, and built the first prototypes of that car. Ultimately John Coletti somehow handed it to Saleen instead, but MM still at least ended up producing a couple thousand billet control arms for the car. The guy that runs the production facility in Markham actually ran Milford Fabricating in Detroit when they were producing the frames for the 05/06. He commutes from here to run the plant. The guy that runs the paint facility at MNV, ran the paint facility at Saleen Special Vehicles in MI when they produced the 05/06. You can probably get a sense that there's a lot of repeat personnel on both cars.
Multimatic's technical expertise comes in on chassis and suspension. The DSSV damper is ubiquitous across the industry and race world. A guy named George Howard-Chappell runs their WEC team and is kind of the race brains. I think he and this aerodynamicist Mark Handford (best known from F1) did a lot of the "maximize race capability to the rules" stuff. He ran Prodrive for years when they won LM for Ferrari and Aston Martin. A guy named Brian Willis was an MM employee responsible for a bunch of chassis/suspension stuff that I gather dated back to the Le Mans LMP-winning 1999 BMW V12 LMR. Larry Holt, who is the overall brains of Multimatic, is the dude that runs it all. He is truly a beyond amazing character. I've hung out with him quite a bit the last few years and everyone is coming to hm for something. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of motorsport. I've walked the plant with him twice and that alone is worth the price of admission if you are a car guy.
Beyond that, it would require a book to get into the people working on the car in Allen Park. Everyone here is familiar with Jamal, Pericak, but there's a whole bunch of dudes who have spent the last 3 years of their Ford careers at FP doing nothing but working on this car. Some of them will continue to do nothing but GT until it's completion. The "it's a MM car" thing is a cheap troll.
Ford GT at VIR
- Thread starter DBK
- Start date
This is on point. The GT is somewhat similar in concept as the LFA, just better executed. Ford did the heavy lifting and contracted out the production. I’m sure they looked at how much money Toyota lost (think carbon fiber loom) on the LFA and decided to pass on in house production. No way Ford would have been able to keep the GT secret if it was an outsourced product start to finish.
Ford needed all that skunkworks bullshit yet the guys up the street designed and assembled a better track car completely in-house using dinosaur pushrod engine architecture and leaf springs, and did so on a true production car that anyone with the cash (~25% of the GT cost) can purchase.
The 2005 GT was a great car that Ford got everything right on, while the 2017 GT squandered it's heritage with the 6 cylinder powerplant and it's unobtainium status. Fittingly they BOTH got eclipsed by an assembly line Corvette soon after their release.
No it wasn't my opinion at all. It was based off of facts that I read from DBK's website...*shrugs*
And wow, that is beyond great. What an experience that must have been. The thread on your site I got my info from didn't go into all this detail and appreciate you posting it here.
I had no idea Multimatic had a hand in the 05/06 GT's. And I knew Ford put in a great deal of work on the NFT but I wouldn't have guessed they started all the way back in 2012.
Dont you work for Ford? Im surprised you hate the company you work for so much. Why not quit and work for a Chevy dealership?
What was the engine they used in this better track car you speak of?
GT started late summer-ish 2013. The program that preceded it, Project Silver, that got axed started in 2012. They were going to run a CF tub homologation special Mustang at LM but it didn't survive. Luckily.
Gotcha.
Gotcha. I was just shocked to see them working on Les Mans that far back. That did intrigue me more to find more info on the cancelled Mustang for Les Mans. It was a good read.
http://fordauthority.com/2017/04/ra...ancelled-project-silver-s550-mustang-program/
Gotcha. I was just shocked to see them working on Les Mans that far back. That did intrigue me more to find more info on the cancelled Mustang for Les Mans. It was a good read.
http://fordauthority.com/2017/04/ra...ancelled-project-silver-s550-mustang-program/
Awe man, that hurts.... lol...
Quit acting like a damn child and learn to differentiate between an actual “troll” and someone who just happens to not share your same biased AF opinions.
Sure you do trigglypuff, sure you do... lol
Nope. You are definitely an actual troll/possible teenage girl.
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