Ford GT40

The first lesson to be learned here is simple: don’t ever piss off a guy with a billion dollars. Just who committed this grievous mistake?  And just who was ultimately made to pay for it?  None other than Enzo Ferrari, the former mechanic turned owner-operator-maestro of the legendary racing empire that bears his name. Though the Italian never acknowledged it, the experience did  show him a peculiarly American life’s lesson. Namely, paybacks are a bitch.

Heard of a guy named Iacocca?

It all began this way:  In the early Sixties, one of the movers-and-shakers at Ford Motor Company was a guy of Italian heritage named Lido (Lee) Iacocca. Now renowned as a television pitchman, Iacocca at that time was a chief executive at Ford Motor Company and was mainly responsible for bringing a performance image to the Ford brand by backing projects like NASCAR racing and the landmark Ford Mustang ponycar.

But on the stage of  worldwide  motorsport, NASCAR was looked at as a hick American affectation. Whatever success Ford had in NASCAR, and over the years it had plenty, it held no sway in South America,  Europe,  or the Orient. That was a situation Iacocca wanted to change, so he persuaded his boss, Henry Ford II (a.k.a.  “The Deuce”), that making a commitment to European-based racing like  endurance GT and Formula One competition would help make the cash registers ring. Ford, who liked to hear the cash registers ring, was, of course,  all ears. He asked Iacocca how they should go about it, and the brief  answer was “Buy Ferrari.”

A legend with bad profits

Perhaps at first glance,  that plan seemed far-fetched, because even in the early Sixties, Ferrari was already a legendary marque with an enviable racing record. But, at the same time, as a money-making enterprise Ferrari was not nearly as triumphant  as one might have guessed from its on-track successes. From Bentley to Duesenberg to Lotus, makers of racing machinery have had a notoriously hard  time actually generating profits, and the same held true for Ferrari. For one thing, Enzo cared a lot more about winning car races than making cash. For another, his road cars, though often spectacular, sold in very small numbers and were, in the overall scheme of Ferrari’s priorities, an afterthought.

So when Ford Motor Company put out some feelers to Il Commendatore about the probable purchase of Ferrari, the initial response was warmly greeted. Further meetings followed; Henry Ford II got involved on a personal level; and it looked as if those strange bedfellows– the Italian cottage industry and the American industrial giant –would wind up hitched. But as the transaction neared completion, Enzo Ferrari seemed to get cold feet. In retrospect,  it is impossible to determine precisely what went wrong. Some say that, as part of the transaction, Ford refused to let Ferrari (the man) continue to control Ferrari racing operations, which was tantamount to refusing to let him continue to breathe. Others say Ferrari, both competitive and shrewd, had never been serious about getting into bed with Ford (the company) in the first place. Like a conniving Italian Lothario, the thinking goes, Ferrari was just using Ford to make Fiat jealous and thus to convince the Agnelli family they had better take a partial ownership role in Ferrari, all the while letting Enzo control the racing operations, something they eventually did.

Revenge on Iacocca’s brain

For whatever reasons, Ferrari backed away from the Ford deal, and the Deuce was, well, furious as the deuce. He imagined to have the Ferrari race team as his new playtoy and, instead, he had been jilted at the altar. So, in the fine American tradition epitomized by the motto  “Don’t get mad; get even” Henry Ford II decided he would teach Enzo Ferrari a thing or two about whom he should and shouldn’t mess with.

Simply put, Ford instructed  his minions (and he had lots of minions) to win what many perceive to be the most important race in the world–the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Of course, this was a tall order, since no American race car had ever won the Le Mans 24 hours and very few had even come close. Over three decades before, in 1928, Stutz had made the best shot at it, ending second, and that same year Chryslers ended third and fourth. In the Fifties, Briggs Cunningham attempted to turn the trick with his special Cadillac-powered racecars, but his best results were third-place finishes in ’53 and ’54. But this  didn’t stop Ford. He wanted to beat Ferrari in the worst manner, and the good news was he had the cubic dollars to do it.

Huge guns brought in to win race

As things happened,  the Ferrari transaction went sour in 1963, and the Deuce put out the directive that a Ford-branded GT racecar would compete at Le Mans in June 1964–not enough lead time. But Ford quickly hired former Aston Martin racing team major domo John Wyer to boss the effort, brought in Carroll Shelby, who happened to be a former Ferrari driver himself, as a consultant, and the team began hustling.

