It has emerged that the latest Ford GT will be available with carbon fibre wheels.
The wheels will come courtesy of Australian company Carbon Revolution which produces the carbon fibre wheels fitted as standard to the track-focused Ford Mustang Shelby GT350R. While Ford has yet to comment on the new GT also using Carbon Revolution wheels, Australian publication Cars Guide revealed the news.
The wheels are the world’s first ever mass-produced carbon fibre wheels with the only other manufacturer making them being Koenigsegg but it does so in extremely limited numbers. Alongside being stronger than traditional alloy wheels, the carbon fibre wheels produced by Carbon Revolution save about 30 kg per car.
Beyond its use of carbon fibre wheels, many details about the new Ford GT remain unclear despite it being revealed ten months ago. In Forza Motorsport 6 however, the twin-turbocharged 3.5-litre EcoBoost V6 engine of the car pumps out 630 hp and 539 lb-ft of torque. There’s a very good chance that these figures will be the same for the real deal.
Underpinning the 2016 Ford GT is a carbon fibre monocoque with aluminium front and rear subframes also featuring. Carbon fibre has also been used for the new Ford GT’s body panels and while Ford has yet to reveal how much the car weighs, it is claimed to have “one of the best power-to-weight ratios of any production car”.
Were not so sure about the use of carbon fibre for car wheels, any reasonable sized pot hole could destroy a carbon wheel, the cost to replace it would be astronomical. Also if there were weight saving advantages to carbon wheels why aren’t F1 using them ?