The Spectre R42

Try to suspend your disbelief for a moment and understand this: you’re looking at a Ford GT40.

Not the four-times-Le-Mans-winning original, admittedly, but one man’s vision of a GT40 for the ’90s. And that man – Ray Christopher – knew a thing or two about Ford’s supercar: the GT Developments firm he co-founded having built 300-odd recreations before he began to dream up his own design in 1991.

The proportions were similar, as was the layout – Ford V8 mounted amidships, ahead of a transaxle gearbox – and the underpinnings took the concept of the GT40’s monocoque and updated it with innovative folded aluminium and honeycomb composite construction.

Even the name – R42 – paid homage to the original, the 42 referring to the height from the ground to the roof (although production cars stood 43in high). The R, incidentally, was a touch of vanity from Ray.

Christopher even planned to take the R42 to La Sarthe. “My ambition has always been to see my car going down the Mulsanne Straight at night,” he told the Dorset Echo. “If it does the first 12 hours I will be a happy man.” Before that could happen, he first had to build a road car. Having created a scale model and prototype chassis by the end of 1992, work began on the first running car, due to be unveiled at the London Motor Show in October 1993. That target was met, but the combination of development costs and a worldwide recession forced GTD into receivership late the following year.

The firm was revived, but only after the rights to the R42 were sold for a reputed $2.5m to US-registered Spectre Motors Inc, led by 34-year-old former GTD Scandinavian sales agent Anders Hildebrand in March 1995.

Not only did Hildebrand get the R42 into production just four months later at GTD’s Creekmore premises in Poole, Dorset, but he also secured dealerships in his native Sweden, plus England, Denmark and Belgium – and had US supercar maker Saleen keen to assemble R42s Stateside. 

Ever canny, Hildebrand engineered various high-profile stunts to keep Spectre in the public eye. In 1996 he persuaded sports-racing legend Derek Bell MBE to come aboard as chairman and development consultant, and announced the ALCO-Spectre racing programme with the R42 GTR.

Later that year came the bold assertion that Spectre Supersports Ltd had sold its 26th R42, with plans to move to a 12,000sq ft premises in nearby Holton Heath and increase annual production to 200 cars within three years.

GTD initially planned to use aluminium or carbonfibre, but Spectre’s switch to glassfibre didn’t prevent a pretty wobbly finish – perhaps because boatbuilders laid the panelwork, or simply because the bucks were created from scaled-up scans of the 1:4 model!

The shape itself, however, is pretty accomplished: compact and well proportioned, mixing cues from a wide palette that includes Jaguar XJR-15, Ferrari 288 Evoluzione and Lamborghini Countach.

It’s efficient, too, its Cd of 0.28 achieved with the aid of aerodynamics students at Stockholm University – another bit of Hildebrand lateral thinking – who did the sums taken from the scale wind-tunnel model as an interesting practical project.

Any lingering doubts over the R42’s supercar credentials evaporate when you lift the engine cover (the entire rear end from the bulkhead back).

Here it’s easier to fall for the GT40 illusion – or a GT40 for the new millennium, with Ford’s classic 289 replaced by its all-aluminium quad-cam ‘Modular’ 4.6, driving the vast rear wheels via a Getrag five-speed transaxle rather than its spiritual ancestor’s ZF.

The hissing snake atop the V8’s plenum chamber marks out this R42 as a production car, powered by the Ford Mustang Cobra unit rather than the Lincoln MkVIII motor used in the first cars.

The Blue Oval theme continues inside. It’s clear that several cows, a couple of Walnut trees and a circa 1994 Ford Fiesta gave up their lives to furnish what Spectre called its ‘Racing car in a dinner jacket’.

The flashes of low-rent Dagenham plastic that pervade the cabin contrast with Wilton carpets, anti-glare Alcantara, bespoke white dials – including an impressive 200mph speedo – and the ruched blue leather of the slightly-too-reclined sports seats.

Actually, they need to be at that angle to give enough headroom – although it’s the lack of legroom in this car that may cause complaint. Adjustable pedal boxes were offered, but chassis 29 appears to be designed resolutely for sub-six-footers: anyone taller will find that knees and knuckles have an uncomfortably close relationship. 

Those poor knuckles also take a battering from the gearchange: unless you remember to take care as you engage first or third, your fist crashes into the centre console air vents – early-’90s Ford, naturally.

But it’s best not to dwell on such things, for to do so would be to overlook one of the biggest motoring surprises of the past two decades. Because some 80% of the Spectre experience is actually pretty decent – no, that’s not fair, it’s genuinely bloody good. 

First up, the R42 is unusual for its genre in that it doesn’t intimidate. The clutch is a bit heavy, but that knuckle-cracking gearchange is amazingly light considering the torque going through it and the gate – borrowed from the Lotus Esprit – is well defined for a cable set-up, probably due to the quality of the Getrag transaxle (developed for Audi).