“What do you think I should do about those GT stripes?” Colin Lazarus asks as we ride the brand new Ford GT he’s driving for the first time on the way to it to Auto Africa where it’s to be Ford’s display centrepiece. “They wanted thirteen-thousand dollars to paint them on,” he adds.

“Well I have a damn good guy who stickers our racecars – why not let him have a bash?” The Ford sat proudly on Ford’s showcase without the stripes. Colin is still at odds whether or not to put them on the GT…

The red Ford GT we’re driving is likely to be the only one ever to come to South Africa – they ended production a couple of months ago and this was one of the last cars to roll off that limited production line. It’s here as mentioned as the centrepiece of Ford’s Auto Africa display – as you would have figured out by our exclusive prediction of that fact in our show preview last issue and from there it will be utilised as one of the centrepieces of Lazarus Ford’s 50th birthday celebrations in 2007.

I can’t drive it on the road yet as the insurance covers only Colin at this stage but sitting here with him on his first drive in the car is privilege enough – and I’m immediately impressed by the M5-like completeness of the GT’s repertoire on the freeway.

But what is this burbling red beast we’re riding the R28 with? To truly appreciate Ford GT one needs to rewind to the ‘sixties and to the fabulous Ford GT40 that inspired it. Essentially the upshot of a spat between Henry Ford II and Enzo Ferrari culminating from Enzo’s ultimate refusal to sell his financially ailing stable to Ford unless he ran all of Ford’s racing operations (Ferrari soon opted to sell to Fiat instead and the rest is history…) GT40 was soon the unbeatable crown jewel of mid-‘60s international endurance racing.

Specifically designed by the British-based Ford Advanced Vehicles Division to run as fast as 320km/h and maintain well over 200km for 24 hours, the sleek GT40 soon dominated world endurance racing, beating Ferrari at his own game. The root of the GT in its name is obvious, but did you know the 40 bit stemmed from the car being just 40 inches – or 1.3m tall…?

It took two Le Mans 24-hour races as practice in 1964 and ’65, but in 1966 the Ford GT40 in Mark II guise crushed Ferrari in that racing classic to end the Italian team’s run of six straight victories in a dramatic 1-2-3 clean sweep. Angered by European press downplaying the Ford success as a lucky win, Henry II promised to come back and win again with an all-American car driven by an All-American team. Ford kept his promise when AJ Foyt and Dan Gurney steered a Dearborn, Michigan designed, built and engineered 7-liter GT40 Mark IV to a dominant four-lap victory over the Ferraris s in the 1967 Le Mans 24 Hours to even further entrench that GT40 legend.

The GT40 is a most significant aspect of Ford’s history and when three years ago, Ford planned to build a new millennium tribute to Ford’s engineering, sporting and brand heritage, it did not have to look much further than GT40 for inspiration. In fact the untrained eye will struggle to tell the difference between a’66 Le Mans GT40 and the GT we’re driving today…

Based on that heady GT40 legend, the GT loses the 40 for good reason – it’s 43 inches tall to accommodate the average sized man – the original needed a modified roof for taller drivers to fit and many of the new car’s owners will be even. Access is surprisingly easy considering the still-low stature of the car, although that section of roof incorporated in the door to achieve that easy access makes it near impossible to get in or out in a parallel parking.

But then who’ll parallel-park this thing any way? A genuine concern is the guillotine-like tool that door-roof becomes on closing the door – be sure to duck on shutting it when sitting in the car!

Enough about those controversial doors – what about the rest of the car? Powered by a mid-mounted rear-driven all-aluminium 5.4-litre quad-cam 32-valve supercharged V8 mated to a 6-speed manual Ricardo transaxle, GT turns out 407kW at 6500 and 670Nm at 3750rpm – that’s 102bhp per litre. Interestingly the car needs to be set up for the octane fuel it has to run – Colin has opted for 95 pump for now but is considering upping it to 102 race fuel, although the spec sheet admits 91 is cool too.