Ford built its most hyped modern supercar around a V6, and asked buyers to trust the engineering. At Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, Lou Costabile caught one of the first production 2017 Ford GTs alongside Ford’s own performance marketing manager, who calls it the ultimate expression of form following function. The comments don’t fully agree, and one viewer even makes a detailed case for a 900-hp handmade rival that costs a fraction as much. Who’s right depends on what you think a supercar is actually for.
Ford spent decades building V8 supercars. Then it built the most hyped one of its era around six cylinders instead of eight, and told the internet to deal with it. At the Barrett-Jackson auction in Scottsdale on January 21, 2017, Lou Costabile’s My Car Story caught one of the first production 2017 Ford GTs in the metal, standing just a few feet from the man tasked with explaining why Ford’s ultimate car looks and drives the way it does. What he says on camera makes a certain kind of sense. What the comment section says back does not entirely agree.
A Deliberate Echo of 1966
The whole point of the 2017 Ford GT was never subtlety, it was homage. The car was explicitly designed to evoke the original Ford GT40, the car that famously won the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright in 1966, ending Ferrari’s stranglehold on the world’s toughest endurance race. Lou Costabile’s My Car Story caught this connection in the flesh at Barrett-Jackson, where the low, wide silhouette and flying-buttress rear haunches immediately telegraph their 1960s racing DNA to anyone who knows the shape. Comments on the video overwhelmingly agree on this point even where they disagree on everything else, multiple viewers call it simply “the best looking Ford ever,” a rare consensus for a car this polarizing under the skin.
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Form Follows Function, According to the Man Who’d Know
Ford brought out Jim Owens, the company’s Performance Marketing Manager, to walk Costabile through the car, and Owens didn’t hedge on how he framed it: this is, in his words, “the ultimate car of form follows function.” That’s a specific claim worth sitting with, every vent, every buttress, every surface on the GT was justified aerodynamically before it was justified aesthetically, according to Owens’s pitch. Coming from someone whose job is literally to market Ford’s performance halo car, it’s a confident line, and it’s the kind of on-record framing that gives this video more substance than a typical auction-floor walkaround, even with under 6,000 views to its name.
The Interview Everyone Remembers for the Wrong Reason
Not every memorable moment in this video is about horsepower. One exchange gets quoted back in the comments purely for its awkward charm: “I’m here with Jim. Jim, what’s your name?” It’s a small, human stumble in an otherwise polished corporate interview, and viewers clearly enjoyed catching it. That kind of unscripted moment is part of what separates Costabile’s My Car Story format from a scripted manufacturer promo reel, real auction-floor conversations produce real flubs, and this one became a running joke in the replies underneath an otherwise serious debate about the car’s engineering.
The V6 Heard ‘Round the Comment Section
The single biggest fault line in the comments has nothing to do with looks and everything to do with what’s under that rear clamshell. The 2017 GT runs a twin-turbocharged EcoBoost V6 rather than a V8, and plenty of viewers were not pleased about it: “V6? Nnnoooo…lol” reads one reply, while another is blunter still, “$400k for a TT V6… yea ok smh. howbout a TT V8!!!!” Defenders push back just as hard, arguing the twin-turbo six was the smarter engineering choice, making more power than a comparable V8 while burning less fuel in the process. It’s a genuine, unresolved argument playing out in real time under the video.
666 Horsepower, Give or Take
Amid the V6-versus-V8 back-and-forth, one commenter cuts through the debate with a joke that stuck: the car makes basically “666 hp, give or take.” It’s delivered with a wink rather than as a precise spec sheet figure, but it captures something real about the discussion, nobody in the comments is disputing that the EcoBoost six hits hard, they’re disputing whether it should have been a V8 doing the hitting. That tension between raw output and traditional muscle-car expectations is really the crux of why this specific GT generated more heated debate than almost any other car in Costabile’s catalog.
A Challenger Waiting in the Comments: The Superlite GT-R
One commenter didn’t just criticize the Ford GT in the abstract, he built a detailed case for an entirely different car. He argues the Superlite Cars GT-R beats the Ford GT on nearly every practical metric: it’s faster, lighter, handles and stops better, and is handmade rather than mass-produced. He points to a roomier cabin, a centrally located fuel cell for better weight distribution, and a curb weight of only about 2,500 pounds. His hypothetical build would drop in a twin-turbo 5.2-liter V8 making roughly 900 horsepower. Whether or not you buy the comparison, it’s a rare case of a YouTube comment reading like an actual spec sheet rather than a one-line gripe.
An Interior That Split Opinion
Exterior praise for the GT was nearly universal in the comments, but the cabin didn’t get the same treatment. One critical commenter zeroed in specifically on the steering wheel and broader interior execution, describing it as looking “like something out of the 80s and very cheap” given the car’s price point. That’s a pointed criticism for a supercar built around a six-figure-plus sticker, and it stands in sharp contrast to the exterior compliments stacked elsewhere in the same comment section, a reminder that even a design as widely praised as this one didn’t win over every judge on every detail.
Why a 5,785-View Video Still Matters
This is, by view count, the smallest video in ScottieDTV and Costabile’s combined catalog covered here, just 5,785 views at last count, but it carries the richest technical argument of the bunch. Between the GT40 homage, Jim Owens’s on-record engineering pitch, the V6-versus-V8 fight, and the detailed Superlite GT-R counter-argument, this comment section reads less like typical YouTube chatter and more like an enthusiast forum thread. Filmed on the Barrett-Jackson floor in Scottsdale, a venue where seven-figure classics change hands routinely, this first-production GT’s appearance there only reinforces how quickly Ford’s modern reboot became a genuine collector piece rather than just a marketing exercise.
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thomas lee rhea
Terri Stahler Ole Mann
Did they say V6?! WHAT!
Over 400k and good luck trying to buy one !
Dont know of the way to appreciate this exactly
Ar 4X the cost of my houseand 2.34 acres, it will never happen for me, in fact, I doubt I’ll ever buy another “new car” or used for that matter, our sedan and pickup each have only 155,000 miles on them far away from the million mile mark that each is expected to have by me, there is nothing, especially on the truck that can’t be maintained and/or repaired as needed.