FORD V FORD Gary Ford started off collecting vintage British cars. His first was a 1959 MGA bought in Oklahoma City in the mid-1980s. Later, he added an MGB roadster and coupe to his collection. He not only liked the appearance of the British sports cars of the ’50s and ’60s, he also enjoyed working on them. “In the winter, some people would go skiing,” he says. “I’d drive to Michigan to attend a twoweek program put on by a British mechanic.” But then a decade ago, he fell in love with a far different kind of car. At the time, he and his wife Susan were living in Indonesia, where he worked as an oil company executive. In his idle hours, he’d surf the internet searching for rare autos that he might like to buy. “He was looking at car porn,” Susan says, laughing. His wish list included an exotic British sports car, an Ariel Atom. He found one for sale on the website of an automobile dealer in Arkansas. But after looking at it online, Gary’s attention was drawn away by another of the dealer’s cars: a 2006 Ford GT—a street-legal descendant of the GT40 that the auto company developed in the mid-1960s to compete in the 24-hour race at Le Mans, the car later showcased in the movie Ford v Ferrari. “I thought, ‘Holy cow, look at that,’” he recalls. Even its orange and light blue paint scheme resembled that of the GT40s that won Le Mans in ’68 and ’69. “It’s an iconic car,” says Gary, who’s unrelated to the Ford Motor Company family. “The ’06 is traditional, the body style everyone
Rear vents on the Ford GT.
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The 2006 Ford GT is a descendant of the GT40 of the mid-1960s.
thinks of when they think of a GT40 and the Le Mans racing heritage Ford developed in the ’60s.” He was so smitten that he bought the car long distance, without first seeing it in person. That encounter wouldn’t happen until months later, when he returned to the States for a brief visit. His first time behind the wheel, he took the car out onto a rain-slickened race track, with a professional driver in the passenger seat to coach him. The powerful, lightning-fast car scared him at first. But he loved driving it nonetheless. Now retired and living at Boot Ranch, Gary maintains a workshop in Fredericksburg, where he keeps and works on the cars in his collection. Those include his first MGA; a 2013 Caterham 7, a lightweight and quick British two-seater previously owned by Simon Cowell of American Idol and America’s Got Talent fame; and a 2012 Porsche Cayman R that Gary bought primarily to hone his driving skills. His latest addition is a 2019 Ford GT, whose styling and engineering are more space-age than that of the 2006 GT. Ford returned to Le Mans in 2016 and won its class with the redesigned car. The 2006 model remains his favorite, though. He and Susan drive it often to gatherings of Ford GT owners at race tracks around the country. “It was my first supercar. It’s become part of the family,” Gary says. He might eventually sell the other cars in his collection. But not the GTs. Those will go to the Fords’ two sons, he says. “I have two heritage cars that I can pass on to them.”
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