Camilo Pardo, the chief designer for the 2005 Ford GT, has interesting stories to tell. Jay Leno interviewed Pardo for Jay Leno's Garage, and he revealed a lot about the development of this modern icon. Including what three-time F1 champ Niki Lauda had to say about the car.

We should take a step back first, because you might be wondering what Niki Lauda had to do with the Ford GT. Pardo says Lauda wasn't super close to the creation of the GT, but while it was in development, he was the team boss of Jaguar F1. At the time, Ford owned Jaguar, which led to Lauda getting an invite to meet with the people behind the GT and see the car before it reached production.

Lauda tried to convince Ford engineers that they should do a paddle-shift transmission, as he believed that was the way of the future. Ferrari had offered its F1 automated manual for a few years by that point, and similar gearboxes were starting to become commonplace in the exotic cars the GT was up against. But Pardo said Ford engineers didn't really consider the idea, which is why the GT ended up with a stick-shift. With hindsight, Ford made the right call.

Pardo said that Lauda though the GT was beautiful, but he wasn't a fan of the "floating" air intake. The F1 champ said "it looks like shit," apparently. Once again, Ford didn't listen to him.

This video from Leno runs about 40 minutes long, but if you have any interest in the GT, you really should watch all of it. Pardo reveals a lot we never knew about the GT's development, including the fact that Ford actually considered sticking a V-10 under its clamshell hood.

Ford had a 6.8-liter V-10 in production at the time—and still does today—but it was a low-revving truck engine based on the "Modular" V-8. The GT team didn't have enough time to develop the V-10 for this application, as they were only given 15 months to get the GT40 concept from 2002 into production. So, they instead created an aluminum-block version of Ford's 5.4-liter 32-valve V-8, with dry-sump lubrication, beefed-up internals, and most importantly, an Eaton supercharger. The 550-hp result was more than enough to make the GT a real Ferrari rival.

The fact that the GT could've had a V-10 is interesting, though. In the 1990s, Chrysler engineer Chris Theodore was one of the main forces behind creating a mid-engine Dodge Viper, a car that never saw the light of day. Theodore eventually left Chrysler for Ford, where he became one of the lead engineers for the 2005 GT. According to a 2018 Hagerty article, it was Theodore who pushed for a V-10—the same sort of engine that powered the Viper, and likely would've powered a mid-engine Viper, were it to be produced.

You'll learn all this and more in this video with Leno and Pardo. It's fascinating viewing.

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