I love the sports car “what ifs” of automotive history. What if General Motors had perfected a rotary engine in the 1970s? What if VW had gone into production with its 1997 W12 supercar? Or what if Chrysler and Lamborghini had continued their partnership? But one of the most intriguing questions by far has to be the secretive Ford project codenamed GN34, which was on track to build a mid-engine Ferrari-killer that would have put the Blue Oval light years ahead of Corvette in 1989.

Yes, yes. You may already know about the Ford/Ferrari rivalry of the 1960s: The Le Mans showdown that led to the GT40 race car and Ford finally dethroning the Prancing Pony’s European racing domination. Ford wouldn’t go into production with a GT for consumers until its 2005 generation (revived once more in 2018). But history was almost very different.

By the 1980s the car business was booming. And analysts told Ford that the sports car segment would only continue growing. The sweet spot seemed to be the Chevrolet Corvette/Porsche 944 price point: $30k. Today, that would be about $70k. The Ford company brass greenlit a clean sheet sports car program at the Special Vehicle Operations Team.

The team wasn’t happy with just another Corvette. As the manager said, “It was a once in a lifetime opportunity: Build something to tackle Ferrari and sell it at a Corvette/Porsche 944 price.” (According to Secrets Fords by Ford designer Steve Saxty).

So could the Ford GN34 have pulled it off? Possibly. The most important decision the team made was to go mid-engine, which would have put it three decades ahead of the 2020 Corvette! SVO had to fight the penny pinchers at every turn, but insisted on the layout for handling.

The team kept a couple more aces up its sleeve. By the 1980s, Ford had partnerships around the world. It had Yamaha tune a twin-turbo Ford V6 to make 280 horses. Giorgetto Giugiaro of Italdesign (Lotus Espirit, BMW M1, DeLorean) sketched out the first concepts while Ghia in Turin (De Tomaso Pantera), came up with the final design. And the Canewdon Consultants chassis engineers in England handled the handling.

The team decided on assembly in Europe because of state-of-the-art processes there and a favorable exchange rate. Its original projection claimed it could hit a $26,500 MSRP by the 1989 model year and 4X Ford’s $170 million development investment. It focused on a timeless shape to maximize sales: “Clean and functional, rather than trendy, to embody the timelessness of the Porsche 911 and Ferrari.” Ford also upsized the Ghia design to offer a targa top and some cargo room behind the seats to make the sports car a bit more practical.

The team built test mules and pitted them against all the sports cars of the day. It found the RX-7 Turbo did the best on the skidpad, so it benchmarked the legendary sports car. And after a suspension redesign, tests showed the Ford concept won. How? Hydraulics that could adjust the ride from “very low-frequency plush to a firmer highly damped Corvette-like setting.”

F1 champ Jackie Stewart tried it and loved it. Early market testing proved the majority of drivers—without knowing the car’s brand—preferred it to a Ferrari. They guessed it was worth about $38k.

Personally, I think Ford would have needed to offer a V8 version eventually. Even the mid-engine Ferraris of the day were still running V8s. But during the design phase, Roush even experimented with dropping a Ford 5.0 in a test mule, and it handled the engine fine.

So whatever happened to the GN34? A shift in exchange rates bumped the price of European manufacturing 17%. Combine that with SHO’s perfectionism, and the projected cost of the car was up 40%. To make any money, Ford would need to charge almost $38k after all. That would be the equivalent of $100k today and would shrink its market considerably.

In the end, the board had to choose between going to production with the GN34 and another project: the 1990 Explorer. And while I’m sad we never got this Rad 1980s mid-engine Ford, they probably made the right business decision.

All that said, I have to wonder if Ford knew what was brewing at Dodge. The Viper—though opposite from the GN34 in every way—debuted for 1991 and ended up becoming a legend that shaped Detroit for decades. Despite its $50k price tag.

You can see Ford’s 1989 supercar concept in action in the video below: