Jeremy Clarkson has spent years making it clear that the first-generation Ford GT is one of his favorite machines on the planet, and at some point that admiration turned into ownership. He bought a 2006 example for himself. Now that very car is changing hands, and it’s about to land on the open market through a dealer that knows exactly what it has.
The GT is currently sitting with Tom Hartley Cars, a high-end preowned specialist that deals in luxury, performance, and classic metal. It wears blue paint with white racing stripes, the kind of combination that makes the GT look like it just rolled out of a Le Mans paddock. What makes this one stand apart from the crowd is its place in the production run. It is one of just 101 cars that were shipped to the EU when the GT was being built, which immediately narrows the pool of buyers who can claim to own one on that side of the Atlantic.
A car with a paper trail that actually matters
Provenance is everything with cars like this, and this GT comes with a strong one. According to the dealer, it has a clean service history handled by GT101, a shop in Colchester, England that focuses specifically on caring for the Ford GT and the Ford Mustang. That detail matters more than it might sound. A supercharged supercar is only as good as the people who have kept it healthy, and a specialist record removes a lot of the guesswork that usually comes with buying a car this exotic secondhand.
The dealer describes it as being in beautiful condition, and the odometer backs that up. It shows just 28,000 miles, which is plenty of evidence that the car was driven and enjoyed rather than parked and forgotten, but not so many that it raises eyebrows. For a car built to be used hard, that is close to the sweet spot.
Here’s where the money question comes in
The GT has not been officially listed yet, so there is no asking price floating around for buyers to react to. That does not mean it will come cheap. Earlier this year, a 2006 Ford GT Heritage Edition crossed the block for a staggering $660,000. This particular car does not wear those famous Heritage colors, so a direct comparison is not perfect. Still, the combination of low EU production numbers and a famous former owner tends to do interesting things to a final sale figure.
That celebrity angle is the part that will get buyers leaning in. Clarkson is one of the most recognizable car people in the world, and a car he personally owned carries a story that a regular GT simply cannot match. Whether that pushes the price into Heritage territory is the open question, but it would be a surprise if it sold for short money.
Clarkson got the last word
The man himself could not resist weighing in. When the dealer announced the car, Clarkson jumped into the comments and joked that he hoped someone had finally sorted out the alarm. It is a small thing, but it is also the kind of honest, slightly mischievous comment that fits him perfectly, and it gives the next owner a knowing little heads-up about life with the car.
Why enthusiasts should care
Underneath the famous name and the fresh stripes is a machine that still holds up as a serious performance car. The 2006 GT runs a supercharged 5.4-liter V8 making 550 horsepower and 500 pound-feet of torque. Power goes to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual, which is exactly how purists want it. The result is a zero to 60 mph time of 3.3 seconds and a top speed of 205 mph, numbers that still command respect two decades later.
What you have here is a rare, well-kept, properly fast supercar with a documented history and a backstory most cars can only dream of. The price has not been revealed, and the listing is not even live yet, but the pieces are already in place for this to be one of the more talked-about GT sales of the year. The only real mystery left is how high someone is willing to go to own a piece of Clarkson’s garage, alarm and all.
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