The original retro-styled Ford GT is now a sure-fire modern classic, with good examples sitting somewhere between a quarter and half a million pounds in value. You’d sort of imagine that all 4,000 or so examples made are now part of cherished collections, but that’s not always the case.
Ed Bolian of the VINWiki YouTube channel recently got wind of a GT that had been sitting abandoned in a garage near Atlanta for at least a decade and possibly up to 15 years. To check it out, he brought in Matthew Ivanhoe, owner of high-end Connecticut car dealership, The Cultivated Collector.
The circumstances that led to this GT spending around half its life gathering dust aren’t clear, but the time has not been kind to it. While everything looks like it’s in reasonable condition structurally, plenty of the bodywork has suffered from the steady growth of mould.
It’s worse on the inside, which looks like a lab experiment gone wrong. The dash, door cards, leather seats and pretty much every other surface are all covered in all manner of unpleasantness – enough to warrant the donning of hazmat suits.
Ed Bolian and Matthew Ivanhoe wear hazmat suits in the abandoned Ford GT
Despite all that, though, with a quick jump of the battery, the GT’s mighty 5.4-litre 550bhp supercharged V8 is able to fire up on the first attempt. It settles into a rough, choppy idle, suggesting it’s only running on four of its eight cylinders. Does this robustness come from it sharing its roots with the rugged motor from an F-150 pickup?
Nothing else seems to be seized either, with the GT rolling forward out of the garage on its own power. It’s loaded onto a flatbed, where it’s taken away first for a much-needed mechanical refresh, then an even more needed top-to-bottom detail. We’re very much looking forward to seeing that part.
