Can Ford Control Ford GT Ownership Through Applications? Lexus Did

by Aaron Cole

Updated: December 31st, 2020 Published: August 28th, 2015

can ford control ford gt ownership through applications lexus did

If Ford wants to control sales of its extremely small production of Ford GT and vet its owners, it only needs to look at the Lexus playbook from 2010 to see how.

On Thursday, Ford’s Group Vice President for Global Product Development and Chief Technical Officer Raj Nair told a group of last-gen Ford GT owners that it would ask potential owners to submit an application through the automaker to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the supercar. Official pricing for the car hasn’t been announced, nor has the criteria for ownership been made public.

Ford said it would only make available 250 cars each year worldwide. There are more than 3,200 dealerships in America alone and more than 7,500 worldwide.

If all this sounds familiar (as in, 500 Lexus LF-A cars at $400,000 for thousands of Toyota dealers) you might be right.

In 2010, Autoblog detailed the extraordinary process that potential LF-A buyers had to go through to qualify to buy the car.

Included was a “lease” option with $60,000 in deposits required before getting the car, $297,000 due upon receipt of the car, and a $93,000 option to buy the car after the 24-month lease expired. The “lease” amount was $12,398.44 per month.

Ford hasn’t announced how much it will sell the Ford GT for, or how it would collect that money, but it appears that every part of the buying process for the supercar will be unique to the Ford GT alone.

In 2005, when the last generation of Ford GTs were sold in America, the first cars were going nearly $100,000 over the MSRP price, as chronicled by the defunct FordGTPrices.com. As production ramped up on that car in 2006, prices eventually normalized to MSRP, but as the former site’s administrator Paul Allen told us, the 4,000+ volume of the last generation car and the 250-per-year production of this car makes it a whole different animal.

In its bulletin to dealers, Ford said it would make available to dealership owners a separate number of cars — available by application as well — for them to buy. Those cars would still come from the 250 produced each year, but a Ford spokesman declined to say how many would be allocated to dealer owners.

#Application #Ford #Gt #Supercar

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4 of 22 comments

Higheriq on Aug 28, 2015

And here is the official application: Question 1. Can you afford it? End of application.

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- ClutchCarGo on Aug 28, 2015
  
  As with yachts, if you have to ask how much, you can't afford it. Smithers will see you out.
  
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Ihatejalops on Aug 28, 2015

Meh. Without a V8, it's just a bleh car.

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- Raph on Aug 28, 2015
  
  I think that's a valid point although this car will have a competition pedigree (well factory at least). Not that the prior Ford GT doesn't have one, it holds the record for the standing mile and has some road racing under its belt, just no factory stuff. The Ford GT hasn't done bad for itself as an asset but compared to the GT40 they are chump change. Look up original GT40 transaction prices I believe they are still in the millions. In any event we shall see how the V6 effects the status of the car as it sells and down the road.
  
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