Few American performance cars are as iconic as the Ford GT and eager to see how a 2005 example performs against a classic GT40 Mk III from 1967, Doug DeMuro and the Petersen Automotive Museum teamed up to put them to the test.
While the original GT was created for Ford to compete at the Le Mans 24 Hours, the car manufacturer did build several road-legal examples and the 1967 featured in this video is one of them. Indeed, it is one of just seven Mk III models of its kind and is one of just four with left-hand drive.
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Powering the classic GT is a 289 cubic-inch V8 with 306 hp, which are sent to the the rear wheels. By comparison, the 2005 GT featured in the video has a 5.4-liter supercharged V8 that churns out 550 hp at 6,500 rpm and 500 lb-ft (678 Nm) of torque at 4,500 rpm. It too is rear-wheel drive and has a six-speed manual transmission from Ricardo.
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone that the new GT has the performance advantage over its predecessor. It gets off the line more efficiently while the Mk III spins up its rear wheels as it struggles for traction. For a brief moment in the first race, the old car does momentarily get ahead of the 2005 model, but that doesn’t last long as DeMuro makes the most of his extra grunt.