2005 Ford GT
Jamal Hameedi has a dream.
As if he’s not already living in one.
The chief engineer of Ford’s Special Vehicle Team (SVT), Jamal heads up a sort of skunkworks hidden in the depths of Dearborn that turns out the highest performance cars and trucks the company makes.
Those orange, flying F-150 Raptors? Yea, that was him.
The 2013 Mustang Shelby Cobra GT500 coupe and its 200 mph top speed? SVT’s hands are all over that one, too.
Read: Ford unleashes a 200 mph Mustang
“We can do anything. Really, there’s no car in the Ford lineup that we couldn’t take a very novel and innovative approach to,” Hameedi tells FoxNews.com.
See the full interview with Jamal Hameedi in our 2012 Chicago Auto Show Special
Even economy cars are not safe, as evidenced by the upcoming turbocharged Focus ST hot hatchback that SVT had more than a little involvement in.
But while that’s all well and good, what Jamal really wants to build is a supercar.
“My first car that I worked on at SVT was the Ford GT. So, me personally, I would love to do another car like that,” he says.
The 2005-2006 GT was a 550 hp two-seat coupe inspired by Ford’s 24 Hours of LeMans-winning race cars of the 1960s, and the first American production car with a top speed of over 200 mph -- 205 mph to be exact.
Over two years Ford built 4038 of the $150,000 GTs, which were more than a match for the competition of the day from Europe, not to mention the Dodge Viper and Chevrolet Corvette. But after the run was completed, plans for a successor hit a dead end…or did they?
When asked about it recently by Automobile Magazine, Ford’s global product chief, Derrick Kuzak, hinted that just such a car could be in the works, but wouldn’t quite go there.
Still, with new cars being produced by performance divisions like Chrysler’s SRT and Mercedes-Benz’s AMG -- both analogues of SVT – the idea of a GT successor is far from far-fetched.
Unfortunately for sports car fans, Hameedi assures us that his dream is just that. Although it is one that the guy with his name on the cars could make come true.
(Bill, are you listening?)
Then again, Jamal does work for a secret service, and loose lips can sink supercars, too.