The background This article is about a French automobile company started by a rich French industrialist Jean Tastevin. Jean Tastevin was a graduate engineer of the École centrale de Paris and he succeeded his father in his business which used to manufacture mining and railway equipment. Jean was always a huge automobile enthusiast and personally owned cars from brands such as Aston Martin, Facel Vega and Jaguar. Having owned such cars he always wanted to own a French built car of that quality and class. After becoming the chairman, he renamed the company Compagnie française de produits métallurgiques (CFPM) where he used to sell and rent train cars across Europe. His other company called Compagnie Française de Matériels Ferroviaires (CFMF) used to manufacture and store the rolling stock. This was his day to day bread winning job, however there was a fire burning inside of him to build a car of his desire to compete with the likes of Iso Fidia, Jaguars and Aston’s. Jean Tastevin ...
Ford GT40 crushed the Ferrari at Le Mans in the 60’s but 20 years later it was still Ferraris and Porsches winning the sales with highly profitable sports cars. In the domestic market the Corvette was also a great success though it never offered the same quality or feel as its European rivals. It looked like Ford was just letting go of a great opportunity to grab some profits with their own sports car. Two design houses that were part of this project Behind closed curtains Ford's very own Specialty vehicle operations (SVO) decided to work on creating a fast mid-engined sports car that would compete with the other fast European premium sports cars but at the price of a Corvette. The project started in late 1983 with the code name GN34. The project would use resources from around the world with Italian styling, British chassis engineering, European assembly standards and would also boast of the built tough reliability. The full details of this project was never fully revealed ...