Very quickly,  Wyer  winded up in Eric Broadley’s Lola racecar shop, because with so little time to move the project forward he knew it was impossible to start from scratch. So the mid-engine Lola GT became the basis of what was to be called the Ford GT40, but by the time the makeover was finished,  the new racer was a very different animal. Ford stylists in Dearborn, Michigan, set to work on the car’s exterior design, and their handiwork was put to the test  in a wind tunnel at the University of Maryland. Meanwhile, Shelby, who knew more than a few techniques  to wring horsepower out of Ford V-8s, set to work to make the mundane 289 cubic-inch pushrod engine produce racing-winning amounts of  dependable  accelerative force.

The Ford GT40 was presented to the public at the New York Auto Show in the spring of 1964, a heady period because it also was marked by the introduction of the original Mustang. And frankly,  Ford risked upstaging itself, because next to the snarky, sleek,  40-inch-tall GT40, the Mustang looked like a kiddie kar. But the GT40 also showed that Ford wasn’t kidding about going endurance racing against the likes of Ferrari. It had all the right stuff– transaxle with ZF gearbox, sheet-steel monocoque mid-engine configuration, and disk brakes that would stop a Greyhound bus. Yet, amazingly, this brutish-looking beast weighed only 1,835 pounds.

Scared Ferrari a bit, but still lost the race

And so,  on June 20th, 1964, Ford Motor Company came to Le Mans. The company entered three factory racecars: GT103 driven by Richie Ginther and Masten Gregory,  GT102 driven by Phil Hill and Bruce McLaren, and GT104 driven by Dickie Attwood and Jo Schlesser. If you believe in fairy tales, you probably think one of them won the legendary race, but no, it wasn’t that easy. Sadly, the Attwood/Schlesser car caught fire on the Mulsanne Straight, and transmission breakdowns doomed the other two cars, but not before they had put an unholy scare into one Enzo Ferrari. For one thing, while the Ford GT40s were running, Hill set a new lap record (131.38 miles per hour) around the fabled course. But the  bottom line is this : Ferraris finished one, two, three.

Of course, that did not sit well with Mr. Henry Ford II. But he was undaunted in his quest to beat Ferrari at its game, so for the 1965 race, he invested even more cash, and Ford fielded  6 cars, 2 powered by immense 7-liter (427 cubic inch) NASCAR racing engines. With some 500 horsepower on tap, these GT40 Mk IIs had a maximum end of some 210 mph. Phil Hill again set a lap record, but before the 24 hours had elapsed all the Fords collapsed and Ferraris finished one, two, three again.

Deja vu not satisfying to Iacocca

Sadly, this was getting monotonous–and irritating. But Ford decided to apply additional  money to the infested area. For the 1966 race, the field included 13 (13!) GT40s,  three by Ford’s NASCAR race shop, Holman & Moody, three prepared by Shelby American, and the others by “independent” teams. Seven of the 13 were 500+ horsepower 427-engined versions.

Again, the Fords were amazingly quick, but as the race unfolded, the old, familiar thing began to happen–they started to collapse. One by one they fell from the field, heartbreaking because they were very  fast. Surely, the Deuce began to fear he had another debacle–and a damned pricey one at that–on his hands.

But this time, things would turn out  so differently, because this time three of the Ford GT40s didn’t break. And, somewhat coincidentally, they ended the race in an unaccustomed position–one, two, three. The Fords, in fact, were so far in front at the end that team orders went out that they should attempt to finish in a three-way dead heat, because the American marketers thought a French 3-way would have enormous advertising potential back in the States. The MkII driven by Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon was officially declared the winner.

More triumphs the next season

Ford might have stopped right there, but the crew now had a good thing going. Driving lighter, even more powerful GT40 Mk IVs, produced  in the U.S. by Kar Kraft, the team of  A.J. Foyt and Dan Gurney won the next year’s race, and Bruce McClaren and Mark Donohue finished fourth.

Two in a row proved enough for the Deuce, and Ford Motor Company decided to quit its formal  involvement in world endurance GT racing, but that didn’t stop the Ford GT40s from winning victories at Le Mans in 1968 and 1969 under the management of John Wyer and his Gulf Oil team. The ’69 victory was especially impressive since it was accomplished by Jackie Oliver and Jacky Ickx  in a car that had run at Le Mans in 1968.

What this all meant was that, after the snub by Ferrari, and after millions upon millions of dollars plus the effort, time,  and sheer nerve of many, many intrepid racing men, Ford won the world’s most glamorous race four consecutive times.   In other words, Mr. Ferrari, as far as Americans at Ford are concerned, you can eat…well, what you can eat sure ain’t pasta.

—© Studio One Networks—

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