This article was first published in the November 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
At Ford Performance, near the auto giant's Dearborn, Michigan, HQ, Dave Pericak has a sign in his office that reads, "Cowboy Country".
Ford has a staff of around 187,000 and had revenues of $144 billion (£94bn) in 2015. How does such a massive entity innovate? Answer: a small team that operates outside the company. Ford Performance is a group of 130 people founded in March 2015 on the merger of its US-based Special Vehicle Team and its European Team RS (Rallye Sport). Its creations include the Mustang Shelby GT350 and the Focus RS, a 350bhp, 4WD hatchback in development. "We are a skunkworks," says Pericak, director of Ford Performance. "I'd equate our role to that of Navy Seals. We're specialised, we have to move fast and break the rules."
Eighteen months ago, Ford began a top-secret project to develop one of the world's most advanced supercars: the new Ford GT. A decade on from the last iteration, the 2016 GT will have a top speed in excess of 320kph, taking on Ferrari, McLaren and Lamborghini -- plus electric supercar marques such as Rimac and Renovo. "Only about 50 people knew about it before it was unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show in January," says Moray Callum, Ford's vice president of design. "We used to meet at strange times of day so as not to arouse suspicion."
Smartphones were banned. Most areas of the Ford facility are accessed via an electronic card; the underground home of the GT project, previously a storeroom, was accessed by a key held by no more than a dozen people.
Only 250 GTs will be built each year, fewer than 1,000 in total, and are expected to cost around £250,000. It has been created to facilitate Ford's return to Le Mans, the world's oldest endurance race, and to trial technologies to filter down to mainstream models.
For a vehicle built in such small numbers, the GT's complexity is staggering. Fifty sensors -- monitoring functions from pedal positions to humidity -- produce more than 100GB of data per hour, which is analysed by 25 microprocessors, instructed by more than ten million lines of code and processing 300MB of data every second. Even the door lock has its own code and microprocessor. (For context, Boeing says its Dreamliner aeroplane uses six million lines of code.)
But the main innovation is its use of materials. Most of the vehicle is carbon fibre: the wheel rims, for example, are 40 percent lighter than the aluminium equivalent. Reducing the mass makes the suspension more effective, boosts fuel efficiency and improves the power-to-weight ratio.
Much of the early design took place in a virtual reality cave in Ford's R&D facility in Dearborn. "The GT was spatially calibrated to the room," explains VR technician Elizabeth Baron. "This allowed the designers to explore the car without having to build a physical model."
By using a headset, a carefully positioned seat and a pointing stick, researchers are able to walk around the car, sit inside or even fly through the bodywork. This means they can optimise components before physical prototypes are built.
The designers can see how the shape interacts with the "real" world, by viewing it against different backdrops from cityscapes to B-roads. Early aerodynamic testing was also carried out digitally using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), which uses computer modelling to assess how the shape interacts with the air. Results were then verified in a wind tunnel using a scale model.
Small performance-driven subdivisions are nothing new. BMW has M Power, Audi has Quattro and Mercedes has AMG -- but they're normally high-margin offshoots of luxury brands, rather than mainstream monoliths. Incorporating such an agile operation into a company whose biggest selling model is an F150 pick-up truck, is not without its difficulties.
Autonomy and privileged access can create tensions in such a huge, bureaucratic organisation, hence the separate facility. "For strategic reasons we're not on the main campus," Pericak says, "and everything is under one roof. This is a key enabler for us. It's hard to have one of our guys sitting next to a mainstream guy who's not allowed to break the rules."
The team also had access to cutting-edge tools. The GT will be the first Ford to be developed using a driving simulator, commonplace in Formula One but relatively new to the road car. Given that hand-built prototypes cost millions of dollars, that helps to make such low-volume projects viable. Another development tool was more old-school: the team built full-size models in Styrofoam.
Although most Ford Performance models, such as the Fiesta ST or Focus RS, are built on mainstream production lines, the GT will be assembled by an outside supplier. Multimatic Motorsports is based in Ontario, Canada; itwill also build the racing versions. The cars will be largely hand-built, avoiding the huge tooling costs of mass-production.
Its biggest test comes in 2016, when the race version will launch a fresh assault on Le Mans, 50 years after the original GT40 made history. After all, designing a supercar boils down to just one thing: going faster.
Photography: Brian Wybenga; Illustration: John Devolle
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
