For nearly three decades, South Africa’s Cape Advanced Vehicles (CAV) has carved out a comfortable, highly specialized niche doing one thing exceptionally well: building gorgeous, anatomically correct Ford GT40 replicas.
After shipping over 220 of these nostalgic time machines to wealthy purists worldwide, you would think they’d just keep coasting on corporate nostalgia. Instead, CAV looked at their legacy and decided to throw a twin-supercharged grenade right into it. Enter the CAV GT Mk II, an 800-horsepower existential crisis that boldly replaces their entire replica lineup.
At first glance, the GT Mk II plays tricks on your eyes. It has the iconic Le Mans silhouette, but those ultra-modern headlights and sleek, smoothed-out rear bodywork immediately signal that this isn’t your grandfather’s 1966 racer. It’s too elegant, lacking the raw, blue-collar malice of the original GT40 or even the mid-2000s revival. But it’s significantly larger, which means normal human beings can actually sit inside without requiring orthopedic surgery afterward.
CAV calls it a restomod, refusing to disclose the donor platform, but a quick look at the aluminum-carbon roofline and pillars reveals the open secret. There is an Audi R8 of the second generation hiding beneath that vintage dress.
Purists might scream blasphemy, but the mechanical madness under the hood deserves some respect. CAV took Audi’s 4.2-liter V8 and slapped two massive blowers onto a carbon-fiber intake. The result is a screaming monster producing 800 HP at 7,800 rpm, spinning all the way to a glorious 9,000 rpm, and churning out 649 pound-feet of torque. Better yet, while an automatic is standard, you can option a proper six-speed manual gearbox.
Paired with standard all-wheel drive, six power modes, and a featherweight 2,970-pound carbon body, this machine rockets to 62 mph in just 3.0 seconds and tops out at 204 mph. CAV threw in three-way adjustable KW Variant 4 dampers and massive eight-piston Brembo brakes. An active Inconel exhaust ensures your neighbors will hate you.
Marking the 60th anniversary of Ford’s Le Mans sweep, only 40 units will exist, including 20 in Miles Blue. It’s a risky bet for CAV to kill its core replica business, but if you’re going to go out, you might as well do it at 9,000 rpm.
