…Which makes one wonder why they didn’t name the new one the GT44.3, or GT44 for short.
The GT90 concept car (which was neither 90" tall nor first shown in 1990) kind of screwed up Ford’s GT naming system. Badging the new car “GT00” would make it sound kind of crappy (not to mention that it would confuse the simple- “Gee tee oooh?”)
It seems like everyone has forgotten about the show car (gorgeous as it was), so they could just have called this car the GT44.3 (or possibly GT44) or just GT50, a la Ferrari… “GT” has, you know, been done .
Previous posters were correct- the car is a loss-leading image booster; a surprising number of performance cars from volume manufacturers are never intended to turn a profit, just to lend their auras to lower-end models. See Dodge Viper, Honda/Acura NSX, Jaguar XJ220/XJR-15, Subaru SVX, Ferrari Enzo, et al. It should be noted that those were all partly built to satisfy the performance urges of upper management in each company too.