It’s not hard to feel like a Le Mans hero with a GT to play with. Once you’ve dropped into the comfortable, leather-lined, carbonfibre seat, the chunky steering wheel can be pulled close to your chest, revealing a close-to-perfect driving position. Our only complaint is that it appears no one bothered to position the pedals for instinctive heel-and-toe changes.
The rev-counter looms large and dead ahead, flanked by small dials stretching across the dash until you reach the speedometer, infuriatingly far from your sightline. Neat aluminium toggle switches and engraved magnesium alloy on the transmission tunnel are nice touches, but are not enough to offset the disappointment of the flimsy dashboard, Mondeo stalks, window switches and mirror controls, and swathes of plastic pretending to be aluminium. For £120,000, you have a right to expect more.
There’s nowhere to store anything in the cabin unless you count the small pockets behind the seats. What luggage space there is in the nose: it’s enough for a small overnight bag and no more.
Nevertheless, the GT is a commendably civilised partner on the road. The tyres can make a comically loud noise on very rough sections, but most of the time the GT resists the assault of wind and road noise impressively.
Standard equipment includes two airbags, anti-lock brakes, air conditioning and electric windows and mirrors. You can have your wheels forged rather than cast and choose the colour of the car and its stripe. That’s it. If you want sat-nav, cruise control or any other luxury options, you’re in for a shock.
Thankfully, we weren’t expecting miracles with running costs. Drive the GT the way it was intended and you’ll sink into single-figure consumption. Drive it gently and you might tickle it up to 20mpg. The compounding irritation is the 80-litre fuel tank: we managed to nearly drain it in under 170 miles and we’d be surprised if owners got 250 miles between fills.