There’s a bit of eschatological fervor around the last edition of so many gas-powered cars, from the 2023 Chrysler 300C to the Audi R8 Coupe V10 GT RWD. An era is ending. This is no less true for the slowly departing Ford GT. The only difference is the Ford GT LM final edition car has a literal reliquary inside of it containing crushed bits of the car that podiumed in its class in the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The Middle Ages were a trip. Much of the world was advancing culturally, and Europe was grappling with changes in climate, the collapse of the dominant empire, and the rise of Christianity. However weird Europe was at this point in history, Medieval Christianity was its own bizarre experiment highlighted (lowlighted?) by the Crusades. Essentially, the Pope and a bunch of his best buds decided that it was important to reclaim the Holy Lands. It was brutal and violent and we are, to some extent, still living with the repercussions.
But the stuff! So much stuff! What’s the point of crossing so much of the known world, slowly, and watching your buddies die of completely treatable infections from minor wounds without bringing back stuff? A lot of it. During that time, Europe’s coffers filled with treasure, and the coolest souvenirs became religious relics — especially anything you could claim was connected to the original church. You put these relics in a reliquary and then put the reliquary in a church. At this point there are enough “pieces of the true cross” in Europe’s churches to build a freakin’ ark. There’s a nice wrap up here of the strangest ones and, yes, this list includes “the holy prepuce” aka the circumcised foreskin of the little baby Jesus.
I bring all this up, because what Ford has created in the final final edition 2022 Ford GT LM is a legit reliquary made of a ground down crankshaft. I’ll let them explain it:
Making the Ford GT LM Edition a special final tribute, the Ford Performance team looked for ways to embed the Le Mans podium-finishing spirit into each road car.
The result: the team located the third-place 2016 Ford GT (No. 69) racecar’s engine that was disassembled and shelved after the race, ground down the crankshaft into a powder, and developed a unique bespoke alloy used to 3D print the instrument panel badge for each of the 20 special-edition supercars.
That’s super weird. I like it, but it’s weird. Here’s what that engine looks like when it’s not ground down into parts. Maybe you can glimpse the crankshaft that ended up in the race car? It’s probably not possible to know, but it’s as close as look as you’re likely to get:
The 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 was built by Roush Yates, who also makes racing engines for NASCAR. One of the big bragging points at the time for Ford was that this engine was similar to what you’d fine in a Ford GT and it’s true that the blocks came from Ford’s Lima, Ohio plant the heads from the company’s engine plant in Cleveland.
Of course, the Ford GT LM actually has more power from its twin-turbo EcoBoost V6, putting out 660 horsepower. These 20 cars have some other important bits, including a unique 3D titanium-printed dual-exhaust, a 3D-printed GT LM badge, and an interior that can be done up in red or blue to match the race car’s livery. Otherwise, it’s basically a Ford GT, if there’s such a thing as a basic Ford GT.
No word on what one of these LM Edition cars costs, but expect it to be a lot and expect it to be a lot less than what someone is going to pay for it at auction in five years.
All images via Ford.
I love your headline. It sounds like a synopsis of a haunted car movie.
Personally I think they should just keep building variants of the Ford GT at a steady low-volume rate as long as people are buying them or until they don’t meet safety or emission standards anymore.
Still more in disbelieve that they’re still making the GT with special edition after special edition of a limited production car that they stopped racing years ago.
Yeah, I wonder if Ford in reality has made more special editions than “regular” editions.
In our social media age, I get it – this is more about owning something most others can’t have (might be a positional good) than owning something with a racing pedigree. In fact, I have a hard time imagining any of these will ever be raced in any form by their owners. I hope I’m wrong.
Why they didn’t put a V8 in this thing is beyond me. Just for the historical call-back.
Another thought: I think they should build the last one around Jeremy Clarkson. That way he can’t complain about how hard it is to get into the car.
Because of the marketing for Ford’s Ecoboost V6’s.
The V6 is so much more compact than the V8 that it gave a massive amount of design freedom. Performance, packaging, fuel economy, durability, and more; these are design factors for an engine when considering what’s required to win a race. The engineers that designed that knew that.
Also, race on Sunday, sell on Monday was likely also a factor.
It was due to packaging, they couldn’t fit a V8 in the body they wanted to build.
Marketing the EcoBoost is one reason but the other is the V6 is a 60 degree block so it’s much narrower than the 90 degree V8’s and this narrower engine allowed for the narrow design at the rear of the car where the air goes under the pillars and through the center of the rear wing which is probably the most unique aspect of the design.
Eh, you got me – I half-expected this to be about Dan Gurney having willed some of his bones to Ford so that he could keep racing.
A real missed opportunity here, if they had just made the car with a V8, they’d have enough crankshaft material to make 33% more plaques and sell 33% more absurdly marked up cars.