Class clone: Ford engineers take a blast from the past, infuse it with Ferrari DNA and create the ultimate supercar

Automotive Industries, Jan, 2003 by John Peter

As the story goes, Henry Ford II became upset with Enzo Ferrari when he refused to sell his company to Ford. He sent out an edict to his engineering staff that they would build a race car capable of beating Ferrari at his own game, the 24 Hours of LeMans, the most prestigious race in Europe. They succeeded, finishing 1, 2 and 3 in 1966 and going on to win for four consecutive years.

It's hard to ignore the historical significance of Ford's new GT supemar. Not just because designer Camilo Pardo has created a near spitting image of the historic racer, but because the first running prototype is sitting within spitting distance of a bright red Ferrari 360 Modena -- the benchmark for the Ford GT, and the car these engineers set out to better.

"What better way to celebrate the centennial than looking backward and looking forward," says Chris Theodore, vice president of product development. "It's a great way to celebrate one of the greatest racing cars of all time, but actually take it forward into a road car."

Theodore says that secondly it's a halo product. "We wanted to have a product that's kind of a lightning rod. Imagine one of these sitting in the dealer showroom. It certainly polishes the Ford oval and establishes an icon of all icons."

But the last reason may just be the most valuable. Ford is using the GT program as a technological proving ground for how new product programs will be done in the future.

SVT Program Director John Colletti says, "Everything we're doing on this car is unprecedented -- the way we assemble the car, the way we're pursuing the project, the timing of the project, the cost of the project, the investment and the engineering."

Chief Program Engineer Neil Hannemann knows about 'halo cars.' He was the lead product development engineer for the Dodge Viper program, before coming over to Ford to head up the GT team.

The GT program got the okay from Ford executives Bill Ford and Nick Scheele in January, after the concept car made its debut at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. It was decided that a production version of the GT would go on sale in the summer of 2004. The timing was quite an undertaking for a car of this magnitude.

"We spent the better part of a week going through and trying to figure out everything we could do using the current technology," Hannemann says. "The ways you could cut corners -- the ways you could save time."

Hannemann says that a lot of time was taken out of the beginning of the program by doing all of the design, engineering and analysis virtually. This is the first totally virtual program that Ford has done.

"We needed to compress the virtual time," Hannemann adds. "The design had to happen simultaneously with the engineering. So that determined how we set the team up."

Though the decision was made in January, actual work on the project didn't begin until May 1, when the hand-picked team of engineers was assembled. Everyone working on the project was put into the same room.

"We started design reviews immediately on sight," Hannemann says.

He adds that there were weekly reviews where the whole team came together to go over the entire car as well as many adhoc meetings held around CAD terminals, with engineers, designers and suppliers interacting in real time making on-the-spot decisions.

The supply base was linked to the same CAE system allowing them to look on in realtime during the main table review. Ford carefully picked the supply base, signing on suppliers with experience in doing low volume vehicles and doing them quickly.

This will be the first program for Ford CAE-wise that we only had one level of prototype for crash testing.

"Six months ago," Hannemann says, "we had a frame and an engine, and we started working on the car from there. Our designs are firming up, we're building prototypes and we're to the point of starting production tooling. What's happened between May and where we are now is a model of the continuous transformation we re going to be making in creating product in the future."

Chassis

"We had some extremely aggressive stiffness targets for this frame," says Huibert Mees, supervisor, chassis systems. "In order to make a high-performance vehicle, you have to have a very strong backbone and structure."

Ford developed them first using modeling techniques, then the team convinced Ford management that if they let them buy a $140,000 Ferrari 360 Modena, they'd take very good care of it.

"We wanted to know how well this car performed," Mees says, "and the only way to do that was to measure it. In order to measure the torsional stiffness, you have to disassemble most of the vehicle. So that's what we did."

Without the blessings of upper management, the Ferrari was disassembled and chassis was twisted.

After measuring the Ferrari 360 they found that the Ferrari's torsional stiffness was right where they had set their targets. The Ferrari measured just under 16,000 ib.ft. per degree of torsion. The GT design exceeded those targets by 40 percent.

"If you have the stiffness in the chassis," Mees says, "you can fine tune the suspension and NVH will follow."