It took Detroit by storm and now it's time to get this thing ready to kick ass on the road and track. That's essentially Ford's attitude these days in the wake of revealing its wonderful new GT at the Motor City earlier this month. If all goes to plan, the GT will go on sale as a 2017 model, roughly 18 months from now. There's a lot of work to do to meet that deadline. Now, the GT Concept we all saw at Detroit is supposedly the final design inside and out, though some minor tweaks wouldn't be surprising.

But the real challenge is going to be the development phase. Actual road testing couldn't take place before now because of the super-secret nature of the GT. Before it debuted at Detroit, the GT was essentially a skunkworks project stored away in the basement of Ford's design center. Very few people, aside from the already small group working on it, knew about its existence. In fact, if the team wanted to evaluate prototypes outdoors, they were forced to do so on Sundays when no-one else was in the building. Alongside the road-going GT will hopefully be a track version, specifically one for endurance racing at Le Mans. 2016 will be the 50th anniversary of Ford's first Le Mans win in the new GT's forebear, the GT40.