SPANISH FORK — From Model T to GT, Smith Auto Ford Co. has operated in Spanish Fork for some 80 years — and all that time as a family business.
Now, the seller of Ford vehicles is making history: it's the first dealership in Utah to get a coveted Ford GT, the $155,000 street-legal race car that can go from a dead stop to 60 mph in under four seconds.
Owner Glenda Lyman won the right to put the mid-engine sports car on her showroom floor at a multi-regional Ford spring dealership convention last year in Las Vegas. Her chip was drawn from a rolling drum that had thousands of chips in it.
"The chips had dealership names on them. They put them in a drum, rolled the drum and mine came up," she said.
The car was delivered to her at the end of April and was on display until last Wednesday when Highland resident Glen Nilson picked it up.
He was shopping for one when he found out Smith Auto Ford was expecting a delivery.
The car — with a 550 hp, 5.4 liter engine — went for more than the $155,000 asking price, Lyman said. That was expected for this kind of car, according to several dealers.
Other Utah dealerships will sell — or have already sold — the GT they've been allocated.
St. George Ford in St. George got one shortly after Lyman received hers and sold it right after receiving it, said a sales manager. He'd like more to satisfy at least 10 waiting customers "but you only get one a year," he said.
Henry Day Ford in Salt Lake will get two — one was won in a lottery; the other because the dealership is a top sales performer. Owner Mike Day will keep one; the other was sold a year ago to a Ford store owner outside of Utah, sales manager Jared Hamilton said. About half a dozen would-be buyers have expressed interest in the GT, he said.
Wright Ford in Heber City won the right to sell a GT from an allocation lottery in Detroit, Joey Wright said. It was sold in advance in the fall to a buyer from Las Vegas, he said, but hasn't yet been delivered.
At Salt Lake's Larry H. Miller Ford, it has not been decided how the one car the dealership gets will be sold, said sales manager Greg Rolfe. The delivery date is also undetermined, but should come this summer.
The GT going to Willey Ford in Bountiful will be built next week and has an August delivery date, sales manager Adam Forman said. The dealership has a list of interested parties that has about seven names, he said.
The production of the GT is based on the race car of the 1960s that has a rich history of winning races. In 1966, it took a historic sweep of the 24-hour Le Mans race. The GT went on to win three more Le Mans victories that decade.
It also marks Ford's continuation of retro cars that are based on popular vehicles of yesteryear. Other examples are the 2005 Ford Mustang, built with features that were found on Ford Mustangs of the mid-1960s and early '70s, and the Ford Thunderbird, based on the popular sports car of the 1950s.
The specialty cars are not for first-time buyers, Lyman said. Rather, they are targeted at baby-boomers who were young when the originals came out but who are now more affluent and want the kind of cars they couldn't buy then.
Lyman is the third-generation owner of Smith Ford, started by her grandfather, Legrand Smith in 1924. The store was a downtown fixture until 1999 when she moved it to its current seven-acre site just off I-15 north of Main Street.
E-mail: rodger@desnews.com