There are a lot of "What Ifs" at Ford. I remember when Roy Lunn's group at experimental engineering did the Mustang I. Fortunately, it fathered the Mustang as we now know it. The Bordinat Cobra was a typical styling excercise . . . slap a high style body on an existing car. There were a lot of them.
I have stories from the innards of Ford styling about still born projects that would make you cry. But here's one that really tore me up. And it was an original out of Larry Shinoda's studio. A mid-engine car that was built for the Corvette market and then some. We designed and built an original chassis at KarKraft for the car and developed it on the Dearborn Proving Grounds. Small-block power and ZF transaxle mounted in rear. With Alan Moffatt at the wheel, it was very fast on the handling course; even had quicker times than the MkIV GT40. That would undoubtedly not have been the case on faster courses. Here it is:
