Overtaking? Even with left-hand drive, two cars are possible, maybe three or even four: you'll be past them and back in lane before the oncoming drivers have fumbled for their headlamp flashers. With 550bhp of grunt available from the blown engine, who cares about the claimed top speed of 212mph except at track days - and we're getting to that.
Fortunately the brakes are probably the most fantastic thing about this car, surpassed only by the best braker in the business, the Porsche 911. Normal 200mph-plus cars have brakes that clank and graunch around the car park and have all the low-speed stopping power of a seal in an empty fish lorry. Not so the Ford, which has the Focus's exemplary pedal feel at all speeds and the power to stop that leaves you breathless and giggling at 20mph or light-headed and laughing at 120.
The Ricardo-developed transaxle gearbox handles all that power and, more importantly, torque, although the shift loads are heavy at low engine speeds and the dogleg first-to-second shift is best learned. The steering, meanwhile, has all the fluency and linear feel of a hot hatchback. Turn the wheel and you instinctively know how much to twirl. The ratio is perfectly judged and so is the weighting. Shame there isn't a lot of feedback to the driver; the GT tends to faithfully nose down every bump, camber and tramline in the road while transmitting little detail about the surface.
With massive, low-profile tyres, the road grip is wonderfully strong. The rear wheels will step out of line on slower corners, but provided you obey the rules of mid-engined cars (have a driving plan, pick your turn-in point, power through the bend and never lift off or brake), the GT rarely surprises. The ride is good, too, although potholes and off-camber bumps tend to smash through the double wishbone suspension and into the cabin.
From myriad potential customers, Ford has now picked 28 lucky ones - including Damon Hill, Jeremy Clarkson, and Martin Brundle. So imagine yourself in their place and take your life-size Scalextric toy to Brands Hatch to exercise its legs.
What are you going to find? Caveat emptor might be the most appropriate phrase, as I found at the test track. Proper racing drivers refer to the GT40 as a heavy car, and that weighed just 998kg. The GT weighs 600kg more and, with nearly 60 per cent of that over the rear axle, it's a rear-biased pendulum. Willie Green on the original again: "With the weight of that big, cast-iron engine behind you, the tail will go if you hang it out a little too much. It's all about polar moments of inertia, which means that if you get it wrong you're having an accident."
Drive the GT properly in the dry, ease it up to its limits and the incredible grunt of the engine will allow you to hang the tail out, as I found on subsequent laps of the test track. It's not a particularly forgiving car, though, and if you end up going too fast into a corner and trying to sort it out half way through, you'll be going backwards before you can think, "Blimey, what was that?" Those two small pockmarks on the test car's rear wings are mine forever.
Ford thinks the GT proves it can make a supercar, but that much was never really in doubt. Why its supercar had to look like a 40-year-old racer is a lot more difficult to figure out - after all, Holman and Moody will build you a brand new original for $1 million and there are some very good replicas for not much more than the GT's price. Is this the best thing that Ford can come up with in 40 years, a 20th-century car from a 21st-century company? An equivalent Ferrari or Lamborghini costs more and is slower, but they're future-looking, modern designs for the road and they sound like supercars, too.
"Pastiche is the new authenticity," said the much missed motoring writer Russell Bulgin when winding me up about owning a classic car. As in most things, he was probably right, but I think I'd rather have the real thing - modern or old, just not both at once.
Ford GT
Price/availability: about £120,000/deliveries of the 28 UK cars begin in 2005.
Engine/transmission: 5,409cc all-aluminium-alloy V8 with DOHC per bank and four valves per cylinder; Eaton-made Lysholm screw-type supercharger with water-to-air inlet-charge cooling; 550bhp at 6,500rpm and 500lb ft of torque at 3,750rpm. Ricardo six-speed transaxle gearbox with helical limited-slip differential. Rear-wheel drive. Performance: top speed 212mph, 0-60mph in about 3·5sec (see text), average fuel consumption about 12mpg.
We like: The design, but we like the GT40 better. The performance. The brakes.
We don't like: The ride quality over bumps. Little steering feel. No storage space. Lack of passenger leg room. Non-existent exhaust note. Slightly bogus quality.
Alternatives: Aston Martin DB9, from £103,000. Lamborghini Gallardo, from £117,000. Ferrari 360 Modena, from £103,300. Porsche 911 Turbo, from £90,520.