"I was working at SVO at Ford and they were talking about the GTP car, but Ford wanted to build a front engine racecar because they did not sell any rear engine cars. That's where that came from. That was a Ford decision," Riley told RACER.

If entering a front-engine GTP machine wasn't enough of a milestone, Riley also helped produce the first carbon fiber prototype chassis.

"Right about that time, a guy I worked with got in contact with Ford Aerospace," he said. "I went out to visit Ford Aerospace in Palo Alto, and I really had the car already designed with aluminum honeycomb flat sheets like they were at the time. I remember meeting with those guys – there were a bunch of PhD's in the room – and started going over the car design and they wanted to know the loads everywhere.

"So I had to come back and calculate all the loads going into the car and when I came back, they designed the panels to fit that exact load. They did a great job on the tub, and after we recalculated everything to the new materials, we just switched over to carbon sheets. It was all carbon, but it had a steel roll cage, and from what I understand, it was the first carbon sports car tub made."