It all started with a business deal gone sour
and what came out of that
was the greatest rivalry in the history of racing.
Ford. Ferrari.
Two titans of the automobile industry
waged war, at what was at the time in the 1960s
the biggest race in the world:
The 24 hours of Le Mans.
You have to imagine the scene.
250,000 people.
Television cameras for the first time.
People all over the world were watching this one race.
It was like a Superbowl of speed.
Definitely the most dangerous sporting event of any kind in the world.
To win Le Mans, it meant that you were the best.
Everybody drove in it.
All the formula 1 stars at the time
drove in Le Mans
alongside all the sports car heroes.
It's the ultimate venue.
You win Le Mans, the whole planet knows.
We're starting 55 cars.
I don't think more than 15 or 20 are going to finish.
For an automotive manufacturer,
it proves their endurance more than any other race
can possibly do.
Commercially, it is the most important race to win
in the world, for a car manufacturer.
From the moment the second automobile was built, racing was born.
And the car that would win is the car people wanted to buy.
It took a lot of cheek to think it could rival the horse
as a way of getting around.
The car lost the race.
But it won all the attention.
And none was any too modest in the things he had to say
about his own breed of horseless carriage.
The best way to settle these competing claims
was in a sport w.K. Vanderbilt brought to America from Europe.
A race over public roads.
By the third year of the race, 1906,
2 million people turned out to witness this new sport
where men and machine were linked as teammates.
Racing at 60 mph on the straights.
Only the fittest car survived.
And those which held up in competition redoubled their boasting in advertising.
From there on out, people who built cars
knew they had to win races to Market their cars.
So racing spread the gospel of automobile companies all over the world.
In Detroit, a man named Henry Ford
was making what he called a quadracycle.
It looked like a buggy, only it had no shafts or a horse to be harnessed to.
The horsepower was going to come from a gasoline engine he had made himself.
In 1901, Henry Ford was kind of struggling at that point.
He would end up starting and failing twice
before he started the Ford motor company.
He was an engineer and a technical guy.
And he was not one of the wealthy people at the time.
He had this very pivotal race against Alexander Winton.
He had the crystal bowl victory winner for this race.
He thought Alexander Winton was
the most important race car driver of the day.
That maybe if he got some of his engineers and
put together a car and raced Winton, and beat Winton,
that would be the beginning of the new launch of the Ford motor company.
He raced a car that he called "sweepstakes."
But it was lighter and it was more efficient than Alexander Winton's car.
And he was behind Alexander throughout most of the race.
And then Alexander's car began to slow,
so he eventually caught up and passed him, and won the race.
People came to him after the race
and said "anything you want to do, Mr. Ford, we're happy to invest."
That's always been something in my mind that has
really kind of a key element of our company's DNA.
Which is that we were really born on the racetrack.
1923, I think, was the first year that le mans was run and there was a model-t racer.
And various private companies had taken model-ts
and adjusted them and used them in racing.
That started the modern day history of the Ford motor company.
Enzo Ferrari, was born northern Italy
1898. Into a mixture of a rural and industrial area.
His father was called Alberto and he was a metal worker.
The family of Ferrari, they had a house in Modena.
They were producing parts for the Italian railway.
My father, as a kid, he was not much interested in the family business.
He was a dreamer.
In 1908, father took Enzo
to a big motor race called the coppa acerbo.
He was fascinated by these racing cars.
And so he fall in love with moto racing.
And from that day onwards, he wanted to be a racing driver.
The 1st world war happened.
It was a tragedy for everyone. It was a tragedy for him.
He lost a father.
He lost a brother.
Enzo is called into the service.
He starts doing motor maintenance for the artillery regiment.
Still, in the back of his mind,
what he really wants to be is a race car driver.
After the war, he did sell the house
for buying racing cars.
This is the reason for which at the beginning
the people from Modena thought he was crazy.
For Alfa-Romeo, he did one race
called the coppa acerbo in 1924.
Won that. And said that was the point
when his life changed completely.
That was when he said he became a real racing driver.
At the same time, Alfa-Romeo is going through all kinds of
financial problems with the parent company.
They can't be seen to be directly involved in motor racing,
in the way that they have been.
So they hive off the motor sport side to Enzo.
He sets up a new organization called Scuderia Ferrari.
Which is in everything but name, is the Alfa-Romeo racing team.
For the first time, he had premises of his own.
He also had a badge of his own.
A black prancing horse on a yellow background.
The prancing horse is a family story about my father.
That he was a young racing driver...
And he won, two years in a row,
a race called Circuito del Savio.
And in the crowd was a guy called Count Baracca.
His son, Francesco, had been a WWI fighter Ace
in the Italian airforce.
He had 34 kills before he was killed himself.
The mother of Francesco Baracca told Mr. Ferrari
to use the emblem of his son for his car because
he was the only man in Italy eligible to use the prancing horse.
And to use the logo in 1929.
When established Scuderia Ferrari
while Ferrari is running Alfa-Scuderia Ferrari,
they win everything there is worth winning.
They win grand prix, they win the Targa Florio
and from 1931 to 1934 they win Le Mans 4 times.
All on his watch.
One thing that goes all the way through Ferrari's life,
he was an individual. He did things for him.
So when Ferrari eventually negotiates his way out of Alfa Romeo
around 1939, he gets quite a good financial payoff.
But part of the settlement is that he will not be allowed to build cars
using his own name for 4 years.
As it turns out, those 4 years will be 4 years of wartime.
During WWII, we had basically converted all of our factories
for war production.
Tanks and airplanes and jeeps and everything.
It really was Henry and Edsel's idea to transform Willow run
and build bombers.
Henry and Edsel wanted to help the war effort.
They wanted to do whatever they could
to help win the war. Many of the history books would say
if the Ford motor company hadn't stepped up and built the bombers at Willow run
we might not have won the war.
The business during the war was producing grinding machines for the army.
And this was the means to survive.
To have his employees working, even during the war.
But at the same time, he was designing cars.
And he had engineers who were working for him designing cars.
Modena is quite heavily bombed during the war.
It's possible, that during World War II Ford and Ferarri had there first run in
it's highly likely that the bombers that took out Ferrari's factory
had come from the factories of Ford motor company.
Ferrari needs somewhere a bit quieter.
With the money he got from Alfa-Romeo
he bought ground in Maranello, where he wanted to
build the factory with the purpose to produce cars.
I deem this reply a full acceptance of Potsdam declaration,
which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan.
After the war, in 1947, the design of the first Ferrari was ready
two years after the war.
The 125 s. It was a 12 cylinder.
You have to understand something. Italy was destroyed.
Everything was a ruin.
And to start producing racing cars
under these conditions was considered to be crazy.
He was following his dreams.
His passion for engines and for racing.
The new Ferrari, it's very, very sophisticated.
He built very small engines, but very sophisticated engines.
And they were purely designed for racing.
So it had overhead cam shafts, hairpin Springs,
lots of carburetors. Everything about it was a racing car.
The car, shortly after it's introduction,
won the grand prix of Rome: Circuito di Caracalla
he only built two 125s,
but those two cars did so much,
that Ferrari is now a name in his own right.
The cars are called Ferrari, and they start winning.
Henry had gotten quite a bit older in the 40s.
He can't run Ford motor company. Edsel died.
So they bring my father, Henry Ford II, out of the Navy.
My grandfather, for as strong a personality that he had,
I think still really created that team atmosphere.
And he brought people in and delegated,
and relied on other people to make important decisions.
Henry Ford the 1st was a little bit less Democratic
about the decision making process.
He was the end-all-be-all of the Ford motor company and
he didn't really ask other people for help.
It was his way or the highway.
Young Henry Ford, he had no experience.
But he had a good sense of what the right thing to do was.
