The Ford GT stunned the automotive world when it was revealed at the 2015 Detroit Motorshow, except for this band of merry men at DCB towers. The GT was quite literally a bolt out of the blue so just how did Ford keep it a secret? A self-effacing storage room in an unassuming part of Ford’s Product Development Center is the answer. Work on the GT was mostly done under cover of darkness with just a close-knit team of six designers and engineers given access to this nameless basement. So secretive was the project that the group were given metal keys instead of industry standard digital iD-cards. On top of that the team were under strict orders not to reveal anything even to close family members. The basement was failry cramped, if the GT team need to see their creation in the light of day they had to do so when no one was around to witness them rolling the car out of the basement and quickly back in. Project Phoenix, as it was called internally, was kept a secret to prevent corporate bureaucracy from suffocating the team from making quick decisions. Without the secrecy the GT would not have been ready in time said Moray Callum, Ford’s global design chief “A lot of people probably knew something was going on, but no one actually knew. Usually, we like to encourage, especially on important programs, wide input from around the world. But on this one, we sort of realized both in terms of time and the element of keeping it quiet that we probably had to change the process here, so we picked a small group of designers.” Project Phoenix flickered into life towards the end of 2013, with the company’s past and current CEO and product development chief key leaders in giving the project much needed backing. Fords intention was to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first generation GT40 which won the 24 Hours of LeMans back in 1966, ending the reign of the dominant Ferrari era. Demand for the second generation GT/GT40, which ceased its limited production run in 2006, has increased in value. When new it could be purchased for $150k, last year at an auction in Chicago one sold for $475k. The new GT is expected to cost $200k+ when it finally goes on sale in 2016, expect demand to be too hot to handle.