There’s a particular joy in finding a rare version of a rare car. It’s even better if you can find a rare version of a rare car that showed up in a lot of automotive magazines, which allows you to see the car through the years. And that’s exactly what we have here.
Every Ford GT40 is a bona fide classic, worth oodles of money. However, this one has a fun twist. Rather than being raced at Le Mans, it was offered to journalists of the era, to allow them to convey to readers what driving the latest race-winning technology was like in real life.
That wasn’t its first role, though. Built for the 1967 Geneva Motor Show, it showed the world what a roadgoing version of the most recent Le Mans-winning car looked like. Although it had left the factory Opalescent Silver Blue, it was quickly repainted Metallic Borneo Green by Scuderia Filipinetti, who was in charge of the car while it was in Switzerland.
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After finishing its duties in Geneva, the car passed on to Ford UK, where it served in the company’s press fleet. While you may think that the fact that it didn’t race at Le Mans means that it was treated kindly, I’ve met fellow auto journalists, and I’ve read reviews from the ’60s, thus I suspect that this car was ridden hard and put away wet.
It only served as a press car for a few years, though. By 1971, it had been sold to a collector, who painted it yellow. In 2007, a new owner bought it and decided that it was high time the GT40 had a chance to play in its natural habitat: the racetrack.
The car was used as a vintage racer, even participating in the 2007 Goodwood Revival. At some point, it was returned to its original color scheme, Opalescent Silver Blue, and is now being offered for sale on Piston Heads.
Unfortunately, no price has been listed for the car, but estimates suggest that Ford built just 105 examples of the GT40, and made just a few roadgoing versions. Moreover, since this one has a unique history, it’s likely to cost quite a bit.