So he went and hired a whole bunch of really smart guys
and brought them to Ford motor company. And they were finance people,
manufacturing people, Marketing and sales people.
It was really a group of, probably, the smartest business people of the time.
Known as the "whiz kids."
1949 is a really, really big year.
It's the year that Le Mans comes back
onto the calendar after the war.
It's also the first opportunity for Ferrari to enter Le Mans.
Although he had been involved in the four Alfa-Romeo wins before the war.
Ferrari rocks up at Le Mans with
two 166 Barchetta cars.
The car was driven by Luigi Chinetti.
And Chinetti won the Le Mans 24 hour race with a Ferrari car
and it was really a very impressive win.
First time out for Ferrari, wins the world's biggest motor race.
He's spending a lot of money on his racing.
Everything Ferrari does, he does the expensive way.
He does the sophisticated way.
At this point, Ferrari put everything into his company.
This was something that he would continue to do for the rest of his life.
When you think of Ferrari, and what Ferrari means
you would think the founder of that company would be extraordinarily wealthy,
but he never was. Because every lira was always spent on racing.
The operation is getting to the point where he needs more and more money.
So he will then have to sell cars for the road.
Which is the last thing he wants to do.
America is a dream Market
for European-type sporty cars.
Chinetti is Italian born, lives in America.
And he imports cars.
So, very quickly
America has a Ferrari imported.
Because of that victory and because of Luigi Chinetti,
everything started and the business grows in the United States.
At this point in their history, Fords and Ferraris
were as far apart in the automotive spectrum as could be.
The new 4-door custom sedan
is a perfect example of the balanced engineering
built into every model of the new 1949 line.
There aren't any curvy roads in Detroit.
This is the mid-west. Everything is flat and straight.
Their whole idea of what a great car was
this idea that you get into this living room on wheels.
And you plug it in and it goes down the road and it's very soft.
It isn't a sporty automobile.
The whole idea of a sporty automobile that handles well
didn't resonate there because there was no reason for it.
And out on the highway, the Ford of your future,
with its lower, stable center of gravity,
provides a smooth mid-ship ride.
Quiet as a whisper and gentle as a summer breeze.
The auto companies didn't really want to compete on innovation.
They wanted to compete on advertising and Marketing.
And to do that, they wanted to compete on things people could see
like styling and horsepower.
The competition was fierce over horsepower.
In the minds of adults, maybe it wouldn't have led to more reckless driving.
But in the minds of youngsters? 16, 17, 18 year olds?
They were technologically stagnant in Detroit on fuel efficiency,
ease of repair, and above all, crash-worthiness and better brakes and tires.
Sports fans today, I don't think, could even imagine
how violent motor-sport was during the 1950s and 1960s.
Death was almost routine at racetracks.
The worst ever accident in motor racing was at Le Mans in 1955.
All seems to be going smoothly when disaster strikes at 125mph.
Levegh's Mercedes collides and blows up.
Huge parts of the car went straight through the packed grandstands.
Around 90 people were killed, including the driver.
Back then, I mean, when you got in the car as a driver
I have to imagine, you had to be ready to die
because there was a strong possibility you wouldn't survive the race.
Unfortunately, I think that's part of what added to the spectacle of Le Mans.
The circuits weren't safe. The cars weren't safe.
If you had a big accident, it would burst into flames.
Coming through Tetre Rouge at Le Mans, for example,
there's a big line of popper trees.
Well their idea of safety in those days was to paint them white up to about head height
so the headlights would show this white tree.
And then they'd lean a straw bale on the first one.
You had drivers driving cars at over 200 mph down the straight
and they're not wearing seatbelts.
Half the drivers did not wear a seatbelt because of the danger of fire.
They'd rather be able to jump out or be thrown out,
than risk the fire.
I was in 6 fires in 4 years. They caught fire all the time.
You didn't have to crash. You're be driving along
up they'd go,
eddy sacks. Dave MacDonald. So many other great drivers that
that lost their lives in fires.
Every year you would expect maybe 1-in-4 drivers
to have a huge accident and some of them to die. And it was just accepted.
The owners and the race team people, they were much less concerned
and they would say hey, if you're a driver, you're in a dangerous business
and that's too bad.
Ferrari were the worst. Safety didn't come into their mind.
And if a driver ever mentioned it, you're out on your ear.
Ferrari wasn't doing anything that all the other car companies weren't doing.
But, they were doing more of it.
My father was always telling me not to become too friendly with the driver.
Because one day, they die.
The history of those years is a tragedy.
The Mille Miglia was a road race around Italy.
1957 there were 5 Ferraris.
One of them is driven by a guy named Alfonso de Portago.
Quite early in the race, he has a tire blow.
He goes into a group of spectators.
Portago is killed. His co-driver is killed.
Around 10 people in the crowd are killed. And 5 of those are children.
And that is one of the biggest
disasters for Ferrari in racing.
The Mille Miglia was immediately banned.
In Italian law, if a driver was killed in one of your cars
the manufacturer has to answer to the law.
So in this particular case, Ferrari is investigated.
Facing manslaughter charges, it goes to legal process.
And in the end, Ferrari isn't guilty of anything because it was a racing accident.
There was a group called the automobiLe Mansufacturers of America.
And in 1957, the AMA had essentially mandated that
automakers could not participate in racing. And my grandfather
was the chairman of that committee, so he obviously took that very seriously.
And as a result he basically pulled all of Ford motor company's efforts out of racing.
When Ford did that, they sold off all the surplus cars and equipment
to my father and one of his race drivers, Ralph Moody.
They bought, for $15,000-$16,000, the surplus
cars, parts, and tools. And it became Holman and Moody.
My father's management style was very tough, very rude,
very direct to the people.
But he was always listening the people.
But making his own decisions his way.
In 1961, Ferrari almost threw the whole thing away.
And it was about an internal problem that got out of hand.
Laura Ferrari, Enzo's wife, was spending more time in the factory
working on management. A lot of the high ranking
engineers and other people in the factory didn't like the way she worked.
he did ask Ferrari to ask his wife
to stay away from the factory.
He told Ferrari that either he went or she went.
He went.
Several of the most important engineers
then wrote a letter to Ferrari backing the guy who had gone,
and saying the same thing.
"He comes back or we go." They went.
All the top management of Ferrari,
racing team, and also sales managers...
So all of them had been fired in one day by my father.
And he said to all of the Ferrari people at that time:
The big companies in Detroit, Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors,
they had a gentleman agreement not to put money in racing.
We all agreed we weren't going to be in racing,
but there was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes.
There were all sorts of maneuvers they used. They would support third parties
who could have deniability. "Well, it wasn't GM."
They would use police parts. Things like that.
One of the programs that got cut off on this was the GM Corvette.
Bill Mitchell said we're not going to let that happen.
This whole anti-racing thing is going to blow over, so,
let's hide this program and we'll design and build a new Corvette in secret.
These executives had an agreement, that they would not spend money on racing.
But General Motors was cheating and everybody knew it.
This was in the newspapers that they were cheating.
The Corvette was dominating the American sports car racing world.
The Corvettes were winning everything.
People were paying attention to racing in this country.
They were noticing who won on Sunday.
And there really was a strong correlation to sales on Monday.
We didn't have that performance component of our brand that customers wanted.
Ford had the galaxy. Ford had the Thunderbird.
They really had nothing that could compete with the Corvette.
Gm had something like 60% Market share. And over the course of a year
there had literally been almost a 15-point swing
where they stole 15% of Market share from Ford.
Henry Ford flipped out and he says, hell with you guys.
If you're cheating and you're not going to hold up the ban,
I'm announcing right now, publicly were not going to do it and we're going racing.
Henry is at a motor race. He's at Sebring.
Sees a Ferrari win and says, we need those red cars.
My grandfather knew that we wanted to win Le Mans.
