Introduction

I decided that I would create a build diary for this project for a couple of reasons. First is that I really found reading the other build diaries interesting and hopefully useful. Second is that I am much less experienced than any other build diary author I have read, so this is the “build diary for dummies” version. Third is that if I write about it, and get some encouragement, it’ll help me stay focused on getting the job done.

I was actually born in Australia and now live in the US. I am not a car person. Here’s my proof – here is the list of car’s I’ve owned: a big old 1980’s station wagon, a second-hand Ford Taurus (what a piece of junk), a Honda minivan, a Honda Civic, and a Ford Focus. I don’t watch car racing, I don’t read car magazines, but I am interested in the technology behind automotive engineering. Every car I’ve had is automatic, so I don’t even really know how to drive a manual! The most exciting car maintenance I have done is replacing the radiator on the Ford Taurus in a car park. I have driven a Nascar, though, which was absolutely amazing.

So why build a kit car? One thing I do like doing is working out how things work, and ever since I was a kid, I loved pulling stuff apart and sometimes bothering to put it back together again. I do like doing home renovations, and working out how to do all of the pieces myself. I’m not great at it, but I take time (a lot of time!) and generally do an okay job. I get a lot of enjoyment out of figuring stuff out and seeing the job done at the end knowing I did each little piece along the way.

About ten year ago, I heard that there were such things as kit cars. I got intrigued, but never had the money nor the guts to actually think about it doing it. I assumed it was a bit like “build your own steam powered generator”, and you’d end up with a big, boxy, shabby looking car. Either that, or it would look like some type of open-frame go-kart that could zoom along at 35 miles an hour.

Boy was I wrong! A friend who used to build and race cars pointed me to a couple of places that made Cobra’s, Super 7’s, and knock-off’s of Lamborghini’s and other exotics. I looked at these and was really amazed. These car’s looked great! The knock-off’s where you take a donor car, an angle grinder and a set of body panels and pretend that you have a Lamborghini didn’t interest me one bit. That seemed very vain. 

So I started looking around at some of the real ground-up kits. A lot of them were the open-cockpit roadster type. For some reason, I just didn’t like that. To me, the ultimate car is like a spaceship that takes you from A to B as quickly as possible, and the enjoyment of speed is in the navigation of the car. Roadster’s seem like they are the ultimate “experience it while it happens” type of car, sort of like a motorbike, where you are immersed in the wind and the act of transit. I understand and enjoy that thrill too, but it wasn’t what I wanted.

And then I heard about the GT40. I love the "underdog beats the champion stories", David and Goliath, and so on. The GT40 is the epitome of that, with the desperate drive of Ford during the 1960’s to create an endurance racing vehicle that could win the ultimate endurance racing event, the 24 hour Le Mans. If you want a good read in the automotive realm of struggle against really bad odds, read any decent history of the GT40. Its quite incredible what Ford did, and how creative they were.

So, for the past five or so years, I had in the back of my mind that I wanted to build a GT40 kitcar. I did a bit of research every so often, and got familiar with the various kits, and read a lot about the car itself and its history.

Just this year, I decided that now was the right time. I had saved just enough money to make it worthwhile, and I had a nice setup at home (a three car garage) that would serve as an ideal workshop to build it. So, I got serious (drum roll, please…).

I started getting all the info on GT40 kit cars. As I started spending time on it, though, I was getting a bit uneasy. When I look at the GT40, particularly the Mark I, I saw the lines of an American muscle car. The Mark I is what most of the kits seem to be like, and I didn’t really like it that much. I loved everything else about the car; the height, the mid-engine layout, the performance and so on. I loved the racing profile, but still didn’t like the lines of the car as much as some of the more modern sports cars.

So I was torn, because I thought I had to make the choice between a closed-cockpit older “muscle-car” style GT40, the roadster style full kit Cobra / Super 7 type kits, or the completely bogus modern-style copycat Lambo / Ferrari kits that sit over the top of an underlying piece-of-junk donor car. Everything looked like a compromise, and I wasn’t happy. I decided that the GT40 was still the best bet.

I bought multiple history books on the GT40 and was amazed and impressed with everything that the various race teams did. I love the stories of a small group of people making extraordinary efforts to beat out the competition. I love the underdog story, almost regardless of the outcome. Its wonderful when the underdog wins, but more important to me is the human spirit that drives the underdog to even try. In endurance racing, this seems like it is best epitomized in the history of the GT40.

Then a couple of months ago, as I was running through different kit car search engine results on the web, I came across the Ultima GTR, completely by accident. It immediately grabbed my attention because from the photos it was clear that the car was “generally” like a GT40, but (in my opinion) looked a heck of a lot more modern. However, I didn’t spend any time really looking at it in detail.

I put it aside as an option since I’d spent all this time enamoring myself with the GT40, and went ahead to order my GT40 kit from the vendor that I felt was the best. I was shocked to hear that I had a nine month wait. Good for them that they have this level of back-log in business, but I didn’t want to wait for nine months. I was despondent.

Not only that, Ford had just announced that they were bringing out a modern GT40 look-a-like limited production run car. And guess what – it wasn’t 40 inches tall, it would be 44 inches tall, and longer, and heavier. It cost $150,000 and was ideally timed for the 55+ age executive who had grown up in the US as a young adult watching Ford take victory in the Le Mans 24 hour race. I could just see myself constantly explaining to people that, “no, this is not a 2004 GT40(44?), it’s a kit car modeled on the original…”, and so on. I certainly didn’t want to be driving a kit car “trying to be” a $150,000 production car.

So for these three reasons (9 month wait, didn’t really like the body lines, Ford’s announcement), I started to look seriously at the Ultima.

And as I read more, I really liked what I saw. In my mind, its basically like a GT40 (mid-engine, two-seater, racing car origins), but a lot better in multiple dimensions:

So, I decided to get in touch with their factory in the UK, and after a number of emails and a number of phone calls, and a number of long discussions with my lovely wife, I finally put in a deposit on the most remarkable purchase I have ever made. When you think about it, I have never seen an Ultima first hand, I have never spoken to an owner, and when I finally get the “box of bits”, I still don’t even have an Ultima – all I have is a big box of bits! Its pretty scary to do this.

But I'm really looking forward to it, and from all that I've read, this looks like a great kit car to build.