TLDR (too long didn't read); Ford GT 0040 was delivered to me today, pics are in post #2.
Primer:
3+ years ago I changed my avatar to this:
It’s the cover of the album French band Phoenix released in 2013. It was my stealth acknowledgement that Phoenix would shortly become a very important term in Ford GT world, and it lined up nicely because 1) hey, there’s some decent race in France and 2) I listened to it a lot already. Better than an old Charles Barkley jersey.
Right before NAIAS 2015, Phoenix appeared on the floor plan of the show that leaked on the internet. Alongside a GT40 and a Ford GT, it didn’t take much for people to figure out what Phoenix would be.
Yesterday, June 9th, with impeccable timing, I got a notification on my phone that there was new Phoenix available for me, because they released a new album. And I also got a phone call that there was going to be a different new Phoenix available for me this weekend.
***
GT....40
Not that it's a big deal, but I was hoping for a cool VIN. I waffled on changing a few things but decided not to because it might lose the VIN. People were like "so what?" But my VIN is 0040. Get it? GT...40.
***
Options:
I went a little nuts on the color. I waffled all over the place, mainly because the car really and truly just looks awesome in every color. You could paint this car pink and it would look awesome (someone please do Lamborghini Rosso Targa). The shape of the car is so amazing that I really don't think you can screw it up with paint.
The car looks like a spaceship in white, and I am generally a white car guy. But after spending a lot of time looking at Porsche PTS and Lamborghini Ad Personam, I decided that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use the extended color palette program to paint the car whatever color I wanted. I spent hours and hours looking at PTS GT3 RS cars and Aventador SVs trying to find the right one. My Lamborghini dealer eventually just left me alone with all his paint samples to peruse them. I endlessly annoyed Ford Design Director Chris Svensson and Garen Nicoghosian over the various possibilities.
Ford provided me samples of Porsche Riviera Blue, Ford Stealth Grey, Lamborghini Grigio Telesto, and a large number of paint domes of Ford current and historical colors. I downloaded keyshot, the CAD for the show car, and the Axalta paint catalog and rendered it a bunch of different ways. There was no bad combo.
Tough call; do you go stealth, or tough, or crazy skittle? Do you try to be mature, do you try to be flashy? Ultimately, I really decided that little kids don’t go running after grey cars. The car is ultimately a fun, silly thing you hope will make people’s day when they see it. I always thought Jim Dunham had the right idea painting his first GT grabber, and his second in bright solid orange. So I went skittle, which coincidentally was my very first instinct when I went out and bought an xBox and Forza 6 just to play with the colors. So thanks for that Turn10 Big Boss! In the end it looked just like I had it in the Forza Vista garage. :lol
The color is high chroma, so when it in the right light it practically glows as it gets hit in different areas. It can be very different from top to bottom, especially on a car with so much shape. I'm beyond thrilled with the way it turned out.
I will say Andy Frisella and I were both on the verge of needing a support group during the color selection process of our cars. :lol His Arancio Borealis car turned out amazing.
I chose the base interior because in pursuit of the raciest look possible. I prefer the alcantara dash, steering wheel and seat backs. My only change, were it available, is that I would have preferred an Alcantara seat insert over the cloth. And contrast stitching. These cars make a lot of noise, so there is a giant NVH hush panel located behind the seats. I don’t care about noise, I want to see all of that carbon, so I already took that shit right out. :biggrin Looks sick. Noisier, hotter; do not care. The bit between the seats, and behind the seats as you look through the seat back is visible carbon. Gorgeous.
Part of the reason I picked the color is because I really love the contrast between it and gloss carbon fiber. I’d seen this combo on a couple 918 Spyders and just thought it really exploded. So I ordered the gloss carbon exterior panels and the gloss carbon fiber wheels. I actually prefer the aesthetic of the base wheel in gloss black, but ordered the CF for the cool factor and to complete the effect. I ordered silver calipers because it was really the only option that made sense. I think the contrast between the gloss CF and the paint looks absolutely unreal in the sun. It's almost blinding.