And Ferrari had won Le Mans, had been winning Le Mans.
I think he felt the easiest way to do it
was just to buy Ferrari and merge the companies
and use their kind of technical expertise to help win.
Ferrari would bring a commercial sports car that could compete with the Corvette.
And a racing team with international pedigree.
Ferrari built a few customer cars to pay for his racing.
Which is interesting in one way because it's the exact opposite of the Ford story.
Ford went back into racing to sell customer cars.
Win on Sunday, sell on Monday. Really opposite views.
They made an approach to Ferrari to
investigate if he was eventually willing to sell the company.
And Ferrari said that he was willing to speak about it in any case.
And to see what were the terms for the sale.
There was a lot of effort put in to making this deal a reality.
The lawyers, the accounts, everybody went over there and went through negotiations.
And kind of hashed out this deal where there would be two companies.
A Ferrari-Ford division with the purpose to take part in races.
And a Ford-Ferrari division with the purpose to manufacture cars
for road use. Gran Turismo cars.
The Ford team tried to put a valuation on the company
and I think, Enzo, in his mind, had a valuation.
They were, I think at first pretty far apart, then they ended up settling $15 million.
We'll try to accommodate your desires as best we can.
My father thought that this was going to be a done deal.
Ford Motor Company was going to walk away with an incredible brand.
And then all of a sudden this racing thing just exploded.
The sticking point was the racing side of the business.
That we be called Ferrari-Ford. That would be owned by Ferrari, by Enzo.
But there was a stipulation in the contract that said
Ford would still have veto power or control over
what series was raced, where the cars would race, who the drivers would be, etc.
Ferrari said no, i don't want to sell it.
He didn't want to accept any restriction on motor racing.
His choice was for the freedom.
Ferrari used that gambit to try to sell the program to Fiat
because he didn't want the Americans to take over his company.
Enzo didn't want anyone telling him how to run
his racing business in Europe.
And my grandfather didn't want anyone telling him how to run the racing business in Europe.
The final moment came sitting in his rather monastic office,
and his works in Modena, and he said,
I don't want to race in the Indianapolis 500.
He turned Ford down.
My father was extremely disappointed.
That's when he decided, all right, we're gonna beat you.
And we're going to beat you at your own game, in your backyard.
After the Ferrari deal fell apart,
Ford had to create this car that could beat Ferrari
and win Le Mans.
If you're going to compete at Le Mans, you need a car with very high top speed.
So you can get down the straight very, very quickly.
My grandfather formed this division of the company called
Ford advanced vehicles.
And took the best engineers he could find and
they came up with the original GT40.
They designed everything.
They designed a specific magnesium casting,
with 92 separate parts. All custom fabricated and custom made.
Just for the peddle assembly.
The chassis was a unibody, but it's as detailed and
complicated a unibody as anything they did for mustang or any of the production cars.
It was a purposely built racecar.
It was maybe heavier than it should have been,
but it was very nice to drive.
It was beautifully finished inside, the seats, and the controls were very easy to use.
They were built to race.
When you go into a corner in the GT40, it's meant to go around there.
The design of the GT40 was really representing a big change in motor racing.
My father was surprised by that car.
The design was very impressive.
The size and shape of the GT40 made it such a unique vehicle.
I'm not sure if people had seen a car that was so low.
So it was clearly a very unique and dynamic design.
Ford had invested a lot in making it bulletproof for racing.
The money Ford spent in racing for Le Mans
was the biggest amount of money ever,
in one big wad, to get dumped into racing. It just changed the scene for everyone.
Especially for Le Mans, if you want to win from zero,
you have to invest more money than the team that has been winning.
We would get anything that we wanted. If it was a sensible choice,
and if there was a need for it. If helped durability or speed,
or performance, we had no problem getting it.
We felt really good about our chances at Le Mans.
Ferrari had a proven track record.
Winning Le Mans year after year, every year the car was better. Faster.
Mauro Forghieri, the young, new chief engineer at Ferrari
was about to instigate some very radical moves.
Mid-rear engine racing cars. Both in formula-1 and sports cars.
That had never happened at Ferrari.
It was a radical move to put the engine behind the driver.
Le Mans always had hundreds of thousands of spectators,
but this year it was overflowing.
Ford's debut at Le Mans drew millions of eyes to that race around the world.
The Le Mans 24 hour race at last.
And three gleaming Ford GTS are present.
There was a tremendous amount of publicity
at the fact that Ford motor company
was going to enter the Le Mans race with these new GT40s.
This is the Ford.
The blue-and-white Ford bearing the American racing colors.
The lowest car, by far, in the field.
Do you feel the preparation of the Ford
is equal to the preparation of the Ferrari?
After which has won for, i don't know how many years.
I think the preparation is every bit as equal, only problem is,
that this is a new car
and it isn't related to any other car that we've run before.
Whereas Ferraris are usually a development of something else that's already existed.
Two of the great manufacturers from either side of the Atlantic
are going to tangle for the first time. The stage is set for a war of speed.
At 4pm, the starter drops his flag and runs for safety.
But disappointment. Phil Hill's Ford is seriously delayed with fuel vaporization troubles.
In the opening laps, the GT40 is furiously fast.
There's a helicopter camera car following it.
Its top speed is incredible.
Do you reckon you've got anything up your sleeve
you can pull out a little bit more?
I could pull out 15 seconds if they wanted it, but we're trying to finish 24 hours.
You mean they won't let you pull out the 15 seconds?
Ford's first casualty is Richard Atwood from Britain, driving a GT40.
Going down the straight, I guess a fuel line came loose
and I could see through the rear view mirror and the
glass partition between the engine bay and the passenger side
the flames coming up.
And suddenly there was a woof underneath the bonnet.
And I stepped away from it.
And it's a sad sight, but that was the end of our race.
The third car, which Phil Hill and Bruce Mclaren are sharing,
it's the fastest car on the field.
During the eleventh hour of the race, troubles brew for Ford.
Richie Ginther's GT40 is retired.
Thirteen hours into the race, Phil Hill's GT40 goes also.
The cars really weren't ready to run 24 hours.
But they showed right away, they were faster than the Ferraris,
and if they could develop the durability, they were going to be players.
So once again, Ferrari wins Le Mans in 1964, 1st, 2nd and 3rd.
With none of the GT40s getting anywhere near a finish line,
Henry Ford II is not happy. They need to make changes.
Ford needed a guy who knew something about the 24 hours of Le Mans.
Maybe a driver who had beaten Ferrari before.
And they found the guy. It was said of him, he could charm the leaves off a tree.
Got my driver's license at 14 years old,
and the first thing I do is take my dad's '34 dodge out and
get caught by the cops for driving 85 mph.
Carroll Shelby started road racing at its very infancy
up in Watkins Glen, in some of he very first races ever run in our country after the war.
And he won everything, and he wore his bib overalls and he was a showman.
The rivalry between Enzo Ferrari and Shelby started way back in the late 1950s,
when Shelby was a driver. Ferrari wanted to hire Shelby, and Shelby refused him.
I decided to stay with Aston Martin
because of the internal politics of Ferrari.
Now the winner pulls in to be submerged between a seething mass.
Eager to have claimed a resounding victory.
This is 1959.
He and Roy Salvadori had just won the 24 hours of Le Mans in an Aston Martin.
He was at the peak of his racing career.
He wins that, and he's dying.
And it wasn't even a half-hour before the race, he came up and said
his heart was going. He said, "i don't think I can run."
I knew that i had hereditary problems.
And my father died at 46 years old with it, so
I figured there was nothing that could be done.
He drove with a Nitroglycerin pill under his tongue to keep the thing down.
We won the 24 hour race and it was the luckiest break
up to that time did it ever happen to me because
it opened the door for a lot of opportunities for me down the road.
