It’s been set up with a bias towards modern track use, with stiffer suspension, and this makes it sensitive to a bit of drizzle – you need to be careful with the power

There are some cars that beg to be replicated and at the top of the pile are the Cobra – the former Ace that was retro even before a V8  morphed it into an icon – and the GT40, which shared a similar iron engine but not much else.
It was a showroom Ford that became a superstar, epithets which as bedfellows seem strange out of context, but shouldn’t. There was a time when hardly a year went by without another Cobra or GT40 replica rolling out of a farm-estate factory unit somewhere in England, some with period engines, others with Rover V8s, and with a variety of transmissions and chassis and suspension layouts. Almost all wore a body that was dimensionally much like the original’s, for no other reason than it would likely have been moulded on one. Sometimes you had to ask yourself how it kept happening. Would you lend your original so someone could use it as a buck?
 
The car here is no farm barn enterprise but a Continuation GT40.

The prefix has a capital ‘C’ because the makers want you to know that this is as much like the real thing as possible. It’s made in South Africa by Hi-Tech – the outfit responsible for manufacturing the Noble GT cars – and imported by Le Mans Coupes, historic racer Nigel Hulme’s Crawley-based company. It wears a price tag of £100,000 (including VAT), which is either cheap when compared with the real thing (expect to pay anywhere between £500,000 and £1million depending on history) or worryingly close to that of the modern incarnation from the American giant. Ford made about 4000 GTs between 2003 and 2006, with a price tag of about £120,000. They haven’t depreciated and you’d expect to pay about that for a used one today.
 
Whether the new one flatters the old or the other way round is a debate that will continue to rage; but before we see whether the claim of 90% interchangeability of parts means the Continuation car not only looks, but also feels, smells and drives like the real thing, it’s worth another quick look at how the original GT40 came to be and what Hi-Tech has set out to replicate.

Forty-four years ago, way back in 1964, Ford of America’s power brokers had decided that victory – nay, domination – of European sports car races generally and Le Mans in particular would do their sales a power of good and, as was their way, thought the quickest way to the laurels was to buy somebody with a track record and attach the blue oval. Ferrari was top of that pile and the approach was duly made.

Enzo Ferrari – apparently a good friend of Ford the man – had no intention of selling to America but simply used the Ford interest to ramp up the value of his company, then sold it to Fiat, a detail about which the Italians apparently didn’t care and still don’t. Not to be deterred, the Ford men turned from Modena to the next best thing, Bromley in Kent and Eric Broadley of Lola.
 
A year earlier Broadley had been trying to mount a World Sports Car campaign with his Mk6, a stylishly beautiful GT which already used the 4.2-litre pushrod V8 engine from the Ford Falcon, and monocoque construction – where the strength comes from sheets riveted together to form boxes, rather than traditional welded tubes. Ambitious he certainly was, but the cash-strapped Broadley’s creation struggled to fulfil its potential and Ford’s approach seemed like manna from heaven. Broadley was quickly hoovered up by the corporate machine and put to work on a development of his Mk6 where his original inspiration would be an important ingredient in the GT40’s success. Broadley replicated the Mk6’s double box-section sills but skinned the tub in steel, material he also used for the floor and roof panels. It was a heavy mix, but strong – something which also applied to the iron Ford engine.
 
With just the one camshaft and a forest of pushrods, the 4.7-litre (289cu in) all-iron V8 came from Ford’s Mustang and, lightly modified, spun to just 6500rpm and pushed out about 390 horsepower. Compare that with the 450 of the rival Ferrari delivered at over eight, but the Ford’s leisurely pace and simple, stout construction – plus a surplus of litres – in theory gave it a better chance of survival over a long distance. The gearbox was a massive, proprietary German ZF five-speeder and like the rival Porsche it featured road car synchromesh. This might be a hindrance to the lightning shift in a sprint race but for a tired driver at the close of a night stint it helps preserve the gearteeth.

The body bore a distinct resemblance to the Lola’s, although it had a style of its own and rapidly became the icon that Ford had hoped. Handsome rather than stunning, it’s attractive in most people’s eyes and similarly most people know by now that the suffix ‘40’ that has since attached itself relates to the height of the body in inches.
 
When you first see and sit in a GT40, there are several details that strike you and the first is the driving position. You lie back at such an angle it’s like lolling in a deck chair, a perception heightened by the canvas seat cover with its steel ventilating rings. You have to bend a helmeted head to miss the roof – or more correctly the top of the door which curves over to form part of the body above you – but this is essential if you are to enter and exit in a hurry and, provided the pedals have been mounted in whichever of the three positions is appropriate to the length of your legs, from the shoulder down a GT40 is an unusually spacious place to start a 24-hour race.
 
But what about the more important thing, which is the drive? What is it that says to your backside and fingertips that this is the basis of a Le Mans winner? Road or race car, the engine sits inches from your shoulders and thrums, rattles or howls down a row of eight Weber trumpets according to where the needle on the Smiths tachometer is pointing. The steering is always weighty and feels quite low-geared, while the stubby gearshift down to your right needs a very deliberate movement to overcome powerful synchronisers. There’s also a lock-out mechanism on the gate which obliges you to go up all the way through the sequence before you can go down. It was a logical defence to stop drivers selecting second instead of fourth – something which probably wouldn’t break the engine but which would definitely lock the rear wheels and spin you off the road.
 
If it all sounds heavy and deliberate, it is, but this is strength not weakness. You pile into a corner a little too fast and the nose just edges wide in mild protest, more like a saloon than high-strung race car. Hit the power too early, wake up those lazy American horses too soon and the tail just sways to one side. Straighten up the wheel and it comes back almost by itself. Lock a wheel into a corner, decide that the right hand is better occupied with steering rather than the deliberate up and up then down and down of a downshift, and it hardly matters. The engine is nearly as happy in fourth as it would have been in third.
    
About the only thing you have to treat with a gentle touch is the brakes. Broadley fitted the best technology of the time – as did all his rivals – but by today’s standards it seems distinctly lacking. The discs are solid and the calipers small, with only two pistons each. It is one area where extra weight does extract a real penalty and some of the hotshoes of the time simply had to accept that lapping 10 seconds slower was the only way to ensure they had something to hand over at the pit stop. Some – like Jochen Rindt – hated this kind of discipline and would rather not bother with GTs.