When Ford's global performance vehicle chief engineer Jamal Hameedi started to tell us how his team was targeting "the best power-to-weight ratio," we figured the sentence would end with "in its class." Nope. Hameedi instead capped off the claim with "of any car on the market." Ford has yet to reveal the GT's weight, but we're expecting it to be crazy light. As for the engine, Ford promises more than 600 horsepower.

Calaboogie is a very tight and windy track. Lots of corners on top of one another. Plays to cars that have very good transient performance. (Which I built into the car design.)

Ford and MTC have used that track now for years. We had 10-12 cars of varying types (including a 458 Speciale, Corvette, GTR, Macca, etc, etc.). We had pro drivers run each around the track and get objective and subjective numbers on all the cars for comparo. We had Ford and MTC people drive all the cars on the back roads doing same thing. A huge database of competitor info was creted from all this and was used in making sure teh car would be better than it's rivals. The consensus-on track and off track was the 458 Speciale was the best car there and the best sports car in the world. So we set our sights and making a better car than that. Which I believe we did.

The weight of the car was driven up from what I would have wanted by the addition of the active aero and active suspension bits. It just all adds up, bit by bit. By as mentioned all the simulation work showed the car was faster with the added bits than without. So why they are there.

Besides, when has anybody taken a Ferrari published weight number (or any number) seriously? Ferrari is famous for creative numbers! Like giving out an L/D for the street 458 that was nowhere near reality. Like so far from reality that it was laughable. (What they did was take the lowest Cd number the car had-based on it's active aero bits set for low drag and then take the highest Cl number tha car had-based on it's active aero
set for max downforce-and combined those two numbers for their L/D. Of course the fact that it was impossible to get both at same time was a minor detail.)

We weighed the 458 Speciale-and its weight "as delivered" as a street car is no where near the Ferrari published numbers. Go weigh one yourself...

As I have stated before -the big thing about the Ford GT is just how much effort was put into making the car's feedback as pure and linear and race like as possible. More so that any car out there. Add in the pure race car components the thing has and you have the purest race car to road car connection of any current production car.

That was a big, big goal for us. Make a car that could win LeMans, be superior to a 458 Speciale (It is) and have the best feedback possible for a street car. I think we hit that too.

For those people how have bought the car-congrats-it is not perfect-the NVH is not "Mercedes like", etc but it is a very special car. A huge amount of effort went into making sure of that ( every person at Ford and MTC who worked on the car-everyone's work was a bit brilliant) .

I wish I could afford one. But being the chief engineer on the program didn't pay well enough to let that happen....

We recently weighed my good friend's Speciale, and with full fuel it was 3303 lbs. Of note, my GT3 with full fuel in the extended range tank (about 24 gal capacity) was 3308 with full fuel. The Speciale cross weights were exactly 50.0%. Since I think the Speciale has about 23 gal capacity, the cars are almost identical in total weight.

Same scales, same location, same loading configuration. Neither car has particularly "heavy" or "light" options. All stock including wheels and tires. Speciale is 173 lb (78 kg) lighter than Italia in same configuration.

2015 US-Spec Speciale, completely full tank of fuel, no driver, no passenger, no modifications, no ballast: 3,321 lb
LF 718 lb
RF 709 lb
LR 937 lb
RR 957 lb
Front 43.0%
Rear 57.0%
LF/RR 50.4% (50.0% with driver in car)
RF/LR 49.6% (50.0% with driver in car)

2013 US-Spec Italia, completely full tank of fuel, no driver, no passenger, no modifications, no ballast: 3,494 lb
LF 730 lb
RF 766 lb
LR 999 lb
RR 999 lb
Front 42.8%
Rear 57.2%
LF/RR 49.5% (49.3% with driver in car)
RF/LR 50.5% (50.7% with driver in car)

Mine was 1425kg on empty fuel tanks; but with all other fluids. I have no luxury options, no front lifter; but I have the active headlights and heavier anti UV windscreen. No carbon fibre options either.