Carroll didn't know for sure what he was going to do in his life but
one of the things he could do, is he wanted to build his own sports car.
All this time i had been planning to try to build
a car that utilized the American v8s.
So Pete Brock left general motors and he went to Carroll Shelby.
You got to realize, we're a very small group. Like 8 guys total.
We had hot-rudders from Japan, France, Italy,
Switzerland, England, New Zealand, Australia,
and all these guys worked together amazingly well.
It was a great shop to work in. It was like one big family.
Abusing each other.
We were a ragtag bunch of crazy guys, kind of out of control.
There's always lots of pranks going on, you know.
Cherry bombs and all that kind of stuff.
But basically, everyone got along well together.
Shelby was really in the right place at the right time.
He had all these young people, these hot-rodders who knew how to make cars go fast,
who knew how to fabricate. And he had Phil Remington, who's this technical genius.
Sometimes he goes by the title of chief engineer,
sometimes general manager of racing.
Remington is one of the few figures in racing who has become a legend
who is not a racecar driver or constructor.
Phil Remington was pretty much responsible for all
of our successes in racing over there.
Phil Remington is like the unsung hero of all 1960s racing.
He was the genius. He could fix anything. He could fabricate anything.
And he told the kids in Shelby's shop what to do.
All of that together, you had an amazing company.
Corvettes were the prominent car in racing at that point.
And Shelby, yeah, he definitely wanted to beat the Corvettes. There's no doubt about it.
He knew if he wanted to make a name for himself as a car manufacturer,
he had to build a Corvette killer.
He was able to get an introduction to go to Detroit.
And meet Lee Iacocca and try to sell him on the idea of an American sports car.
We had the capability of mass producing reliable engines,
and that's what he needed.
They'd given him about ten minutes to give his elevator talk
on what he was going to do.
And he was still talking as they pushed him out the door. Finally, Iacocca said
just get that guy outta here. Give him a couple engines and some money.
And let's see what he can do.
Carroll went over to the AC car company, in England.
And said Ford motor company is behind me and we're gonna build this big corporation,
build all these sports cars.
And would you guys supply us a couple chassis for nothing?
Between whip-sawing both of them, uh...
I wound up with a chassis and four or five engines from Ford.
So they built the chassis.
We put the engines in them and the first Cobra was put together.
When we had the first head-to-head competition at Riverside,
obviously all the top west-coast Corvette drivers were there.
It took care of the Corvette pretty handedly and people at Ford noticed that.
In 1963, we won the driver's championship,
the manufacturer's championship, and of course, the USRC championship.
It was a recognition that Carroll,
along with Ford, had found something special.
We had our first true competitor in the racing car business in a while.
No matter how good it was for short track racing
it was not going to be a suitable car for Europe
because it simply didn't have the top speed.
Everybody knew that they just stopped dead around 150 mph.
They were just like running this barn door through the air.
I said to Carroll, we can design a completely new body
for the existing Cobra chassis and i think that we can make them go faster.
But I said it may not look like anything you've ever seen before.
And he said, "ah hell, I don't care what it looks like, is it gonna go fast?"
And I said I believe it will.
There wasn't any time to do this. We had a 90 day window
to build this car from the first sketch to the completed running car.
To get it ready for Daytona.
If you wanted to make a change on a car, you would just make the changes.
So you could evolve a race car much, much quicker than any factory could do it.
We got the car done and took it out to Riverside.
Right out of the box, the car was three and half seconds faster
than anything we'd ever run.
Shelby named the car for the race he was preparing it for.
The Daytona continental.
So since that day, it's always been known as the Cobra Daytona.
So our next race, of course, was Le Mans.
And we've got two Daytonas in the GT class.
In 4th place overall, and leading the GT division,
the Cobra driven by Dan Gurney and Bob Bondurant.
They're competing against one of the lead Ferraris.
And they run those guys into the ground.
In 1964, winning Le Mans in the gt class is huge for Shelby
and for the Daytona coupe.
It was absolutely amazing a group of guys from Venice California
could come down there and beat all those high end manufacturers.
We didn't win. The cars didn't finish.
Henry Ford II is not pleased.
He wanted somebody who demonstrated that ability to win.
Carroll Shelby had won Le Mans as a driver.
Had won Le Mans as a manufacturer with the Daytona coupe.
And it was after '64 that he brought in Carroll Shelby
to help develop the cars.
Here's something else that we're excited about:
This new Ford GT. It was designed and built by Ford engineers
as kind of a laboratory on wheels to test new ideas
and prove Ford's capabilities in open competition.
We've been given the job of testing this new car and racing internationally.
The biggest concern for them was endurance.
These 12 hour, 24 hour races are demanding beyond reason.
Carroll Shelby knew the task before them.
I can remember when the two GT40s actually came into our shop,
they still had wire wheels on them
and were overheating, so Phil went to work on that.
Phil Remington is the best mechanic I've ever seen in my life.
Rem was like a fireman looking for a fire.
Very quick on coming up with solutions.
A lot of the sub-systems, breaking sub-systems, were redesigned.
They changed the suspension geometry, they changed the engine,
they did everything they could in the short amount of time they had before Daytona.
Ken Miles was the test driver. Really.
He basically tested and developed most all the cars.
He was an engineer prior to going to Shelby and prior to opening his own business.
Ken Miles drove it first, he didn't like it at all.
And I hopped in and I drove it. It didn't handle great.
So I brought it back. Told Remington what it was doing.
So he adjusted the right heights and the suspension,
changed the shocks on it, and stiffened it up.
Each time that he worked on it, it got better and better and better.
43 cars, 29 from Europe and 14 from America,
will start the two thousand kilometer Daytona continental.
So the GT40s show up at Daytona in 1965.
Shelby's had less than two months to turn these cars into winners.
The race is on.
In the beginning of the race, Bob Bondurant in a GT40
flies by Surtees in a Ferrari.
By the time we got to turn 2, I was going 200 mph.
And I pulled Surtees 18 car lengths.
The car worked great. I was like, yes, we fixed it and it worked.
With all the changes that Remington made and Ken made,
and even Carroll Smith...
They got the car moving very quickly.
Trouble on the third turn.
Rodriguez is slowing to a stop on the course.
The Ferrari's European tires blew, beating the rear end and battery to pieces.
This race was the first race the GT40 finished
the last lap.
The Americans have won. They've overthrown the Ferrari.
This was a magnificent win for Shelby.
And you could say this victory, maybe even more than his Le Mans win in 1959
as a driver, this is the win that first really put him on the map.
The next race for the factory team was a Sebring.
Ferrari had pulled out of Sebring in protest.
Even though Ferrari withdrew,
this would turn out to be a great test for Shelby and the new Ford.
And then the rains came.
It's the worst deluge ever recorded at Sebring.
You take a tire off to change it,
and if you didn't grab it, it literally would float away.
Porsche and Ford began to close in
on the Chaparral, cutting the lead in half.
Sudddenly the 12 hours endurance of Sebring were over
the no.11 Ford GT is first in the Gran Touring prototype class.
If we're successful at Daytona and we're successful at Sebring...
By the time Ford is getting its cars ready to ship to France,
suddenly, people are starting to describe Ferrari as an underdog.
Ford is expected to keep pace in this race, and maybe win.
This is the year of Ford's great challenge.
An American invasion on the supremacy of the Italian giants.
Ford was racing four of the 289 Ford GT’s
and two 487 MARK II’s.
The pre-race drama had centered
on the strongest ever challenge from America.
Their declared intention, to beat Ferrari.
In 1965, it was starting to get really serious.
My car worked fantastic. I was third fastest qualifier.
Ford had really built some good engines.
And somebody at Ford had decided to rebuild them just before Le Mans.
The night before, Ford said change all the engines.
When Ford debuted in 1964, there was a huge audience.
