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By Noel Young, Correspondent

January 12, 2015 | 3 min read

Ford today unveiled a GT supercar at the Detroit Motor Show with more than 600 horsepower generated by a twin-turbo EcoBoost V-6 engine. It will go on sale 50 years after the original GT40 swept the 24-Hour race at Le Mans.

The new GT will return to Le Mans next year on the anniversary of Ford’s historic win in the legendary European endurance race, Bloomberg reported.

GT40 racers finished first, second and third at Le Mans in 1966, as Henry Ford II, the company’s chief and grandson of the founder, looked on. The GT40 was the first American racing car to win the grueling race and the first US car to win a major European race since 1921.

The carbon-fibre body sparkled like a blue gem at Detroit as executive chairman Bill Ford and chief executive Mark Fields announced that it would go into production next year.

The car will reportedly be priced above $150,000.

Ford said it developed the car in just a year - in contrast to the three years it typically takes to bring a car to market.

“This car literally is a showcase for all the innovation and technology we put in across our product line,” Fields told reporters after the unveiling. “In the car business, it’s about making people’s hearts pound.”

Ford also unveiled an F-150 Raptor and the Shelby GT350R at the Detroit auto show today. The company said it will offer 12 performance vehicles by 2020.

Fields’ brainchild, the new GT has been developed under the internal code name Project Phoenix, said Bloomberg quoting a source. The race car will be powered by a turbocharged EcoBoost engine that maximizes fuel efficiency.

After a year in which Ford lost almost a point of U.S. market share, the automaker is eager to show it will come back in 2015, as the F-150 reaches dealers and now is joined by some sizzle in the showroom. While a GT would sell in small numbers, the impact on Ford’s image for styling and engineering could be large.

“Ford wants to put some pizazz in its product line,” Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst with AutoTrader.com, said in an interview. “It’s a reflection of the mood of the market. The economy is better, people have money and it’s OK to consumer conspicuously again.”

Ford’s last GT, which it stopped selling in 2006, was priced at $149,995 and sold just over 4,000 models in two years on the market. While it traveled from zero to 60 miles per hour in under four seconds, it managed only 12 miles per gallon in the city and 19 mpg on the highway, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.