Talk about having your thunder stolen. With the brand new Ford GT concept car now wowing crowds it’s feasible that one might forget the last one. The last Ford GT concept wowed the world back in 2002 and the Blue Oval weren’t slow in realising just how much of a win they had on their hands vis-a-vis “hey world, we’re an interesting company with interesting ideas”.  They were, and indeed are. And they backed up all their noisy “look at us” grunting by actually putting the damn thing into production. The Ford GT. You may have heard of it.
Meanwhile, Beanstalk, later to be absorbed into Pauls Model Art, were licensed by Ford to distribute a bunch of models of prominent halo lines from the Ford Portfolio of the day. They included the Jaguar XKR, Ford Thunderbird, (this) Aston Martin Vanquish from the terrible Bond film Die Another Day, and the 2002 Ford GT Concept.
And here it is.

There were white, red and yellow models released, as well as the orange and powder-blue “Gulf” livery. When I bought my example from Modelzone in Plymouth in 2004, I could have chosen any of them. They were on clearout at £19.99 each. I really should have launched eighty of my student quid at buying one of each for posterity, but I plumped for the version whose colourway meant the most to me.
When the silk cover was pulled from over the GT a lot of pain-in-the-arse experts began moaning. Camilo Pardo penned the GT under the watch of J Mays as part of Ford’s Living Legends exercise in patting themselves on the back while looking at the good times in Ford’s history. Well, actually it was far less cynical than that, the design world had run away with itself a bit and I’m glad that somebody took the chance to take stock and pause for breath. So what that the GT was more than just inspired by the Le Mans dominating original? The original was great, and Ford in the early 2000’s could use a bit of that magic for the new millennium. The GT Concept certainly delivered on the magic front.

This model, unlike the AutoArt one you can also find, is based on the concept vehicle rather than the production machine. You can hopefully see from the photos how faithfully it captures the proportions of the car, I think the sinuous curves are enhanced by the overly retro livery although you could say that choosing the Gulf paint scheme was a cheaty way of inspiring immediate visual recall of such a legendary car.

Pretty much every feature seen on the prototype is here for you to fondle with your 1;18 scale finger. The cockpit is packed with detail, from the gorgeous ventilated seats to that legendary dashboard that breaks so many ergonomic rules, but does it in style.

Out back, too, detail isn’t in short supply. The engine is absolutely caked in chrome, all the better to wow people on a show stand, but it’s all there. Being a model of the show car excuses it from having to stand up to the closest scrutiny, all you Ford GT drivers out there can relax; this isn’t your car. Anyway, apart from a few pretty blue hose connectors missing, it looks pretty true to the 1:1.

There are only two real shortfalls to this model, I’d say. The first is the yawning chasm of a shut-line where engine-cover meets rear deck. Actually there are a few places where the manufacturer hasn’t quite got away with absolute scale fidelity; some things like metal gauge can’t be accurately modelled without ending up with a car made of tinfoil. Consequently you’d have to be a far better photographer than I to make this low-cost model look like anything other than a scale replica. To be fair, this fault can be levelled at the vast majority of diecasts, some manage to bevel their edges to a knifepoint so they look ultra-real in photos.
So because this is such a tiny niggle as to be hardly worth mentioning, I’ll get to criticism two; the non-opening of the front compartment. But there’s probably nothing much interesting in there anyway, a battery perhaps, but precious little space for much else thanks to the channels for radiator cooling, which are present and correct.

This is one of the most beloved models in my collection and I’ll be cherishing it for life. My  rating is a wholly deserved 1000%. A quick patrol of eBay shows that they’re plentifully available but the pricing is, shall we say, inconsistent. There are a lot of dudes out there with crazy ideas as to how much these are worth, so you might want to be patient and wait until a reissue. That said perhaps the market will soon be flooded with models of the New GT. This could take prices of the old one either way.
Buying just the one in 2004 wasn’t one of my smartest moves.
(All images copyright Chris Haining / Hooniverse 2015)