In 1965, there was an even bigger audience.
For the first time at Le Mans, an American car is actually favored to win.
The board expected this car to beat Ferrari’s
Chris Amon's first away in the Ford 7-liter,
followed by Bob Bondurant, Bruce Mclaren, and Surtees.
lorllflhln II I hominid-Ill.
And the leading Ford sets a blistering pace.
When the race starts Bruce Mclaren in one of those 427
and Christ Amon in the second 427,
they lead at the start and by time they're at the end of the Mulsanne straight
the Ferraris aren't even in sight.
We got a great start, and I knew i had a great chance to win.
And now the Mclaren mile sport is having gearbox trouble.
Already the Ferrari grip on the race tightens.
The Le Mans racein 1965 was an absolute barserker because,
the cars were quick, the cars were running quick, but
we had all kinds of engine problems and vibrations.
What happened was, they got some new head bolts
and they didn't check them out, and all the head bolts stretched.
One thing about the Ferrari car
was that you were unlikely to break it mechanically.
For all that having a 7-liter engine against a 4-liter engine
sounds one-sided, the Ferraris were so much more sophisticated that
they weren't a long way behind on horsepower.
And they were light so they could make the car work better.
By midnight, with the race only one-third through,
the Ford challenge had been shattered by Ferrari.
All the cars broke.
Ford made the decision to tell Shelby to take them all
out and put in Ford engines. It was a disaster.
If I didn't have to change that engine, I would have won.
Again, the Fords broke.
They made simple engineering mistakes, and Ferrari didn't.
Only one Ferrari prototype finished the race,
but that was enough to win it.
And Ferrari also won the GT class, and they finished 1-2-3 overall.
The press called it "murder: Italian style."
It was the second year for my grandfather of utter disappointment.
And I'm sure he probably questioned
in his mind, whether this was all worth it.
Ford, with millions and millions of dollars going down the tube again,
start to look bad.
This was humiliating. Henry Ford II was pissed.
He made it very clear that we were not going to fail again.
Henry Ford II was not the president or the chairman of Ford motor company,
he was the emperor. And he had a way of making
statements that if you don't win, you're out of here.
I was with Don Frey and Leo Beebe when he called us in.
And he had name tags made up in September of 1965
September says Ford wins Le Mans in '66.
"You want a job next June, don't you?"
Ford decided to expand its operation
so instead of just having Shelby American, they also hired Holman & Moody,
who is already running their stock-car operation, and Alan Mann racing,
which had just won the GT championship with the Cobra Daytona coupe.
When I came back, a lot of the crew were missing. They were gone.
They didn't need as many people to run the GT40’s because
they already had those people set.
So anyone working on the Daytona coupe kind of got their walking papers.
At the end of the '65 season, I got back.
There's a total stranger in my office. They had come in. Taken over.
Shelby didn't fire really me, but it was obvious they didn't need me around there anymore.
Enzo Ferrari did not tolerate mistakes.
Especially when it came to engineering.
And if engineers did make a mistake, he made sure they knew about it.
Every component broken displayed in that room
was representing a race that had been lost.
He said they are responsible people. Every time we are here for a meeting,
they have the possibility to see the parts which are broken
so they would not repeat the same mistake.
In '66, it was really important for Ford to win, so the pressure was on.
It was obvious that we were going to have to retire the little engine and
go to the big engine. Even with modifications in favor of fixing
the weaknesses of the 289, it just didn't get the job done.
'65 was a disaster, but if we had run second or third,
or possibly even lucked out and won the race, we might never have
gotten the funding to go like we did in '66 and '67.
It was the beginning of what they knew would be the
direction to go with the big block cars.
As a driver, of course, you always go for the power.
The 289 at the very beginning obviously left a lot to be desired.
There just was not the power that the driver is looking for.
Ultimately, of course, they came out with the MARK II.
They said, right, we got to get the job done, so if we can't do it by cunning and
daring, we'll do it by brute just force with this bloody great engine.
We'll blow them away.
The 427 in that application was a brute.
It wasn't like sending a boy to do a man's job. I mean, it fit the use.
When they went to the bigger engines,
all of a sudden all the drivers were smiling.
And that's when we started seeing some real speeds.
The weight of the car needed to have the torque and so-forth
to be able to compete with what we were up against. You know, the Ferraris.
Here in test cell 17b, without car or driver
the 1966 Le Mans race is already run
six months before it actually happens.
I do remember going to a Ford engine test stand.
And it had a Le Mans system in it, so it had robots that shifted the gears.
It'd go through all four gears.
And had a 427 engine. And you could tell when it was on the Mulsanne straight
and when it slowed down for the right hand turn at the end.
So they could run that car... I think the longest they ran was 40 hours or something.
With the MARK II GT40 and the FE 427 engine...
It was so understated and under tuned, that it just goes.
At 64 hundred, to be able to run 220 mph, and do it all day long
not even straining itself. And the drivers like that because
it felt solid. It felt like the engine was going to be there for the entire event.
Rem was very much involved with the MARK II
along with Ken Miles.
As a test driver, I also got to test some of the cars
on behalf of Carroll Shelby too.
We knew we had some brake issues, especially at Le Mans
because of the Mulsanne straight. So you got 3.2 miles
and the brakes would go from 1,200 degrees to 0 every single lap.
And at that point I don't think they had the material,
that could withstand, you know, that repeated cycle.
Phil Remington figured out how to make a quick change brake setup.
They could change the disk, the calipers and the whole braking system...
When somebody like Dan Gurney has to get in that car, I mean, they had to
build a bubble into the roof-line to be able to fit his helmet in the car.
I was 6 foot 4 so when you get into that car,
you were sitting on the actual chassis.
The roof is hitting your helmet, so there wasn't anywhere else to go.
So they had to go up on the roof, and that's where the bubble came in.
Racing for the flag in the 24 hour Daytona continental.
Ford had five GT40 Mark II's in the running,
led by Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby,
and Dan Gurney and Jerry Grant.
Miles takes the lead as they thunder towards the second go around
the infield, pushing the last Ferrari threat.
Miles and Gurney basically led the whole race.
And it was a like a start-to-finish race. It was incredible.
It was just a relatively easy race.
For the first time, Ford wins 1-2-3 at Daytona.
This is the 12 hours of Sebring. And during the next
twelve hours, we're going to to have a lot of questions answered that
are in the minds of racing fans everywhere.
Can the Fords win two in a row, such as they did with the continental,
the long road race. This being the second one on the road to Le Mans.
And can Ferrari come back after a rather dismal start at the beginning of this year.
Can you tell us who your rabbits will be
and who your steady boys will be?
Well I think we'll have Dan Gurney out front.
We were going to be the rabbit.
To be the rabbit is someone that obviously is
quite quick. You want to entice the competition
to follow that and try to destroy the equipment.
If you're designated as rabbit, that means you're expendable.
That's part of team play strategy.
Dan Gurney is going like a rocket. It's neck and neck now.
Parkes. Miles. Gurney. Close enough to cover with a blanket
as they roar through the left turn.
Ken was running second. I think at that point, Dan had lapped Ken.
And Ken would come in to the pits and i say, Ken you got to get your finger out
and I say, Gurney's gonna win this race if you don't watch it.
"I'm not that worried," he says, "cuz Dan is pulling me out of every turn."
"He's definitely over-revving that vehicle."
I said, well, it's not that much further to go, Ken.
Night full on, it's: Ford-Ford-Ferrari-Ford-Ford.
Report of another accident.
Third place Rodriguez-Andretti's Ferrari is in and damaged.
Fire! Quickly out. But that should do it for the
only Ferrari capable of challenging the Ford.
And I get the car back in the pits and then the engine caught fire,
you know, so we were out of that race.
Here's Ruby bringing the Ford prototype in to hand over to teammate miles.
