Gurney’s triumph signaled the start of the infamous Cobra-Ferrari Wars, which came to a head in 1965 when Shelby American overcame Ferrari to win the championship, the first and only time for an American team.
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Carroll Shelby has various jobs, including creating renowned automobiles.
Few people would be more qualified to complete the task than Carroll Shelby if your objective were, say, to dethrone an Italian racing titan (Matt Damon). A larger-than-life personality in the world of fast cars through the second half of the 20th century, Shelby was a WWII flight instructor, chicken farmer, racing car driver, and manufacturer of renowned automobiles. He was regarded as a man of huge ideas with little patience for specifics and for his enormous personal charisma. In an Autoweek obituary, a friend of Shelby’s said, “He is an entrepreneur who borders on the con man — he is a legitimate con man.” It is the traditional American success tale.
Shelby didn’t start out making cars; instead, he competed in and won races. Early in the 1950s, while still a farmer, he entered his first races and took first place in events held in the American Southwest. He started competing for the Aston Martin team in 1954, and he and Roy Salvadori eventually won the Le Mans race for the British automaker. Shelby finally had to retire from competitive racing due to heart problems. He made the decision to create fast automobiles instead of driving them. He established Shelby American, a stand-alone sports vehicle manufacturer, in 1962. The company started importing English AC coupes and modifying them with potent Ford engines before rebranding the result the Shelby Cobra.
Shelby and his team began work on Ford’s brand-new racecar, the GT40, in 1965. The GT40 would later defeat Ferrari, a performance behemoth that had won the prestigious race for six consecutive years, to win the coveted Le Mans championship.
The Real Meaning of “Ford v. Ferrari”
A battle of the automobile titans took place. At the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance event, a long-awaited battle pitting upstart Ford against reigning champion Ferrari for the checkered flag and bragging rights.
Enzo Ferrari, a former race car driver and the creator of the brand bearing his name, was the representative of the old world. The Ford GT40, a new version of a car that would go on to become a classic of international motor racing, and the skills of automotive designer Carroll Shelby were used by Henry Ford II to carry the torch for the new world.
The Ford v Ferrari film, featuring Christian Bale as Ken Miles and Matt Damon as Carroll Shelby, brought the tale of Ken Miles, Carroll Shelby, and Ford’s GT40 defeating Ferrari at Le Mans in 1966 to the attention of the world. But what was the actual sequence of events that led to what happened?
As you might anticipate from a Hollywood movie, the plotline strayed from reality a bit. What portions of the movie are therefore accurate, and what details were exaggerated for artistic and dramatic effect? Check out the second in a series of videos covering the actual race and the movie in the one up top (part 1 can be viewed below).
At a race in California, did Ken Miles actually throw a wrench at Shelby? Has he ever thrown a punch at him in public? Was Ford management sabotaging Miles after he had a multiple-lap lead at Le Mans because they wanted their other drivers to win? At the finish line, what actually transpired? What did the actual podium scenario look like?
Using exclusive footage from Motorsport.tv’s Le Mans archive and images from Motorsport Images, we tell the story of what actually happened with interviews with a number of motorsport experts, including Miles’s son Peter, who was a young boy when all the real-life drama unfolded. Tom Kristensen, a nine-time winner of the Le Mans 24 Hours, serves as the narration.
World-beater
After learning about his cardiac issue, Shelby devoted himself to creating the fastest sports car in the world—one that was proudly American-made. Instead of starting from scratch, Shelby tried to cram an American V8 engine with enough of power and dependability into a little sports car.
With their AC Ace two-seater roadster, AC Cars had been having some racing success on the other side of the Atlantic. It was only made in tiny quantities and used a Bristol straight-6 engine at the time. It had an English wheeled machine-made aluminum body with a hand-built steel tube frame and steel body panels.
Shelby wrote to AC and requested that they construct him a vehicle with a V8 engine installed. AC concurred. Shelby first inquired with Chevrolet about their willingness to supply him with engines. But Chevrolet didn’t want to offer anything that might be in competition with the Corvette.
Ford, on the other hand, was eager to create a “Corvette killer” and had a brand-new engine that could be employed in Shelby’s project. Two brand-new 4.2-liter (260-cubic inch) thin-wall cast small-block V8 engines were air-freighted to Shelby, who had his crew install the engine and transmission in less than eight hours. These engines were tweaked for maximum performance. The outcome was the 1962 release of the Shelby Cobra 260.
With only one race lost in three years, the car won the SCCA A-Production and the US Road Racing Championship with a stronger 4.7-liter (289-cubic inch) engine.
The Le Mans 24 Hours
How accurately the carnage is depicted in Ford v. Ferrari’s treatment of Le Mans (and other races like Sebring) is one of the most surprising aspects of the film. Major collisions caused no fewer than seven vehicles to crash out of the 24-hour race, many of which were brought on by the rain that began to pour as night fell. There was an incident involving Ferrari racer No. 20 that included a Porsche and a French Matra MS620. Many more cars, including the Ferrari and Ford competitors featured in the movie breaking gaskets and destroying their engines, did not finish the race due to less terrifying mechanical malfunctions.
