quote:
I don't know him personally, but I was told by someone in the ZR group that he acquired the car in connection with a business he had in the 1970s building replicas. I was also told (and I can't vouch for the veracity of any of this, of course) that he acquired the rights from Ford for the name "GT-40" at that time. The story goes that when Ford decided to build the GT, they tried to buy the rights back, but he declined their offer. In consequence, the new car had to be called the "Ford GT" instead.
Sounds like the same guy, he had the car from the '70's and intimated he got it dirt cheap at the time. Thirty years ago the 'GT40' name was never apparently trademarked by Ford. The trademark problem actually began in 1985, when Safir Engineering Ltd. of Surrey, England, bought the rights to the GT40 name to set its vehicles apart from other replicas that were being made of the race car.
Safir Engineering produced copies of the car in the 1980s and 1990s, continuing the sequence of serial numbers from the original cars.
The company closed in 1999 and transferred the trademark and rights to produce and sell replacement parts for the cars to Safir GT40 Spares, a parts company owned by Bob Wood and partners Brady Pack and John Sadler, supplying spares for origianl GT40's. It's rumored they wanted a $40M tag to license the GT40 name back to Ford for the new Ford GT and no deal was struck. Now Safir licnese the name to Superformance for $3K a car so that the SPF GT40 can claim to be a true 'continuation car' with sequential chassis #'s.
Why am I so up on all this? Well this week I purchased an older 90's KVA GT40 MK1 replica.....eagerly awaited in Reno from CT
Peter, please do send me photo's!
