The Ford GT supercar at the Toronto auto show on Thursday.Tom Maloney/The Globe and Mail
The all-new 2017 Ford GT, the company's new supercar, will be built in Markham, Ont., in partnership with Multimatic, a privately-held Toronto-based company.
Joe Henrich, president of the Americas for Ford Motor Co., and former president of Ford Canada, made the announcement Thursday at the Canadian International Auto Show. There had been speculation Ford would build the car with an outside supplier.
The two-door supercar, developed secretly before being revealed at the Detroit auto show in January, will feature lightweight carbon-fibre design, rear-wheel drive, a two-seat cockpit, upward swinging doors, and "a mid-mounted, next-generation twin-turbo EcoBoost V-6 producing more than 600 horsepower," Henrich, in animated voice, told a gathering of media on press day at the Toronto show.
A privately held company headquartered in Toronto, Multimatic designs and develops lightweight composite automotive system at manufacturing and engineering facilities in North America, Europe and Asia. The company engineered and built the Aston Martin CC100, contributed to GM's Camaro Z/28, and has worked with Ford for about 30 years.
The challenge will be to go from Thursday's announcement to production in late 2016. Multimatic executives deferred comment on the subject to Ford.
"It's not a conventional program," said Craig Metros, exterior designer director of the Americas for Ford. "It's a streamlined process but with Multimatic building the car, there are some advantages."
In Detroit, Ford's performance vehicle engineer Jamal Hameedi pledged the vehicle would have the best power-to-weight ratio of any car on the market.
"A lot of the surface development was dictated by the wind tunnel but, at the end of the day, we wanted an absolutely beautiful sports car," Metros said. "In my mind it's a balance of technology and innovation but also design and style. We wanted it to have the aesthetical spirit of the original car, which I think we've accomplished."
The 2017 GT has been in development for about a year – hyper-speed for any auto maker.
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