They've driven a great race following their 24 hour win at Daytona.
But it looks like second at Sebring.
It's 10 o'clock. The checkered flag is out and no Dan Gurney.
For Pete's sake! Here he is and he's pushing it! He could be disqualified for that!
It looked like Dan was going to win until the last lap and it puked.
Gurney is actually pushing car no. 2 in.
And that means Ken Miles has crossed the finish line first.
Ken was a lap down at that point.
He had to circle Sebring one more time before he actually won the race.
If Dan hadn't had touched the car, just left it where it was, he
would have finished second. Because he started to
push it, it was all over. He got disqualified.
And obviously elated with surprise,
miles enjoys the victory Lane hub-bub.
While everyone wonders what happened to Gurney.
Well, she quit.
Engine trouble?
I believe so.
How long did you push it?
Oh, probably, almost a quarter mile.
Ken Miles, are you as surprised as we are?
I'm slightly ashamed.
Well it was a big day for Ford, wasn't it?
It was a good day for Ford. I'm very happy for the Ford motor company.
And I'm very sorry indeed for Dan. He ran a beautiful race, and I'm sorry
something happened at the last minute.
How'd Lloyd go for you?
This is your third big long distance win together, isn't it?
I like oi' Lloyd.
What's next for you?
Le Mans.
Suddenly Ken Miles has emerged as the driver to beat
on the Shelby team, having won Daytona and Sebring in 1966.
Sebring is another 1-2-3 finish for the Ford GT40s.
All that's left is Le Mans.
Ford had already a couple years under her, '64 and '65,
come '66, when the success started to be real...
Even from a competitor's standpoint such as Ferrari,
I was sensing, you know, these guys are not going away.
Then they started paying some attention.
Ford had the possibility to invest an incredible amount of money
compared to Ferrari's capabilities.
This was something which really did spoil
the Ferrari idea about being capable to fight against such a giant.
I learned that Enzo Ferrari wanted to meet me.
So I went down and met him.
And he said, "would you like to run with us?"
I said, yeah I would.
In 1966, Bob Bondurant swapped from Ford to the enemy.
Drove for Ferrari at Le Mans.
Enzo Ferrari was smart. He hired me because I was beating him all the time.
'66 was a great year for the Ford GT40.
We won Daytona 1-2-3, we won Sebring 1-2-3.
By time they got to Le Mans, i think everyone was feeling
a lot confident than they had been in '64 and '65.
Then you say to the boss, hey listen, we got a really good idea for you.
Why don't you come to Le Mans and start the race
and we'll see if we can't win it for you.
I went to Le Mans with him in 1996.
He had a smile on his face the minute we got on the airplane.
I mean, he was really excited. He was going over to beat the Europeans.
On their own turf.
Well, we did all right the first couple of times out.
We feel the cars were very impressive in Daytona and Sebring.
In the weeks to come, we hope to continue our string of victories.
It seems whatever success we find, we'll also find our share of disappointments.
The Le Mans test in '66.
It was raining and drizzling.
When it's raining. There's no point.
You're not going to break any track records in the rain.
We'd already figured out the cars were going to be quick in the rain with the right tires.
Walter Hangsen was driving a MARK II GT40.
Miles, who was a brilliant rain driver, he'd already come into the pits.
He said bring in Walter, he's taking to many chances out there.
We don't need to go any quicker because it's raining.
Carroll Smith tried to slow him down.
It was like he refused to come in. He was just going 'round and 'round.
Finally, at the end of the chute, at the one right hander
he just went straight on.
But you know, that's motor racing. Some of these drivers,
when they get in that car, they give it everything they got.
These things are unavoidable.
He lost it. And it killed him.
It rolled that car up in a little ball, that GT40.
It was like it wasn't even made of steel. It just crumpled up around him.
Now with the preliminaries over, Le Mans is under way.
Ford entered eight Ford GT40 MARK II’s.
Ferrari entered seven cars.
The table is set. 1966 will be the showdown
between Ford and Ferrari.
Ford went to Le Mans with a 900 Ib gorilla.
But that said, they had a history of failing at Le Mans the past two years.
And the fact they've never had a car finish at Le Mans.
Even though I'd say they're the odds-on favorite,
I'm not sure everyone was betting on them.
We had a strategy and we thought the only way we would beat the Fords
would be if we could go along, and from the very start
of the race, we could drive it like a grand prix.
Because the drivers in the Fords were all racers.
And they wouldn't just hold back.
They would have a go.
And there might be some possibility that we might be able to break the Fords.
There's the Ferrari team.
And car no. 20 was scheduled to be driven by John Surtees of England.
But shortly before the start of the race we found out that he wasn't going to drive
and we asked him about it.
Yes, unfortunately you've heard correct, I won't be driving.
What is the reason?
Well, I suppose it's best summed up at this stage by saying political reasons.
When I got back for the actual race, Dragoni said,
"uh, got to change the policy because Mr. Agnelli is going to be here...
"And he'd like his nephew, Scarfiotti, to start the race."
I said this is ridiculous. That year we'd done one or two moves
where we'd lost races. Because of pure strategy.
So I went back to Ferrari and said enough is enough,
I'm not going to be treated this way. I'm here to win races. I'm off.
Surtees was a victim of the internal politics.
And he was another guy who walked away. As did Phil Hill.
It didn't matter how much you won.
For some people,
important people inside the team, if you weren't Italian, you weren't Ferrari.
For Ferrari to lose Surtees right before the race, it's massive.
This man was a true talent. Still to this day, he's the
only man who's won world championships on two wheels and four.
So without him, Ferrari was handicapped for sure.
This race has been billed from the very start as a race
between the Ferrari's and the Ford teams.
There are fifty five cars lined up, ready to go. And of course
they are employing what is becoming famous in all parts of the world,
for the Le Mans start.
The famous Le Mans start. You know, you run across, jump in the car.
Even though you had safety belts, most of the drivers,
they just wanted to get out there. Wouldn't even buckle up.
The main thing was to concentrate on getting
the engine running and getting out of there.
And then you'd later on do your seatbelt.
If there was a seatbelt.
Going down the Mulsanne straight, you try to
hold the thing. Maybe buckle up maybe not.
Ford actually, in '66 race, had strict orders for the drivers,
"i don't care if you're going to be there a half an hour. You got to buckle up."
Which was very prudent. But did the drivers listen?
Hell no.
Ken and Gurney were the rabbits.
So their job was to go out and break the Ferraris.
When the race started, Ken Miles didn't get his door closed correctly.
So he got a terrible start.
And I thought, oh, this ended right from the beginning.
Those first 20 laps or so were just incredible
Ken was hauling ass. He was just so quick.
And finally after... A couple hours probably,
he was up in the second spot, behind Dan.
Phil, the tremendous talk here has been on the
pace of this race. What is your comment?
It's a terrific pace. I'm sure before the things over
we're going to see an awful lot of cars that just aren't around anymore.
You think there'll be a lot of them falling out?
I think so.
That's car no. 8, John Whitmore as the driver,
and this was quite a surprise that he made a stop so early in this race.
And incidentally we have the official report on that.
He had a broken brake line.
Six hours in, two of the GT40s are already retired.
As well as two Ferraris.
The MARK II no. 1, being driven by Ken Miles and Denis Hulme
is leading, but it has been a battle all along between
car no.1 and car no.3, Dan Gurney and Ken Miles,
and the Ferrari being driven by Rodriguez and Ginther.
Dan Gurney's car died about the eleventh hour.
With Jerry Grant, we led the race for a long time
then just had a failure of a head gasket.
It's a brutal race.
It's an endurance race. And it epitomized the word endurance.
Only two drivers drove. So you were going to split it
12 and 12, or somebody do 14 and somebody do 10.
You don't wake up and go 24 hours then go to sleep.
