Ford GT :: Right-hand-drive business case didn’t stack up, says car maker

Speaking with CarAdvice in Detroit today, Ford Performance global director Dave Pericak ruled out the possibility of the vehicle being made available for our market.

“You know, when you do a right-hand-drive version of a vehicle, some people think it's just a cut and paste and you just copy it over to this side of the car and that’s not true,” Pericak said.

“There’s a lot of engineering that goes into making a right-hand-drive version of a vehicle, so we have announced that the volume on this car is going to be on the lower side so therefore doing the engineering and everything that would be involved to do a right-hand-drive is just not going to pay off at the end of the day to be honest with you.”

Only 250 Ford GTs will be made each year. The GT is designed to represent the best that Ford has to offer, with Pericak himself admitting that it’s “the embodiment of everything that is good at the Ford Motor Company”.

Nonetheless, with right-hand-drive markets such as Japan and the United Kingdom allowing left-hand-drive vehicles to be road registered, Australia and a few other low-volume RHD markets are once again left wanting.

“I just don’t think that with a right-hand-drive version you would be able to justify the investment required to do that.”

Pericak also reiterated that the decision was unlikely to change in the future.

“Early on it was pretty much understood and agreed that we just weren’t going to go down that path.

"We know what it takes to do it right - we just did it in the Mustang. We made a commitment to making the Mustang a truly global car and this vehicle doesn’t fall in the same case.”

Pericak was also the chief engineer of the new Mustang and pushed for the vehicle to be made in right-hand drive.

“It was about time we took it [Mustang] global. So far we have been seeing the demand and the excitement has been out of this world, so I have high expectations of what it’s going to do globally.”

The new Ford Mustang will arrive in Australia around the end of this year priced from $44,990 plus on-road costs.