Manoli Katakis 
Tomorrow is July 4th, and marks the 243rd anniversary of America’s independence from the imperialist islanders otherwise known as the British. In an attempt to forget, the Brits are putting on the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed in Sussex. To their credit, it’s possibly the best automotive festival in the world today. However, Ford plans on reminding the blokes in Britain just what day it is with a special version of the Ford GT supercar.
The teaser photo doesn’t reveal much, but it is nevertheless clearly a Ford GT with an extra large rear wing and roof-mounted scoop that looks like it was ripped right off of the IMSA and WEC race cars. Considering that the Ford GT production road car is all spoken for through its life cycle that ends in 2022, this announcement could be for a special track-only model, akin to the (ahem) Ferrari FXXK.
The Ford GT the announcement will be made by Hermann Salenbauch, global director of Ford Performance, and Larry Holt, chief technical officer of Multimatic, the Canadian firm that builds the road-going version for Ford, and designed the race car.
For those looking for some sort of V8 swap in place of the 647 horsepower, 550 lb-ft 3.5L EcoBoost V6, don’t hold your breath. The Ford GT was designed with the EcoBoost in mind, and its extreme packaging simply will not fit anything bigger. That said, Ford could give this higher-end version of the supercar a fully uncorked version of the engine, as it wouldn’t have to worry about various noise or emissions laws as a track-only car.
The production version of the Ford GT already commands a price of over $400,000, which buyers had to shell out after being approved by the automaker to buy one. For this special version of the car, we can only expect it to command an even higher price, and to have even more stringent requirements for ownership. We can’t wait to see this thing tomorrow.
