GT 40 Refresh: So RED!

For years now I had this series of posts called “The Replacements.” Whenever I feel the need to retire a car from the fleet or replace it, I’ll make up some story about that to create continuity in “The Lore” and then explain what I’m doing and why. This situation is more unusual, which is why I have not labeled this post a “Replacement,” although in a way it is. What I’m doing here is replacing a perfectly awesome car with another awesome car that looks almost exactly like it, from the paint scheme to the racing number, so no change in “lore” is required. Which begs the question, why am I doing this? Well…I don’t really have a good answer for that! Perhaps it’s because, as time goes on and I feel myself becoming a little more of a collector of the original T-Jets, I want to retire a particularly nice original from the rough and tumble of high speed racing and replace it with a modern replica to help preserve a classic. Or then again, maybe its just because I was looking for an excuse to buy and assemble another car! Regardless, the red Ford GT 40 named “Patriot” is getting “freshened up.” For the lore, we’ll call it a trip to the shop to repair some race damage, including a new coat a paint, an engine rebuild, and a new set of wheels. In reality, it’s a swap for a totally new car.

The latest releases of the GT 40 from Auto World are the nicest ones they’ve ever made. For years I bitched about this car being unavailable and wondered why Auto World wasn’t reissuing it, especially in the aftermath of the release of the excellent movie “Ford vs Ferrari” in January of 2020. Well they finally did reissue it, and these versions in gold with red detailing and red with white stripes are both gorgeous! As I mentioned when I profiled the car I’m replacing, I found it a little ironic that AW decided to reissue this car in red with white stripes after I’d made such an effort to duplicate that exact look with an Aurora original, but there you have it! The rivets around the windows and headlights, the clear headlight glass, and the idea of running a repro around the track with abandon with no sense of worry about potentially crashing such a beautiful original all made this seem like a good idea.

So I duplicated that original car right down to the Road Race Replicas decals, but in a side by side comparison you can see some differences: the repro is a deeper, richer shade of red, and even though both cars are small and light, the new one is just a hair bigger to fit the Ultra G chassis. Of course I got the original to fit the Ultra G chassis, but it did require a little scraping here and there with the Dremel. Not so on the AW version: it was plug n’ play!

As part of this decision, I also decided to pull the gold #76 car back into the shop and replace the wheels, since it was running on stock wheels and I am trying to remove these from the racing fleets for consistency. Both cars now wear the same wheel style, the GT, which is the newest from Road Race Replicas, and I reversed the colors between red and gold for greater contrast. I think they both look awesome and both are crazy fast just like you would expect from a GT 40.

So now the question becomes, what will I do with the original red car? Well, I really haven’t decided. My gut feeling says it will get mounted on an original T-Jet chassis and join the Road Crew, but I’m not sure. For now, it stays on the Ultra G magnet chassis its been racing on, still wearing its beautiful RRR “Bullet” wheels, preserved in a case with a couple of other “shelf queens” until I make a decision. On the track, however, there are no decisions (or indecisions) in sight: #27 is still raced by Kenny “Thriller” Diller and still out to eat Ferrari’s for breakfast. After a stint in the shop, “Patriot” is likely to be even more formidable next time around than she has been up to this point!