You've already been awake for 10-15 hours before that in the pits.
Especially at Le Mans, we never stop for one second.
I would never get any sleep, just too wound up.
You're about ready to drop dead.
Complete and utter physical exhaustion.
But we were still running away with the race.
Ken and deny were still hauling ass, doing a great job.
The Ferraris are dropping out.
Bruce Mclaren and Chris Amon, they were running several
laps back but still running really strong.
As the race was a few hours from the finish,
it looked like car wasn't going to break anyway.
Ken was going to win the race easily.
Miles is now in first place and he's lapping at amazing speeds.
Faster than they told him he should be going.
Miles has won Daytona. Miles has won Sebring.
So if Ken Miles wins Le Mans, it'll be the triple crown.
No driver had won the three premiere
long distance endurance races of the year.
The word came down, presumably from my grandfather,
that he wanted to facilitate this 1-2-3 finish.
Henry Ford told Carroll, he said "you gotta slow him down."
When they told Ken, he was very, very upset
he was leaning on the pit while waiting for his stint on the drive,
and that's when he first told me, "they want me to back off."
It's three laps ahead of him, how are they going to slow you down with this three laps?
He said, "well they want to slow me down on the back chute...
"longer pit stops. Things like that."
I said it ain't gonna happen. I'm not going to slow down on the bloody pit stops.
They've talked to the Le Mans officials. They're saying that we can do a dead heat.
Which still meant that Ken had to slow down to let Bruce catch up.
Which he did.
Ford won 1-2-3.
And Henry Ford was so happy. He beat Ferrari.
It was a relief for a lot of people because it was a herculean effort
to make this program a success. And so when it finally paid off,
I can't imagine how it must have felt for people who'd
dedicated years of their life to this program.
Your eyes water up.
There was a lot of hugging and handshaking and so on.
It was just that magnificent feeling.
I felt wonderful about us winning 1, 2 and 3.
Ford won the 1966 race fair and square by having
every base covered. They had a car for every eventuality.
It was a shock, of course. But that's motor racing.
You win one day, you lose, you know.
I think we were lucky, you know. We had six cars.
We felt really good about our chances and we came in 1-2-3.
When it came to the finish, it was considered a dead heat.
Even though in the pictures it looks like Bruce was ahead of Ken.
But when Ken came up the pit Lane to head from the circle
we thought we had won the race.
We get to the winner circle and they go waving him off, yelling in French.
Then the FIA got involved and said, "well, just so you know..."
If there is a dead heat, across the finishing line
the car that started farthest back on the starting line must have covered
the greatest distance.
So no.2 becomes the winner!
There wasn't going to be a 1-2-3 finish. Bruce was going to win.
We made a horrible decision with Ken Miles,
in saying the three cars come over exactly together.
It was good politically for Ford, so I couldn't argue with it.
Besides that, I work for Ford. And I'm not going to go against Henry Ford.
Ken ended up getting cheated out of it.
And it wasn't fair either because he would have
been the first driver to win those three big races.
And it broke his heart.
When they win the race,
he's asked, "what happens now?"
Henry Ford says, "well, we're going to come back next year and do it again."
It's a development of the p3, but it's better
it's just beautiful. It looks stunning.
It's got a new engine that's derived from their formula 1 engine.
And it just kicks ass.
At the latter part of '66, Carroll Shelby, Phil Remington,
and the Shelby experts were making a faster, quicker MARK II-b.
My grandfather was determined to make sure
that people knew this was not some kind of fluke.
So development of the cars continued in '66.
The j-car was this prototype where they had used this kind of
honeycomb pattern and I don't think they knew exactly how durable it was.
So they sent it out for testing at Riverside.
The car was being tested by Ken Miles.
The car broke.
And when the car broke, he was doing 180mph.
It careened wildly. He went over the cliff.
It was unsurvivable.
We were all devastated, but I knew
Charlie was by far the most devastated.
I mean this guy was like a father to him.
When Ken died, I wasn't there unfortunately.
I'd never really lost a driver.
It was a very tragic en d to an amazing career.
In 1967 when the season began at Daytona,
Ford showed up with a full array of upgrade MARK IIs.
Ferrari wanted revenge after '66.
So he had the p4s and a p3.4, and he brought like
six cars or something. They were factory cars.
This was going to be a real showdown and a real race.
They had all these entries. And they were all big blocks.
Horrible goddamn thing.
They started coming in, one after the other with broken transmissions.
Only one out of six GT40s finished at Daytona in 1967.
Enzo Ferrari gets his revenge.
Ferrari won the 24 hours of Daytona with a 1-2-3 arrival
with two p4 and one 412.
Ferrari, having lost at Le Mans, got a little bit of
its own back by going to Daytona.
Early in the career, they had not been as durable as the opposition
this is the first time that Ford had been slower than the opposition.
So at that point it became clear to the hierarchy
that something needed to be done.
But it wasn't clear how to make the MARK II decidedly faster in a short period of time.
Phil Remington returned to Dearborn with two
of his chief fabricators and they took the first
j-car chassis, they took it into the wind tunnel and they started literally cutting away
at the bodywork to try to improve the aerodynamics of the car.
They came up with a shape that was so dramatically
different from the j-car...
That they dubbed the new car the Mark IV.
The Mark IV was perfect out of the box.
It was completely designed and built, the whole car,
in the United States. Not England. No Italian gearbox. Nothing.
You didn't have to take it out and get it ported or balanced.
You didn't have to build an engine. Right out of the box!
And the engines, they had part numbers on them.
You could go to a Ford dealer and purchase
the exact parts that are in that engine.
Assemble your own race engine and get the same performance out of it.
For us, that was our goal.
And they went out and tested that almost immediately thereafter
out in Arizona and it proved to be faster right out of the box
than the existing MARK II. So that's when it was decided
to race the Mark IV at Sebring, and if it did well at Sebring,
they would go ahead and take that to Le Mans.
Fast is the competitively untested Ford Mark IV.
The super slick lemon-yellow Mark iv is Ford's standard-bearer.
Bruce Mclaren and Mario Andretti will be at the controls.
What is your strategy in the 12 hours?
Well, I think we've got a car that should be fast enough to lead it
if qualifications are any indication at all.
Ford's only other factory entry: A slightly reworked version
of last year's victorious MARK II.
Lloyd Ruby and Aj Foyt are in command.
I; A. 1.1 q '.3111111
he didn't even bother sending them to Sebring.
The competition would be between Carroll Shelby's gt 40 MARK II b
versus the brand new Mark IV.
Foyt is in the highest place Ford at the moment
and charging through the throng in the MARK II.
By the ss, the Fords have gobbled up the quick starting offense.
Mclaren has assumed command with Foyt second.
We go out there and we're running 7-10 seconds
a lap faster than Foyt. I never had a better day in my life.
The lead car pulls in. Mclaren and Andretti
have done a magnificent job in the new Mark IV.
We raced it at Sebring for the first time and won,
with Bruce Mclaren as my partner.
And so as you can see, the Mark IV became the envy of the competition.
Ford comes back to le mans in 1967 with a whole new goal.
They want to be the first American manufacturer to win the 24 hours
of Le Mans with a team of all American drivers.
It's race week. And along with every gendarme in
the south of France, comes the world's finest racing machinery.
It would be the first time the Mark iv and the p4 would face each other
on the racetrack. And these were two really iconic cars,
representative of two different kind of philosophies
and racecar design and construction, but both aimed towards the same end.
There are so many good cars there. There were probably
eight or ten cars there with a legitimate shot at winning.
The world was waiting to see what was going to happen.
World famous drivers. Mario Andretti, winner of
the most recent international endurance race at Sebring.
Aj Foyt and Dan Gurney raced against each other
at indie just twelve days earlier.
Now they are teammates driving one of the new Mark IV Fords.
