"With a little help from Space Shuttle technology, Ford helped reinvent the wheel." Nothing like a bit of American modesty to support a press release, is there? But Ford's introduction of carbon fibre wheels for the
Mustang GT350R
is pretty cool, as is the whole car in fact. Yes, it's very unlikely we'll ever seen any in Britain but nerdy tech like this appeals and so nerdy tech we will write about.
"Camaro zee twenty what?"
Ford claims the wheels fitted to the GT350R are the world's first mass-produced carbon wheels, as those we've seen on Koenigseggs are optional and in much smaller numbers. They're built by Carbon Revolution in Australia and then shipped to America for installation on a Shelby, indicative of the efforts in creating them.
The benefit to (much) lighter wheels is of course reducing the mass of the car not supported by the suspension. Ford claims a carbon wheel weighs just 18lbs (8.1kg) compared to 33lbs (15kg) for an aluminium wheel, saving 60lbs (27kg) in overall weight. Rotational inertia is apparently down 40 per cent, which will help acceleration, braking and turn in. The springs and magnetic dampers have been recalibrated from a GT350 to account for the reduced weight.
Carbon wheels. On a Mustang. What next?!
Now obviously Ford is quite proud of how the tech is suitable for road use but, credit where it's due, this sounds like a fair achievement. What happens when you hit a pothole? Can you kerb a carbon wheel? What about in cold weather? Hot weather? So for example the design was upgraded from road to motorsport spec when it was found 900 degree celsius brakes didn't work with the original design. The resin and construction ensures the carbon isn't brittle, it has passed UV and chemical exposure tests and will even survive salty winter roads. Bring it to Britain Ford, come on...
More numbers? Alright then. As the one-piece wheel is cured, 61 individual checks and more than 246,000 data points are logged and 18,000 X-ray images are taken. For a wheel! No word yet on how much a kerb scrape will cost...
They're fairly special things for tyres to wrap around then. And it's Ford mass-producing them, or at least making more of them than any other manufacturer previously has. If this much development has gone into the carbon wheels, the car itself should be fairly astonishing. Let's hope a few outside North America get the chance to try.