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Likewise, you haven't proven that Ford named the 2002 concept after teh GT40 as a "nickname."The Ford Motor Company didnt do that to save face they named the car after its proper name and not the iconic nickname the car was giving due to not owning the rights to the name,if you can back up with evidence saying that they did it to save face then go head,again you are making the assumtion that they did without providing facts.
My proof is right here.
Pretty much every time the GT40 is not mentioned in the same breath as the Ford GT 2005 car, it is called GT40. Every time the article is about the 2005 car and is mentioned at the same time as the GT40, the GT40 is called Ford GT, and the 2005 car was named after it. That's not only saving face, that's treating the public to contrasting PR releases and treating them like children.
The only times the 1965+ cars are called Ford GT is for the purposes of hyping the 2005 car. Otherwise even Ford calls it the GT40. If that wasn't the car's official name, they wouldn't call it that at all because that would cause confusion over what the 2005 car was named after. They even admitted themselves at the rechristening of the 2002 concept that GT40 was technically less appropriate than GT, but that GT would fit just as well because that was the name of the original GT40s (1964 cars).
This, when combined with period documentation that always refers to the 1965 cars as GT40, the chassis codes, the fact that Henry Ford obviously didn't care what it was called as you contend, and various circumstantial evidence, I can't understand why you are so wholeheartedly against the fact that the car was called GT40. I actually think you do think it was called GT40, because all of your "evidence" points to it being called "GT40" anyways, and only being "GT" in 1964.
What you posted in post #7 was a sales brochure titled "GT40." That makes any mention of "GT" simply shorthand. It does not make "GT" the actual name for it because it was used once (!) more than GT40 is (which is a pretty stupid argument anyways). That is just how things work. You don't title a brochure "GT40" if that is not the name of the car.what i posted in post 7 showed in that the car was refered to more being the GT and not the gt40.
He's also bankrolled by Ford for life. Not the most impartial of opinions. He says what Ford wants him to say, and since everytime it comes up it is in reference to the 2005 car, of course he says it is the GT.carroll might not have had any say in the name but he worked on the cars for almost 5 years so i would be pretty confident that he would know what the car was called.