Classified of the week: a barely-touched Gulf Ford GT

It’s been a couple of months since Ford sent out its golden-ticket letters to prospective Ford GT buyers, letting the lucky ones know they were about to owe Ford around a quarter of a million quid, and leaving plenty of supercar fans gutted to have missed out on the Le Mans-winning, bi-turbo V6 hero car. If the pain hasn’t yet subsided, TopGear.com can help.

Among three Ford GTs for sale at CNC Motors Inc. in Ontario, Canada, this one caught our roving eye. Can you guess why? Honestly, it’s difficult to think of any object on Earth that can’t be improved aesthetically with a liberal application of Gulf racing colours. 

This 2006 GT isn’t the lowest mileage one out there. In fact, with 618 miles under its wheels it’s not even the most lightly used example at this particular dealership – if box fresh is your thing, they've also got a red’n’white version sporting a sacrilegious 198 miles from new. But, like rock always beats scissors, Gulf livery beats stripes, so this is our pick.

Oodles of GTs have seen the greasy end of the modifier’s spanner, with power outputs north of 750bhp easily extracted from the 5.4-litre supercharged V8. This one’s totally standard, with 550bhp reaching those massive rear tyres via a six-speed manual gearbox. A V8 and a manual – now there’s two things you won’t be finding in the new GT…

You want it, of course. You can see yourself settling onto that perforated driver's seat, can't you? We don’t blame you. And to make it yours, you’ll need a $550,040-sized pile of money – that’s over £430,000 if you’re planning an impromptu session of window-shopping from Blighty. Yep, our consumer advice if you missed out on buying one really expensive fast car is to go and buy another fast, even more expensive car. Thank us later.