Ford axe the GT

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06-02-2006, 09:23 PM

The Sludge

garibaldi

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Ford axe the GT

The Ford GT supercar, will be eliminated from the Ford product line up this year.

It is a victims of the Dearborn automaker's move to idle factories as a cost-cutting measure.

Ford spokesman Jim Cain told Inside Line that production of the LS also will be stopped on April 13 and production of the GT will be halted at an as-yet-undetermined date later this year. He said the demise of the GT was merely "coincidental" with the closure of the plant responsible for final assembly of the supercar.

"It was intended to cover two model years," Cain said.

The 500-horsepower GT, which is priced at about $150,000, was launched on a limited-volume basis as an updated GT40 in 2004. Ford sold approximately 1,300 GTs in 2005. The LS and the GT are assembled at Ford's Wixom, Michigan factory, which is slated to close in spring 2007.

The upcoming 2007 Shelby GT500 Mustang, which goes on sale this summer priced in the low $40,000s, will replace the GT as Ford's high-performance image vehicle. Cain said the rights to buy the first GT500 were sold for $600,000 in late January during the Barrett-Jackson auction, giving the automaker a strong sense of the market potential for the most powerful production Mustang ever made. He would not disclose volume projections for the GT500.

The No. 2 U.S. automaker had planned to release a high-performance, SVT-tuned edition of the '07 Sport Trac, based on a concept version that had been unveiled at the 2005 New York Auto Show. But the company decided the vehicle had a limited potential market and has eliminated it from the lineup.