It should come as no surprise that the Ford GT has an adjustable multimode suspension. Every current supercar, along with a growing number of more mundane machines, offers this capability in some form. But by offering a first ride-along in a preproduction prototype of the upcoming Ford supercar, the automaker showed more about what’s going on under the Blue Oval’s halo car. And it’s unlike anything in its segment today.
The GT’s suspension system uses pushrod-actuated torsion bars in place of coil springs. This moves the major suspension components inboard, minimizing unsprung mass and making room for the giant aero passages that are key to the car’s flow-through aerodynamics.
Through a complex system that Ford only described in vague terms (as patents are still pending), each corner is acted on by two springs in series. Think back to your physics courses: Stack two identical coil springs on top of each other, and you’ve created one giant spring that takes half the force to deflect the same amount as the individual springs. In other words, your series spring has half the spring rate of the parts it’s made of.
A system of torsion bars, rocker arms, and actuators controlled by the drive-mode selector in the cabin creates such a system in the GT, with each wheel suspended by two springs acting in series. When the suspension is in Normal mode (corresponding to Normal or Wet drive mode), both springs are engaged, essentially “stacked.” Dialing up Sport drive mode leaves the spring arrangement unchanged, but it activates a firmer setting on the three-mode Multimatic DSSV dampers.
When the driver selects Track or Vmax mode, the series-spring setup is deactivated, leaving each corner sprung by a single spring with effectively double the spring rate of the series setup. The ride height drops by 2.0 inches, reducing ground clearance to a mere 2.8 inches, and the dampers go into the firmest of their three calibrations. In Track mode, the aero components go into full downforce mode; in Vmax, the wing and chassis splitters stay in their low-drag setting.
In effect, this Track/Vmax suspension setting is like having a unique chassis tune, with different damping and spring rates. The ride height, spring rate, and damping are all optimized for maximum performance, without compromising the comfort of Normal or Sport mode. You get a slammed-down racing suspension in a car that you can still drive on public roads to and from the track. There’s even a Comfort button that further softens the dampers in Normal mode for particularly rough roads.
There’s another nifty aspect to this setup: Since Ford runs the suspension and aero systems off the car’s old-fashioned hydraulic power-steering setup, the car switches from normal ride height to Track/Vmax mode rather quickly. There’s also a nose-lift mode for attacking steep driveways without scraping. It picks up the front of the car so quickly, you’ll think you’re at a lowrider-hopping competition.
We can’t wait to try out this nifty suspension setup for ourselves.
A version of this story originally appeared on Road & Track.
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