Ford is edging closer to readying the new hypercar with which it will bid for its first outright Le Mans 24 Hours victory in 58 years.

Ford announced last year that it would enter the FIA World Endurance Championship with an LMDh hypercar in 2027 and confirmed earlier this year that it will use the 'Coyote' engine from its Mustang GT3 racer.

Ford has now fired up a prototype fitted with the 5.4-litre naturally aspirated V8 for the first time – and you can listen to it by watching the video below.

Dan Sayers, Ford Racing’s hypercar boss, said that ”when you have an engine this iconic in your arsenal, you don’t look for alternatives”.

He added that “you lean into your DNA” and described the V8 as a “bridge between the legends of 1966 and the future of 2027”.

All four of the GT40s that won Le Mans in the 1960s featured a V8 engine. A 7.0-litre unit was used in 1966 and 1967, before rule changes meant a switch to a 4.9-litre unit for its wins in 1968 and 1969.

Sayers said the V8 was being developed in-house by a team of engineers at Ford headquarters in Michigan, with input from engineers working on the nascent Red Bull Ford Powertrains Formula 1 project.

Ford will begin testing the hypercar in full from next month. Sayers said it will visit several European circuits, aiming to validate performance, reliability, the integration of its hybrid system and the performance of its aerodynamics.

Under LMDh rules, manufacturers must use a chassis provided by one of four companies (Ford has selected French constructor Oreca), to which it can then fit bespoke styling elements.

A spec hybrid system is employed but manufacturers can use their own combustion engines.

System output is capped at 671bhp and all cars are rear-wheel-drive.

The Fords will be driven by Sebastian Priaulx, Mike Rockenfeller and Logan Sargeant. Brit Priaulx and German Rockenfeller, who won Le Mans in 2010 with Audi, will move up from racing a Mustang GT3 in the US-based IMSA Sportscar Championship last year, while American Sargeant previously drove in F1 for Williams.

Priaulx and Rockenfeller are competing in a Ford-run Oreca LMP2 prototype in the ACO European Le Mans Series this year.

Sayers said this will allow the squad to take “the building blocks of this programme and stress-test them under the most demanding conditions on the planet”.

Ford’s hypercar programme will be its first in the top class at Le Mans since the disastrous Group C C100 project, which was launched in 1981 but canned at the end of the following year due to poor results.