I did also get the harness bars, titanium lug nuts and the indoor car cover. I was pleasantly surprised at how nice the Ti lugs looked.
So that's it. PTS Riviera Blue 1 of 1 2017 Ford GT.
***
I would definitely like to thank Ford for the herculean effort they made to get me this car before Le Mans. It looked like it was going to happen, then not happen, then happen, then not happen like 472 times in the last 72 hours. It narrowly missed the truck that shipped the other cars for this week. I was definitely a pain in the ass about it, so I am very, very appreciative they found a way to make it happen. Especially famous Lynsey from the Concierge team who is super nice and I know went to bat for me on it, and Bernardo the product expert. They took time out of their weekends to bring me this thing. And my concierge Shane who I also drove nuts. :lol
Thanks to Kevin Koshkarian at Pat Milliken Ford for selling me this beast and also coming up here on his Saturday!
This is really such a special machine. Moray, Chris, Garen, Craig, Todd, and everyone else involved in the design have truly designed one of the all time greats. We have run 6 through here now. They are all wildly different, and incredibly amazing, because whatever dress it wears, it is a supermodel underneath.
The whole Ford Performance engineering team has also been awesome to be around, because they've hammered out this car under intense pressure in an incredibly short period of time. I drive them all nuts with the texting as much as possible, but only because I love them. :lol You are all going to love the cars Dave Pericak, Jamal Hameedi and the Ford Performance team deliver. That also applies to the genius Larry Holt, who remains my favorite all-time figure in all of the automotive industry, and his team at Multimatic. It's been a real pleasure to be able to see Multimatic Niche Vehicles and the incredible work they are doing under Jeff Tanis and Alan Eggly, both of whom are veterans of the 05/06 GT program.
And of course, I would like to thank Raj. This car absolutely would not have happened without Raj Nair. He is the father of the Ford GT. Its success is his success, on the road and on the track. He championed and actually got a Le Mans-winning homologation special Ford GT built, ensured it was a technological powerhouse, and one of the most beautiful cars ever built, while being both incredibly futuristic and true to its heritage. And now I own one. Incredible!
Primer:
3+ years ago I changed my avatar to this:
It’s the cover of the album French band Phoenix released in 2013. It was my stealth acknowledgement that Phoenix would shortly become a very important term in Ford GT world, and it lined up nicely because 1) hey, there’s some decent race in France and 2) I listened to it a lot already. Better than an old Charles Barkley jersey.
Right before NAIAS 2015, Phoenix appeared on the floor plan of the show that leaked on the internet. Alongside a GT40 and a Ford GT, it didn’t take much for people to figure out what Phoenix would be.
Yesterday, June 9th, with impeccable timing, I got a notification on my phone that there was new Phoenix available for me, because they released a new album. And I also got a phone call that there was going to be a different new Phoenix available for me this weekend.
***
GT....40
Not that it's a big deal, but I was hoping for a cool VIN. I waffled on changing a few things but decided not to because it might lose the VIN. People were like "so what?" But my VIN is 0040. Get it? GT...40.
***
Options:
I went a little nuts on the color. I waffled all over the place, mainly because the car really and truly just looks awesome in every color. You could paint this car pink and it would look awesome (someone please do Lamborghini Rosso Targa). The shape of the car is so amazing that I really don't think you can screw it up with paint.
The car looks like a spaceship in white, and I am generally a white car guy. But after spending a lot of time looking at Porsche PTS and Lamborghini Ad Personam, I decided that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use the extended color palette program to paint the car whatever color I wanted. I spent hours and hours looking at PTS GT3 RS cars and Aventador SVs trying to find the right one. My Lamborghini dealer eventually just left me alone with all his paint samples to peruse them. I endlessly annoyed Ford Design Director Chris Svensson and Garen Nicoghosian over the various possibilities.
Ford provided me samples of Porsche Riviera Blue, Ford Stealth Grey, Lamborghini Grigio Telesto, and a large number of paint domes of Ford current and historical colors. I downloaded keyshot, the CAD for the show car, and the Axalta paint catalog and rendered it a bunch of different ways. There was no bad combo.
