Throwback Thursday: Maisto’s 1/18 scale Ford GT90 concept car

What happens when, at the height of the 90’s super car craze, one of the world’s top automakers decides it wants to not only build a spiritual successor to a racing legend but also make it the fastest car in the world? The GT90 happens.

Yet another car that graced our CD-ROMS on the early Need for Speed games, this was Ford’s crazy 90’s super car concept. No, it wasn’t 90 inches tall, but the intention of the concept car was absolutely a tribute to the Ford GT40, as indicated by the vents on the nose and the cutaway roof design. It also ushered in Ford’s “New Edge” design language that came about at the end of the last millennium. The GT90 itself has one of the more polarizing designs of the super cars from the 90’s with most people either loving it or hating it. Guess what camp I fall into? Come on, you know you love it. Some dude even built his own in his garage because it’s so awesome.

The Ford GT90 was completed in six months by a small team with $3 million dollars burning a hole in their pockets. Its purpose was to be the greatest supercar in the world. They started with bits and pieces from the then Ford-owned Jaguar XJ220, like the chassis and suspension. The engineers took two Modular V8 engines, cut two cylinders off each of them, then welded them together to make a V12. That wasn’t enough though, so they slapped four Garrett turbos on the thing to make an asphalt melting 720hp and an Earth rotating 660 lb-ft of torque.

That meant 0-60 in 3 seconds, a top speed that could have rivaled the McLaren F1, and the title of “Worlds Most Powerful Car”. But alas, the dreamers don’t make the business decisions, otherwise no one would make any money. The fully operational Ford GT90 was sentenced to be just a concept car and nothing more.

This is the Maisto 1:18 diecast model of the car, and actually one of my first 1:18’s I ever purchased. This model is probably older than a lot of our youngest readers. I was obsessed with this car as a kid, having built a snap-together 1:25 plastic kit and also owning the Hot Wheels car. Its got everything you’d expect from an ancient Maisto, so lower your expectations and I’ll see if they can be met!

The yellow triangles (yes everything is a triangle) are actually the door handles. Push the button and the doors pop open; glass roof cutouts and all. The other things you see on the side there are blind spot sensors; pretty cool for 1995. Here on the model though, they’re just stickers.

The interior is all kinds of blue, because it was the 90’s. You can’t hate on that exposed gear shifter though. The endless number of gauges are clumped together out of a piece of plastic, and only two of them have faces: sticker faces. Maisto missed one of the Ford’s triangles too; there should be a yellow one just under the airbag in the steering wheel. The knobs for the stereo controls look more like chrome pillars rising from the ocean floor rather than, you know, knobs.

On the back side we find even more triangles, along with a giant active rear wing. The wing can be articulated vertically or tilted forward and will stand up for display in either orientation. There were ceramic tiles like the ones used on the space shuttle around the exhaust port on the actual car, but nothing outlandish on the model. The exhaust was so hot it could have melted the car, so ceramic tiles were a requirement. Badass.

The model is missing integrated amber turn signals in the rear tail-lights. We’re also missing a red strip of LED’s across the rear of the glass roof, which served as the mandatory 3rd brake light. Also, it’s worth mentioning that the car’s tires had “GT90″ stamped into the tire treads.

Call it ugly, a cheap old Maisto, whatever you want, but its one of “THE cars that got me into cars” so it deserves its place in my display case. These are very much readily available on eBay, so you have no excuse not to have one. Maiso even did a sleek black colorway, if you can find it.