Why doesn't Ford support the teams racing the "new" Ford GT

[Rick Parker]

Current automotive marketing by the big 3 and Japan is focused on the 23-45 year old crowd. They are the ones that are the future of the automotive companies with the majority of the disposable income. All the smallish cars are designed for and intended to appeal largely to this demographic group. Once a manufacturer has you as an owner they will do everything possible to keep you brand loyal and move you in progression through their various carlines. The Ford GT is at the end of the rainbow for those lucky few that are fortunate enough to own them. Much like the Cobra was once the 70's rolled around, they had run their laps and had their turn. Too small of a market to focus upon and too much money spent to market each individual car. That's why Chevrolet is discontinuing the Avalanche; its run is over.

[Historybuff]

I guess I was looking at the Ford GT ('05-'06) from the Baby Boomer viewpoint but now that I've seen who owns them--fat cats who rarely take them out--I realize they built The Amazing Disappearing Car in that they are seen far less than, say Ferrari Daytonas of which roughly 1200 were made.
So I guess what they need is something exotic looking with a high performance powerplant , rear wheel drive, that's affordable by the young, who they can hook into buying Fords for decades. Maybe I could accept a V6 but a four, even turbocharged, would seem so puny compared to a V8. (What about a mini-V8, maybe 4 liter?). And I wouldn't like it to be like the last Toyota MR2 which was mid-engined but too small and delicate.

At any rate, once Ford starts to coin money with a bread and butter car that millions buy, and make a profit I'd like to see them do a high performance mid-engined car, maybe with GT40 design elements (to start with they could buy one example of a smaller mid-engined chassis and rebody it with the '05 body panels to see how it looks shrunken down).

PS It's not all bad that the '05-'06 Ford GTs didn't sell that much because now, because of their rarity and the fact they are 200-mph plus cars, they seem to be going up in price (especially the Gulf liveried ones) so in a way Ford succeeded in creating a "modern" collector car kind of like a Cobra for the 2000s, though so far they are about 1/5th the price of a real CSX Sixties Cobra.