Tough call; do you go stealth, or tough, or crazy skittle? Do you try to be mature, do you try to be flashy? Ultimately, I really decided that little kids don’t go running after grey cars. The car is ultimately a fun, silly thing you hope will make people’s day when they see it. I always thought Jim Dunham had the right idea painting his first GT grabber, and his second in bright solid orange. So I went skittle, which coincidentally was my very first instinct when I went out and bought an xBox and Forza 6 just to play with the colors. So thanks for that Turn10 Big Boss! In the end it looked just like I had it in the Forza Vista garage. :lol
The color is high chroma, so when it in the right light it practically glows as it gets hit in different areas. It can be very different from top to bottom, especially on a car with so much shape. I'm beyond thrilled with the way it turned out.
I will say Andy Frisella and I were both on the verge of needing a support group during the color selection process of our cars. :lol His Arancio Borealis car turned out amazing.
I chose the base interior because in pursuit of the raciest look possible. I prefer the alcantara dash, steering wheel and seat backs. My only change, were it available, is that I would have preferred an Alcantara seat insert over the cloth. And contrast stitching. These cars make a lot of noise, so there is a giant NVH hush panel located behind the seats. I don’t care about noise, I want to see all of that carbon, so I already took that shit right out. :biggrin Looks sick. Noisier, hotter; do not care. The bit between the seats, and behind the seats as you look through the seat back is visible carbon. Gorgeous.
Part of the reason I picked the color is because I really love the contrast between it and gloss carbon fiber. I’d seen this combo on a couple 918 Spyders and just thought it really exploded. So I ordered the gloss carbon exterior panels and the gloss carbon fiber wheels. I actually prefer the aesthetic of the base wheel in gloss black, but ordered the CF for the cool factor and to complete the effect. I ordered silver calipers because it was really the only option that made sense. I think the contrast between the gloss CF and the paint looks absolutely unreal in the sun. It's almost blinding.
I did also get the harness bars, titanium lug nuts and the indoor car cover. I was pleasantly surprised at how nice the Ti lugs looked.
So that's it. PTS Riviera Blue 1 of 1 2017 Ford GT.
***
I would definitely like to thank Ford for the herculean effort they made to get me this car before Le Mans. It looked like it was going to happen, then not happen, then happen, then not happen like 472 times in the last 72 hours. It narrowly missed the truck that shipped the other cars for this week. I was definitely a pain in the ass about it, so I am very, very appreciative they found a way to make it happen. Especially famous Lynsey from the Concierge team who is super nice and I know went to bat for me on it, and Bernardo the product expert. They took time out of their weekends to bring me this thing. And my concierge Shane who I also drove nuts. :lol
Thanks to Kevin Koshkarian at Pat Milliken Ford for selling me this beast and also coming up here on his Saturday!
This is really such a special machine. Moray, Chris, Garen, Craig, Todd, and everyone else involved in the design have truly designed one of the all time greats. We have run 6 through here now. They are all wildly different, and incredibly amazing, because whatever dress it wears, it is a supermodel underneath.
The whole Ford Performance engineering team has also been awesome to be around, because they've hammered out this car under intense pressure in an incredibly short period of time. I drive them all nuts with the texting as much as possible, but only because I love them. :lol You are all going to love the cars Dave Pericak, Jamal Hameedi and the Ford Performance team deliver. That also applies to the genius Larry Holt, who remains my favorite all-time figure in all of the automotive industry, and his team at Multimatic. It's been a real pleasure to be able to see Multimatic Niche Vehicles and the incredible work they are doing under Jeff Tanis and Alan Eggly, both of whom are veterans of the 05/06 GT program.
And of course, I would like to thank Raj. This car absolutely would not have happened without Raj Nair. He is the father of the Ford GT. Its success is his success, on the road and on the track. He championed and actually got a Le Mans-winning homologation special Ford GT built, ensured it was a technological powerhouse, and one of the most beautiful cars ever built, while being both incredibly futuristic and true to its heritage. And now I own one. Incredible!
