The Museum was visited by the Ford GT40 Enthusiasts Club on Sunday, September 13th. In total 9 of these remarkable cars attended and our pictures show them parked around the Phantom and Sea Vixen aircraft.
The GT40 was produced by Ford in the 1960s to compete with Ferrari at the Le Mans 24 hour race, which Ferrari had won each year from 1960 to 1965. It was immediately successful, winning the event for the next four years.
Low and sleek it was originally named the Ford GT, but became known as the GT40 because the rules governing the Le Mans race required cars to measure at least 40 inches from the ground to the top of the windscreen.
Today original GT40s are rare collectors cars worth upwards of £250,000 and had Ford V8 engines of either 4.7l or 7l capacity. The cars that visited the Museum were all replicas with 4 or 5 litre Ford engines putting out around 300 bhp. Average 0 to 60 time for these cars is still brisk at around 4.5 seconds and fuel consumption, when driven with enthusiasm, can drop to a wallet cramping 8 mpg!
