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

The chassis is an aluminum tubular space-frame made up of extrusions (with castings in key nodes and areas for strength) and a number of stampings.

"We knew that this was going to be a light and stiff structure," Mees says. "We have a lot of experience with it, a lot of lessons learned which we have applied, with the aid of the Ford research lab."

The A-pillar, header-beam and rear-support for the clamshell are bent extrusions, and the whole structure is welded together. Some bonding is done in the floors and the rear bulkhead. Four main aluminum castings serve as mounting points for the suspension.

"We did this to maximize the stiffness of the attachment points," Mees says. "It also gave us flexible geometry for those attachment points."

The engine is not a stressed member of the chassis due to the NVH concerns, a lesson learned from Ferrari's F-40. Another casting connects the tunnel to the bulkhead and to the rest of the vehicle.

The Ford GT's floor panels utilize the first automotive application of roll-bonding. Two thin sheets are rolled into each other. In between the two sheets is a silk-screened pattern of graphite. As the sheets are rolled with high pressure and heat, they bond to each other except in the areas where the graphite sits. Compressed air is blown into an opening and the two sheets inflate. What you have is a very strong lightweight construction.

The tunnel is constructed in several pieces. The top of the tunnel is done on a press brake and the flat side panels are welded to the tunnel using friction stir welding, another aircraft technology. The two panels overlap and something that looks like a drill bit with a small nipple on the end spins at 10,000 rpm. The heat from the friction melts the aluminum and the little nipple stirs the molten aluminum together creating a very clean and very strong weld.

Crush rails are bolted to the four main castings allowing for ease of replacement. Low-speed impacts will only damage the crush rails and not the rest of the car.

The suspension is an all-aluminum double-wishbone. Components are cast aluminum including the knuckle. Architecture for the front and rear are very similar. In the front, coil over shocks are attached to the lower control arm. In the rear they attach to the knuckle. There are anti-roll bars both front and rear, and a ZF steering gear is hard-mounted to the frame, forward of the center of the axle. Brembo supplies the entire braking system while Bosch supplies the four-channel ABS system.

235x45x18 Goodyear tires mount on 9 in. rims on the front and 315x40x19 Goodyears mount on 11.5 in. rims out back.

Body

The Ford GT's aluminum body panels will be manufactured by Mayflower Vehicle Systems of Farmington Hills, Mich. Body Structure Supervisor, Bill Clarke says that they chose aluminum over composites, like SMC, for weight savings. They were also able to rely heavily on the technological expertise used by Jaguar and Aston Martin. The aluminum quarter panels, fenders and doors are made using a super plastic forming process, where the sheet of aluminum is heated to near melting and slowly formed to a one-sided die. The space frame will have attachment points for the body panels to hang from in a manner that will allow for precise fit and finish.