Ford worked on a secret mid-engine supercar that never made it

Ford once worked on a secret mid-engine supercar to rival the likes of Ferrari and Porsche but the car never made it to production. 

Back in the 1980s, Ford set its sights on creating a supercar that would handle and grip the road better than anything else out there. 

The carmaker also wanted to keep the car fairly affordable and decided to price it in the same range as the Chevrolet Corvette. 

However, despite years of working away on developing the car – codenamed GN34 – the project was quietly dropped.

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Ford launched the ambitious project in the 1980s

The GN34 was the brainchild of engineers from Ford’s Special Vehicle Operations (SVO).

The team contacted several European coachbuilders to provide the car’s styling – as none of its own factories were set up to produce 20,000 specialist mid-engine cars per year. 

Eventually, SVO settled on Turin-based Italdesign which had a ready-built show car dubbed Maya that seemed like the perfect vehicle for the GN34 project. 

SVO provided the Maya shell with a 3.0-liter V6 Taurus powertrain so the car could be showcased at the 1984 Turin show.

Further development led to a mark-two Maya that was painted a daring shade of red and had Ford badges to the front and rear. 

However, this concept was later rejected in favor of a design made by Ford’s International Studio and Turin-based coachbuilders Ghia.

The final design benefited from numerous advanced components such as forged aluminum unequal-length control arms, and a multilink rear suspension with twin lower arms. 

Sadly, the car never made it to production

Meanwhile, numerous tests were conducted in the search to find a suitable engine for the GN34. 

According to Secret Fords Volume Two by author Steve Saxty, the Maya II had a V6, but later test cars utilized various engines, including a DeTomaso Pantera tuned V8. 

The team later opted for a Yamaha V6 that had been commissioned for the Taurus SHO.

The V6 engine was enlarged from 3.0 liter to 3.6 and had its power boosted from 227 horsepower to 280.

With bodywork and engine settled upon, you’d think it was all set to launch the GN34 into production, right?

Unfortunately, in 1986 – and amid rising costs to the project – the marque decided to pull the plug and instead focus its attention on the Explorer SUV. 

What might have been, eh?