Remembering the Ford GT90 Concept

In the 1990s Ford found itself in a dilemma. Though it had had a string of successes in the 1980s, the 1990s found the Blue Oval with less-than-inspiring products. Even the fabulously successful Ford Taurus was coasting on a rather generic design refresh, and its dramatic successor was a few years away.

Jack Telnack, the legendary design chief who had spearheaded the original Taurus program, was tasked with coming up with a design concept that could get the public excited about Ford products and inspire a rethink about Ford’s design language.

Telnack chose Tom Scott, leader of Ford’s independent studios (Ghia, the International Studio, and others) to lead the effort. Scott would later recall:

 “We had all this research telling us we needed to be different, but what did that mean? There was research everywhere with trends and ideas but the one thing I knew was that we couldn’t keep doing this oval grille theme any more, plonked on these jellybean cars that looked like a floating cigar.”

Scott instinctively new that the solution lay beyond the research and focus groups and traditional means of guaranteeing a car’s success. It needed to be transformative. He wanted a design for a car Ford didn’t make. Ultimately, he hit upon the idea of “a racing car for the road”.

He passed the challenge off to six designers, and one, a young gifted designer named Jim Hope, returned with a design “like a GT40 from the future”.

With the development time short, it was decided that modification of an existing chassis would be the best option. Ford owned a controlling interest in Jaguar at the time, and its slow-selling the XJ220 supercar seemed and excellent choice for the new concept. And so an XJ220 was shipped in and the stripped down to the chassis. 

For the engine, it was conceived as part of Ford’s Modular Engine project for the nineties which would produce engines from a V6 (passenger cars) to a V10 (for trucks and vans). Engine designer Bob Natkin would take a new V8 engine, cut it in half and weld it to another V8 to form a 5.9 litre V12. Adding four Garret T2 turbochargers, ramped up the power in the new engine to 720 hp, with 660 lb-ft. of torque, a remarkable achievement. The engine was road tested in a Lincoln Town Car, which had a cavernous engine compartment which, though designed for a V8, easily swallowed the new V12.

The body would be made of carbon-fibre. The engine exhaust was so hot that ceramic tiles were placed at the exhaust to keep the body from melting. The styling was mix of curves and angles, with dramatic triangular elements, including that body-melting quad exhaust.

Ford’s management and the initial reaction were less than enthusiastic, but when introduced in Detroit in 1995, the car was a smash hit with the public and the international press. Many asked when the car would go into production, even after Ford introduced it as an engineering experiment.

Jack Telnack, much relieved at the positive attention the car was receiving, would describe the car’s design language as “New Age Edge”, which he soon shortened to “New Edge”. The combination of swooping curves, dramatic angles, and flat surfaces made for a dramatic presentation. Telnack promised that this was the future, and indeed, Ford would return the next year with the Synergy 2010, a dramatic ultra-light sedan concept that Ford claimed represented the future of the family car.

After much teasing of the public for years, Ford quietly announced the GT90 would never reach production. It made good business sense, as Ford had Jaguar and Aston Martin in its stable of brands at the time. They each had their own supercars. Why poach customers and sales from them? 

But the dream never died and the GT40’s spiritual heir would finally be produced in 2006 as the Ford GT which would see production from 2004 to 2006, and 2016-2018. The GT90 would remain a bridge between the past and the future.

Ford’s ‘New Edge’ design language, which garnered so much attention, never really got established throughout the product lineup. In Europe, the Ka was the best example- and probably the best production expression of the design language. 

In the US, the Mercury Cougar was the only production car with ‘New Edge’ styling, although the Ford Focus claimed the same aesthetic. In retrospect, ‘New Edge’ seems like a lost opportunity. Some products, like the Taurus, never saw a ‘New Edge’ design, others were watered down to the point of being rather nondescript.

As for the designers involved, Jack Telnack would retire in 1997 after four decades at Ford. He was succeeded by J. Mays. Tim Scott would stay on at Ford and then start Holographic imaging LLC, in 2001 and then move to Viewtek LLC. He now runs an independent consultancy in Michigan. And Jim Hope, the young designer who first sketched the GT90, he worked for Ford and then Chery Automotive, General Motors, Chrysler and now is Dean of the Transportation Design Institute at China Academy of Art. He is also the 2025 Car Design People Awards ‘Educator of the Year’.

The GT90 itself did not meet the crusher as so many concepts do. It was sold and is now in the private hands, owned by Brent Hajek since 2003, and has been placed in his eponymous automotive museum in Ames, Oklahoma. He has turned down multiple offers (some as high as US$8 million) to sell it. It is frequently shown at museums and concours around the U.S., and still finds welcoming audiences — a reminder of what might have been.