Ford has revealed that it originally planned to return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the Mustang and not the new GT.
The automaker was investigating a Le Mans entrance for the Mustang prior to the third-generation GT being given the thumbs up to race.
Speaking at the SAE International’s WXC conference in Detroit, Ford chief technology officer Raj Nair said “It was all good learning, but it turns out not to be the right fit. Ultimately, Mustang does not need Le Mans to be a global car. o be candid, I still wanted to do it. I was actually a little bit mad … in fact, I was really mad.”
Ford executives ultimately rejected the project after it was determined that it’d cost $250,000 or more to modify each Mustang for racing.
After this rejection, Nair led a team of less than a dozen to start work on the new GT supercar in late 2013 without informing top executives include chief executive Mark Fields and executive chairman Bill Ford.
“I was just determined that we were going to have to do it but we were going to have to do it differently,” Nair commented.
The rest, as they say, is history.
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