2005 Ford GT

This car, Lot 112, sold for $308,000, including buyer’s premium, at RM Sotheby’s Scottsdale, AZ, auction on January 28, 2016.

Have you seen the new 2017 Ford GT yet? It looks phenomenal. It’s smooth and angular, yet sexy and slinky all at the same time. It certainly builds on the legend of both the GT40 and the GT. But what does that mean for values of previous-gen GTs in the future? We’ll get to that in a second.

Target: Ferrari … again

In 2005, retro styling was all the rage, and the Big Three’s design departments all jumped on board. Ford wanted to re-establish real street cred in this new market, and pulling no punches, they brought back the legendary shape of the GT40 in the new Ford GT.

The GT40 was arguably Ford’s biggest factory-issued victor at Le Mans. It kicked Ferrari up and down the track for four consecutive years. What’s even more fun is that all of it was done out of spite. The GT40 traces its roots to disagreement over a deal gone south between Ferrari and Ford — a disagreement that led to Ford declaring all-out war on Ferrari’s endurance-racing efforts.

Since Ford was back to fighting a modern-day muscle car war with the Detroit boys in the mid-2000s, they decided to up the ante and build an ultimate supercar to celebrate Ford’s centennial — and doing so again put Ferrari directly in their crosshairs, too. The GT aimed to better the successful 360 Modena: a supercar that carried sales profits to new corporate highs for Ferrari, was remarkably usable on the street, and could carry track duty with little modification.

Led by John Coletti, the Special Vehicle Team was put in charge of designing the GT, and they did a masterful job of it, using some components from the Ford parts bin.

Many high-tech design features and modern build techniques were employed, and chassis crossover was never a consideration. The body was all aluminum, and other exotic materials ensured light weight and torsional rigidity.

A 5.4-liter truck block was modified and cast specially for the dry-sump GT. That was mated to a reworked set of SVT Cobra R heads that held two cams each, and between them sat a twin-screw supercharger visible through the rear engine cover. While this engine choice sounds rather mundane, tuning yielded 550 horsepower and a tire-vaporizing 500 pound-feet of torque, which beat the 360 Modena on paper by 150 horses.

Markups and depreciation

Ford needed a supercar with a Blue Oval badge to be taken seriously again, and the 2005 GT was a home run in that context. Sales of the GT were immediately brisk, and many dealers were marking up cars well above their initial $139,995 base sticker price (later increased to $149,995). Unlike most supercars, however, the used-car depreciation curve of the GT was minimal.

In 2005, I remember contemplating these cars and where they would be in 10 years. Being a Ford fan, I was excited about the prospect of these being fully depreciated and becoming somewhat affordable, at least relative to their MSRP. Due to somewhat high production, it seemed like these were on track to follow established value trends. I figured these would become collectible after 10 to 15 years and begin to climb again in value after an initial downward drop. Of course, I was wrong — the GT did climb, it just did it 10 years early.

Ford managed to move 4,038 units by the end of production, and by 2008, prices for those in the collector market had already started to climb. Those values showed no signs of slowing until this past year.

The GT outlook

So where will value go from here? That’s a good question, as a lot of industry experts and enthusiasts have been somewhat mystified by GT prices and how they have bucked the trend of every other supercar out there — including all of Ferrari’s offerings of the day, minus the Enzo.

These days the 360 Modena trades for about a third of its MSRP, and per-year production figures are about the same as the GT. The 360 Modena was manufactured for seven years, though, and many more were made than the GT. We have more than a few years to go before 360 prices do anything beyond hedge inflation, as they are just used cars today.

Let’s return to the 2017 GT for a minute. The introduction of this car could make the 2005 GT feel like yesterday’s supercar with an aging pretty face. But will it?

The new GT will ditch the big American V8 in favor of a twin-turbo V6, which sounds like compromise. Supercars don’t compromise, but this V6 has 600 horsepower. Today, Ferrari and others, like McLaren, are running a twin-turbo V8. Why not Ford? How will the engine sound? Will Ford really race it? How these questions and many more are answered is what could drive the values of the 2005–06 GT in the future, and that big question is tough to answer.

Our GT here was sold for what is market price today for minimal mileage, excellent condition and all four options. Nobody got hurt on this transaction. The only way you do better is with a Gulf Livery Heritage Edition, which is positively sublime.

There seems to be a GT at every auction these days, and no fewer than five sold in January, with prices clustered together nicely when charted on a graph. The good news is that GTs are selling, which indicates demand today. But I’m willing to bet that the GT will face a little bit of a correction in the future. Does that mean you should sell? No. It means that if you are expecting double-digit returns on the GT, you may be waiting a while.

That said, if there’s one thing both the industry and I have learned, it’s not to underestimate Ford’s GT.

(Introductory description courtesy of RM Sotheby’s.