GTP Cool Wall: 1995 Ford GT90

[bremics]

But hypothetically, with enough money and/or by knowing the right people, they could drive a Miura to work.

The GT90, though... you could have all the money in the world and be best mates with the Ford board, and you'd almost certainly still not be able to drive it, and definately not on the road. A car you could, even though the chance is tiny, drive to the pub in can be cool. A car in which you definately can't drive anywhere meaningful is never cool.

Pretty sure Jeremy Clarkson drove it. And the rich guy who bought it did.

It was detuned to 540(?) hp though.

 

[Tornado]

But hypothetically, with enough money and/or by knowing the right people, they could drive a Miura to work.

The GT90, though... you could have all the money in the world and be best mates with the Ford board, and you'd almost certainly still not be able to drive it, and definately not on the road.

The GT90 was no more undriveable than the XJ220 they hacked apart to build it was.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Uncool, personally I hate the look of it and find it an affront to the Ford GT heritage

 

[Famine]

I know the theory, but since SUBCC and SUBRC are 99% overriding factors for some people, I can only assume then that accessibility is the most important factor in determining cool for these people. Possibility of driving seems like a moot point given that most people on GTP do not get the chance to drive the Miura, it seems crazy to let off rare historic supercars based on a statistically insignificant possibility. My car is far more accessible than a Miura, it also got me places that were pretty meaningful for me, that I doubt the Miura would have handled as well - but I don't think many would vote SZ on a 120d.

That assumes that accessibility is a sliding scale with coolness - more of one equals more of the other. It's not that the more accessible a car is, the cooler it is, but that a car which is wholly inaccessible save for genuinely bizarre circumstances cannot reasonably be considered to be a car.

This time last week, circumstances aligned sufficiently for me to drive the new Audi R8 V10 plus. They were unlikely circumstances, really, but I think you'll agree that they aren't other-worldly in their unlikeliness.

A couple of concept cars and race cars now also make the list of things that some really unlikely circumstances will align to allow me to drive, so they're not now automatically seriously uncool on that basis - I know that @homeforsummer recently drove a concept car also. Again, they are unlikely circumstances but not quite out there with the most unlikely of things to have ever happened.

The one GT90 that exists would require an extremely unlikely set of circumstances for me to drive, though again not quite as unlikely as, say, the entire planet turning silver overnight. The car exists, functions, moves under its own power - though quite whether that power is what Ford says it was is a different question - and I recall that at the moment it is in the possession of a private individual. Given that the one person in a similar (albeit considerably more elevated and advanced) situation we know that has driven it was only allowed by Ford to do 50mph in it, I wouldn't be able to drive it very far should the unlikely circumstances occur, but nevertheless they're in the realms of possibility. Just.

Concept cars that have no engine or never had an engine can't be driven under any circumstances, no matter how unlikely and should not be considered to be cars. Aside from putting an engine into them, but I think you'd agree that this is a transformative effort to turn them into cars from what they were in concept form.



Incidentally, I voted the GT90 seriously uncool because it's a godawful-looking pile of massive ugly that seems vaguely reminiscent of wrapping a marble in 1980s dog poo and then slamming it into an anvil, with grossly overexaggerated power figures and ludicrous claims like "it needs ceramic tiles like those on the Shuttle to stop the engine from melting the carbon-fibre body panels" because it was the 1990s and everyone made mad crap like that up.

Except McLaren who showed up in silence with an actual 630hp car that actually did 240mph, won Le Mans in it and sodded off in silence

 

[Cano]

The rear of this car is impossibly awesome.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

I know the theory, but since SUBCC and SUBRC are 99% overriding factors for some people, I can only assume then that accessibility is the most important factor in determining cool for these people. Possibility of driving seems like a moot point given that most people on GTP do not get the chance to drive the Miura, it seems crazy to let off rare historic supercars based on a statistically insignificant possibility. My car is far more accessible than a Miura, it also got me places that were pretty meaningful for me, that I doubt the Miura would have handled as well - but I don't think many would vote SZ on a 120d.

I know it's a fruitless discussion.

It's fruitless only because this one concept car/thread was the tipping point in a series of cars that you feel don't get the deserved respect. Accessibility is a reasonable portion to consider when thinking cool, because it takes a car from being a car into either an art pieces that is not even the sum of it's claimed parts, or a dream of grandeur that is axed before said dream is realized or kills itself because it's own dreams are too big to be realized.

Point is Miura was actually built, many people or rather many more people have owned them and driven them then that of the single GT90 which probably could be counted on two hands. Miura has performance claims and said claims can be tested and seen...GT90 was publicly said by Ford and those who talked about the car as not ever having the turbos hooked up nor made the suggested power, because of its concept nature. See all these stipulation sum up into a simple SU because it's not what it is said to be, which is quite uncool.

 

[TheCracker]

Aside from the fact that you can rarely drive a concept car, as has been stated over and over again. The whole concept of a concept car is that of a broken promise. When manufacturers unveil these things at shows, they're saying 'this is what you'll soon be driving' If those cars ever even make it past the concept stage, the road going production version is for various practical reasons 99.9% of the time a watered down version of what was 'promised'.

 

[7up747]

Sub zero. So different.

 

[All Star]

One of (if not the) best example of Ford's New Edge design at the time. A damn shame it wasn't put into production. I'll always remember it as a personal favourite from GT2.