Carmakers are clamouring to bring classic sportscars back from the graveyard, writes Amit Benjamin.
Legend has it, in the early '60s Ford was on the verge of buying Ferrari. But Enzo Ferrari, worried that his race-bred marque would lose its purity caught up in the blue oval's corporate shenanigans, pulled out of the deal at the last moment.
Henry Ford was livid at the public rebuttal and ordered his team of British engineers to build a car to take on the Italians at Le Mans. The result of this spite was the GT40, a low slung, fire-breathing, point and squirt supercar, which with its top speed of 207mph beat Ferrari at Le Mans four times on the trot. The GT40 was arguably the prettiest and most powerful American car ever made.
Over the years, many kit-car makers, and even Ford itself, tried to rekindle the GT40 magic and the results were pretty awful at best.
Ford's hideous GT90, which was apparently a modern version of the race original, was a dog to drive and looked nothing like the strikingly pretty GT40. Quite predictably, it didn't make it beyond concept stage.
It took Ford another 20 years to realise that the only way forward in the GT project was to go backwards. The result was the awesome Ford GT supercar.
GT started
Unveiled in 2003 to mark Ford's centenary celebrations, the GT is arguably the greatest sportscar to come back from the dead. Even though the new GT is higher, wider and longer than the original — which was just 40 inches high, hence the name GT40 — it is a lot more refined and powerful than the original. It is a '60s throwback with none of the '60s drawbacks. And sure enough, despite a staggering price tag of Dh750,000, the Ford GT went on to become a huge success.
King Cobra
Buoyed by the success of the GT project Ford scoured its old books and found dusty blueprints to another iconic badge from its stable – the Shelby Mustang.
The Shelby was the star in Steve McQueen's 1969 film Bullitt, in which it took on a Dodge Charger R/T in what is often acclaimed to be the greatest car chase sequence ever filmed. The Shelby had a massive legion of fans and old Shelby 'Stangs changed hands for increasingly higher amounts of money.
Obviously, there was a huge market, but Ford had to keep the new car as close to the original as possible.
In 2005, Ford unveiled the fearsome Shelby Cobra 500 at the 2004 American International Motor Show. With its pronounced wheel arches, a sloping bonnet and powerful haunches, the Shelby looked the business. In fact, Ford went the whole distance in recapturing the spirit of the old Mustang. In the '60s, the standard Mustang served merely as the base car which buyers would pump-up according to their specifications.
Ford revealed 11 different versions of the new Mustang, all with varying degrees of power, but all almost identical to the stunning Shelby concept appearance-wise.
The Mustang GT, which went on to become a huge success in America and the Middle East, especially the UAE, may not be the most sophisticated car to drive, but it is extremely gorgeous. There is a sense of drama and pantomime as you floor the GT; it raises its nose and lunges forward, riding on a wave of glorious V8 roar.
Interestingly though, despite its stunning good looks and a gorgeous V8, the Mustang GT carries a price tag of under Dh125,000, which could also explain why it's exceptionally popular.
The 500bhp Cobra, meanwhile, is expected to hit the UAE later this year.
Ready, steady, foe!
The return of the Shelby Mustang, spurred a string of retro revivals, the most notable being its nemesis from Bullitt – the Dodge Charger R/T.
In the film, the original Charger was the baddie car, and the new incarnation keeps the flame alive.
With its frowning headlamps, characteristic Dodge crosshair grille and its bigger than Arizona dimensions, the Charger set about its business of getting up the Shelby's nose all over again.
With its massive 5.7-litre HEMI engine and gargantuan proportions, the Charger is even more intimidating than the Shelby. In fact, it's so scary, the American police decided to induct these into its ranks as their steed of choice in 2006. Today, the cop Charger goes about its business scaring baddies, cabbies and the occasional Mustang on the streets of New York.
The Charger did extremely well and Dodge, on the back of the successful revival, announced plans to rebuild another of its iconic cars, the Challenger. This '70s classic was the underdog in the Dodge ranks, always living in the shadow of its more popular sibling the Charger.
While the Charger blitzed mainstream Hollywood films like Bullitt, the Challenger appeared in lesser titles, such as Vanishing Point. However, a part of its charm was that it was in production for barely 10 years.
While the Charger lived on for decades getting fatter and slower over the years, the Challenger died young. It was James Dean to Charger's Marlon Brando.
The new Challenger, which debuted in concept form at the 2006 Detroit Motor Show, will hit the streets in 2008.
Meanwhile, another American carmaker fallen on hard times saw this trend as an opportunity to turn its fortunes around. General Motors revived its famed Camaro badge, which it killed in 2002. The new Camaro is based on the '70s version of the car and will pack a fair bit of punch. While work is still in progress, the prototype is promising, both in terms of looks and performance. A colleague, a Dubai-based motoring journalist, has driven the Camaro prototype in Atlanta, US and describes it as a "glorious car, that will blow the socks off anything from Dodge or Ford". While it's too early to say anything for certain as engineering or performance details are under wraps, the new Camaro will probably be based on GM's most successful sportscar to date, the Corvette. Speaking of which...
Feel the Sting
The Corvette is America's most successful sportscar and has been around for over 50 years. However, the recipe has hardly changed: a huge V8 in the front, a snug cabin in the middle and rear-wheel drive at the back.
From the famed Stingray to the current performance Z06, all 'Vettes have been the same, in essence. But, even with its distinguished history, the marque is not immune to marketing upheavals, and GM is now said to be secretly working on one of the biggest retro-revivals of them all. The top-secret 650bhp super Corvette, bearing the legendary Stingray badge, is expected to break cover in 2009 with a truly terrifying price tag of over Dh600,000.
The Stingray promises to be the quickest and best-handling Corvette to date and will rival exotic European marques. In fact, spy-photographers claim the prototype, which has been dubbed the Blue Devil, is already lapping the fearsome Nurburgring track in Germany in around seven minutes. While all this may sound jolly exciting, there is a problem.
The eye-wetting price will put the new Corvette in the firing line of one of the biggest names in the business – Ferrari.
Ferrari's unsung hero
Rumour has it Ferrari is also hard at work recreating one of its legendary '70s sportcars, the Dino. The original Dino, which was a bit of a non-starter, was Enzo Ferrari's tribute to his son, Alfredino Ferrari, who died in 1956 at the age of 24 due to a kidney disease. It was the first mass-produced Ferrari and was priced as an entry level option. While Ferraris were powered by V12 and straight 12 engines, the Dinos packed smaller six-cylinder engines. Sadly however, the Dino failed to capture the imagination of motorists at the time and remained in production for only four years.
But, as they say, the star that burns twice as bright, lives half as long, the Dino started gaining popularity after its demise. It had all the makings of a classic. It was pretty, had an interesting story attached to its birth and, since it was in production for a very short time, was rare. Sure enough, the Dino is now hailed as one of the best Ferraris ever, making it increasingly sought after by collectors.
The new Dino, which Ferrari vehemently denies building, is expected to be priced below the current F430 and will be the 'baby' of the family.
However, since the Dino has now earned its stripes, it will no more be called so and will bear the famous prancing horse badge instead. While speculation is rife about the technical specifications, a 4.2 litre V8 is expected to power the first front-engined Ferrari in decades.
More importantly, however, unlike the old Dino, the new one will not be mass-produced and will stick to Ferrari's ideology of exclusivity. So in all probability it will still be out of reach of most people, and that is a good thing. In essence then, cars like the Dino and the Ford GT are a bit like a glamorous Hollywood actress — beautiful, fast, frustratingly difficult to live with and expensive to maintain. But like a glamorous Hollywood actress, everybody wants one.