Foyt gets ready for practice in the no.1 Mark IV.
He's never driven the track before
and this is the first time he's been in the sleek new Ford.
We started practice and we have an issue with the cracked windshields.
When the incredibly fast Fords reach peak speeds in excess
and thrown with enough velocity to crack the windshields.
They must all be replaced and the supply is short.
Ford took out first class in one of the airliners.
And they sent about a dozen or so windshields.
During the night, one special aircraft came from
Detroit directly to Le Mans with new material.
Ferrari couldn't have the financial capability to do something like that.
Ferrari has three of their factory p4s in the top ten.
They finished 1-2-3 in the only other 24 hour race of the season at Daytona.
The candy colored Fords are the fastest, with six of the top ten starting positions.
Ronnie Bucknum, driving the no.57 Ford MARK II,
leads the pack off the starting grid.
Bucknum leads the pack down the Mulsanne straight
He's in the car, gone, and he comes back after the first lap
thirty seconds ahead of the second place car.
Here comes the rest of the pack.
Two Ferrari p4s and two Fords.
As the race progressed, the Fords took the lead.
The Ferraris were not too far behind,
but we were pulling away from them.
Now, from the air, we see Gurney quickly
accelerating to become the leader on the 48th lap.
Foyt begins his two hour stint behind the wheel.
His first appearance in competition at Le Mans,
and with only ten practice laps under his belt.
At this stage, Gurney thinks things are going too easy.
The expected challenge from Ferrari hasn't developed.
Maybe he set too fast a pace.
Fifteen cars have already dropped out trying to keep up with the bright red Ford,
and now there's a rookie driver in the car
the GT40 if it has an Achilles heel. It's in the brakes.
It would go about 212, 213mph down the straight way,
the you'd come to the Mulsanne turn
and you have to slow down to maybe 30mph.
That can really raise Kane with the brakes.
So what I did, I invented a new approach for braking.
The chicken shit form of braking I invented
I used instead of deep braking.
What I did was back off about 300 yards sooner than I had to,
and let the engine slow the car down and then I'd brake
and down shift and go around the corner. Well,
this was much easier for the brakes.
That was something i worked with Aj on.
So we went at this thing with a slightly different philosophy of how to do it.
Aj Foyt the rookie everyone was worried about
Has charged into a seven lap lead.
We got Foyt and Gurney, and nobody expected them to finish.
Gurney did a wonderful job of not showing Foyt how fast the car would go.
And Foyt did a fabulous job in
driving within his limits, realizing that 24 hours is a long time,
taking care of the engine, taking care of the gearbox.
Mr. Ford had his sergeants with him,
but they would come through every two or three hours
and that happened all night long.
Fortunately for us, we always had good news for him at the time.
At 3:30 in the morning, the whole complexion of
the race changes when Andretti spins his car,
bounces off the wall, and stops in the middle of the track.
Seconds later, and McCluskey and Jo Schlesser spin off
trying to avoid Andretti. No one is injured, but
all three cars must be retired.
Ferrari hadn't given up, and Ford did everything
they could to help Ferrari stay in the race.
They lost three cars in one accident.
Two factory Ferraris are in hot pursuit.
Now in second and third position.
Bruce Mclaren is in fourth position.
And as he accelerates along the Mulsanne straight,
the top his car comes loose.
He's forced to slow down and hold in on by hand.
There was only one Ford left, and that happened to be ours.
Less than four hours to go, Dan Gurney drives
the no.1 Ford for his last shift, before turning it over to Aj Foyt,
waiting in the pits, who is scheduled to finish the race.
The Ferraris begin to pick up the pace,
hoping to push the leading Ford into a breakdown.
The Ford was about 3mph faster than the Ferrari.
Even though he was in the draft, I could walk away
from him down the straight away a little bit.
And then when I backed off early, he was all over me,
flicking his lights. This happened for four or five laps.
Every time we came to the last 90 degree turn,
at the end of the Mulsanne straight, he was right on me.
He was really bothering me.
And finally I got to a turn called Arnage.
And I went around the turn,
and slowly pulled off to the right, onto the grass and stopped.
And he pulled off behind me
and stopped right behind me. On the grass.
So I thought to myself, now what?
And it stayed that way for probably ten or twelve seconds...
And then finally he pulled out and went on.
He ended up finishing second.
Ferrari were always fairly close to the pace,
but never close enough.
It was the steamroller again.
Weight of numbers. Ford won.
There's the checkered flag.
Dan Gurney climbs atop the Ford Mark IV.
It's an all-American win.
The veteran, Dan Gurney, from California.
The hard-charging Aj Foyt from Texas.
And the durable Mark IV Ford from Dearborn, Michigan.
Foyt and Gurney were the least likely winners.
We were given them and everybody thought they'd blow up.
Well, they didn't.
The Ford guys were just over the moon.
Anything they wanted, they got for Le Mans in 1967.
Foyt was lighting cigars and cigarettes with a hundred franc bill,
everyone was going berserk.
We were all up on the platform.
At that moment I was handed a gigantic bottle of champagne.
It was a huge achievement after trying many times.
There were seven times where i didn't even finish.
I just felt... Let's do something here.
Dan done something amazing
he sprays the crowd with champagne.
Nobody had ever done that.
Like a fire hose, I could get every single one of them.
I didn't realize what it would evolve into.
Now, in every race, particularly in Europe, people win...
They pop the champagne and spray it.
It all started right there at Le Mans in 1967.
It meant a great deal to all of us.
Ford went on to win the 24 hours of Le Mans again in 1968.
Again in 1969. And Ferrari never won Le Mans again.
The Ford-Ferrari rivalry? That is the golden age of racing.
There's been a great battle, a great fight.
It's really a part of the history of motor racing.
It's easy to think of the gt 40 as being
the iconic car of the time,
but the Ferraris that were racing against them,
were, in their own way,
the most sophisticated sports cars ever built.
You mention Ferrari anywhere on the planet,
everybody knows what they're all about.
They're all about high performance and winning.
Clear.
Ferrari did win everything there was worth inning.
And he did it entirely his own way.
He delivered huge results,
and with a massive personality.
I'm often asked, "what was the best car you ever drove?"
Top of the list is the GT40.
American made cars
all of a sudden had a
new appreciation globally.
Once you achieve what the GT40 has achieved,
you're in the history forever.
It's part of an incredible accomplishment,
in the most competitive arena.
The legacy of the GT40 and the Ferraris that
raced against it, was really to start the modern generation of Le Mans.
It was the start of big money, factory teams.
It really changed from being specially prepared
sports racing cars, to being cars designed
from the ground up just to do Le Mans.
Now the cars are bulletproof. The drivers drive flat out.
We couldn't do that.
Doesn't matter what brand, or what car, or who's racing.
In the end, we all have this drive to compete.
I've been so lucky to be on the same track
with the best drivers that ever put their hands on a steering wheel of a race car.
Only two makes ever won Le Mans in the 1960s.
Ferrari won the first half, Ford won the second half.
In the history of motor racing, there will never be another
rivalry like the Ford and Ferrari wars at Le Mans.
It's one of the great grudge matches of history.
Not just motor sports, but all of sporting history.
Such a historic occasion.
Fifty years on from the 1-2-3 finish,
and we're back for another crack.
So to be back fifty years later, with my dad, is kind of special.
The tricolore will be waved by Brad Pitt.
We are racing the 84th running of the 24 hours of Le Mans.
The Ford GT and a Ferrari, battling it out.
We had a problem at the start with the car,
it's a couple laps down right now.
The no.82 Ferrari, Matteo Malucelli,
is going to lose the lead.
Oh, there goes the racing competition Ferrari.
That gives Ford the upper hand.
The reason this car was created was to win this race.
Fifty years later after the infamous 1-2-3 and we did it.