2017 Ford GT

Ford put a V6 in the GT. The internet screamed sacrilege.

The GT40 had a 7.0-litre V8. The 2005 GT had a 5.4-litre supercharged V8. The 2017 GT has a 3.5-litre twin-turbo V6 from an EcoBoost pickup truck. Forum threads reached thousands of comments. YouTube thumbnails used fire emojis. Everyone had an opinion.

Then people actually drove it.

The V6 That Shut Everyone Up

647 HP from a 3.5-litre twin-turbo EcoBoost. The turbos spool with a fury that pins you into the carbon fibre seat hard enough to leave an impression. The power delivery is relentless. No turbo lag. No gap in the band. Just a continuous, violent shove from 3,000 RPM to the redline.

The car weighs 2,955 lbs. Carbon fibre tub. Carbon fibre body panels. Carbon fibre wheels on some specs. Ford looked at every component and asked "can this be carbon fibre?" and if the answer was yes, they did it. If the answer was "technically no," they found a way.

Active suspension adjusts 100 times per second. The ride height drops in track mode. The rear wing extends. The car transforms from a road car into something that belongs on the Mulsanne Straight. The transition takes about two seconds.

The Flying Buttresses

The bodywork looks like it was designed by someone who genuinely doesn't care if you think it's ugly. The flying buttresses that channel air from the roof to the rear are the car's defining visual feature. They're functional. They're striking. They divide opinion violently.

At 216 mph, the active aero generates enough downforce to theoretically drive upside down. Nobody has tested this. Probably for the best. The steering is direct enough to feel individual pebbles through the wheel. The brakes have the stopping power of a concrete wall. Everything about this car was designed with a single question: "Will this help us win Le Mans?"

The Ghost in the Room

Carroll Shelby died in 2012. Three years before this car was unveiled. The V8 he would have demanded was replaced by a turbocharged V6 that sounds efficient rather than angry. The manual gearbox he championed gave way to a dual-clutch automatic. The raw, barely-controlled violence of the earlier GTs was replaced by surgical precision.

The car is objectively better in every measurable way. Faster. Lighter. More aerodynamic. More advanced. More capable. And it's also the first Ford GT that doesn't make you feel something in your chest when you turn the key.

That's the trade-off nobody at Ford will say out loud. The 2017 GT is the smartest car in the bloodline. The GT40 was the bravest. The 2005 was the most loveable. The 2017 is the most impressive. Impressive and loveable are not the same thing.

The numbers that won Le Mans. Again.

It won its class at Le Mans in 2016. Fifty years after the GT40's first win. Ford went back to the same track, against the same rival (well, Ferrari's descendants), and won again. That's a grudge with a fifty-year memory.

Ford built 1,350 of them. You couldn't just buy one. You had to apply. Ford selected buyers based on their social media following, their history with the brand, and their willingness to actually drive the car. John Cena bought one, drove it, sold it within weeks, and got sued by Ford. They were serious about this.

The 2017 GT is the most capable car Ford has ever built. It is brilliant. It is fast. It is a technological achievement that deserves every award it's received.

It just doesn't make you feel the way a GT should. And that's the one thing technology can't fix.