Among those terrifying mechanical issues, Miles did had difficulties closing the door of his Ford GT40 Mk II, apparently because he bent the door by smashing it on his own (helmeted) head. Despite this, Miles still managed to break numerous lap records. The car’s “brake fade” problem and the pit crew’s unconventional plan of replacing the complete front brake rotors — to the surprise of French racing officials but apparently not the strong objections of Ferrari’s own pit crew that are featured in the movie — are both real-life events. Shelby’s theft of the Ferrari team’s precise Swiss stopwatches, a flourish that is regretfully missing from the source material, did not worsen the risky, untested aspect of this attempt.
However, there was less internal fighting among the Ford crew regarding Beebe’s order for Miles to slow down so that the second- and third-place Fords could catch up for a three-way photo finish, in keeping with the numerous instances of dramatic license already reviewed. Beebe’s recommendation was accepted by Shelby at the time, however he later regretted it in light of Miles’ untimely passing a few months later. He states in Go Like Hell that “Leo Beebe and Henry Ford convinced me to allow the three cars to cross the street at the same moment, and I will always regret that decision. Ken would have won the race if he had been one and a half laps ahead. His heart was broken. Then, in August, he passed away.”
Despite being aware that he had been fucked, Miles was also more accommodating in real life than in the film. He skillfully attempted to explain to Bob Thomas of the Los Angeles Times “Be careful how you report what I said, please. For these people, I labor. They have treated me quite well.” A little hagiographic Hollywood dramatization like this, with just a little extra polish, may be appropriate for a man this affable and skilled, who was denied respect in his lifetime owing to small technicalities and a fatal accident in his late 40s.
Was the Ferrari defeated by the Shelby Mustang?
When it was first released in the spring of 1964, the Ford Mustang enjoyed great sales success. Although the Mustang was selling well, Ford Division General Manager Lee Iacocca was worried that it did not fit into the Ford Division Total Performance marketing scheme and lacked a performance image.
Iacocca called Carroll Shelby to ask if he could transform the Mustang into a sports vehicle with a winning performance image in order to address the image problem. The 1965 Shelby Mustang GT350 was the outcome. This most recent Shelby American performance vehicle developed its sports car and performance reputation on American road race circuits. The new GT350 dominated the 1965 B Production National Championship while establishing a performance image for the Ford Mustang in the Sports Car Club of America’s B Production Class against the Corvette Stingray, Jaguar XKE, Sunbeam Tiger, and different Ferrari models.
The GT500 variant was added in 1967 after Ford modified the Mustang so it could accommodate a big-block V-8. The Shelby GT350 was produced from 1965 through 1970. The 428 cubic inch engine-powered Shelby GT500 was produced between 1967 and 1970.
Early in 1965, Ford gave Carroll Shelby and his crew of hot rodders control of the faltering Ford GT racing program. Shelby American turned the Ford GT from a corporate loss to an overnight success in only a few short months. winning the Daytona and Sebring international endurance events. By 1966, the Shelby American Ford GT program was all-powerful, absolutely overpowering Ferrari, and taking first, second, and third places in the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans, the pinnacle of international sports car racing.
The only individual to have won the 24 Hours of Le Mans while driving an Aston Martin in 1959, manufacturing the Cobra Daytona Coupe in 1964, and managing the Ford GT program in 1966 and 1967 is Carroll Shelby.
Only the best, most talented drivers were chosen by Carroll Shelby for the Cobra and Ford endurance racing programs. shown here talking on the performance of Dan Gurney’s Ford GT during the 1966 12 Hours of Sebring.
The Trans-American Sedan Championship, or Trans-Am series, is a brand-new motorsports competition that was founded in 1966 by the Sports Car Club of America. This provided Ford Motor Company with an additional chance to develop the Mustang’s reputation for performance. In 1966 and 1967, the vehicles and teams produced by Shelby won championships. The 1968 and 1969 Trans-Am seasons saw more triumphs for Mustangs made by Shelby American.
After a highly successful four-year career, Shelby American left the competition at the end of the 1969 racing season. Along the way, the Shelby American squad defeated some of the top racing teams of the day, including as the Bud Moore Mercury Cougar with factory sponsorship and Roger Penske’s Chevrolet-backed Camaro.
Is the Shelby vs. Ferrari incident real?
James Mangold directed the true story-based film Ford vs. Ferrari. The movie is about a 24-hour endurance event that occurred at the 1966 Le Mans race. A team of auto engineers engaged by Ford to develop a racing that can outperform a Ferrari sports vehicle at the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France is the center of the movie’s plot. Carroll Shelby, a pioneer in the automotive industry, and British race car driver Ken Miles are in charge of the Ford team. Carroll Shelby is portrayed in the movie by Matt Damon, while Ken Miles is portrayed by Christian Bale, who also plays Batman.
Shelby or Ferrari, which is faster?
Ferrari estimates that the vehicle will reach a top speed of 211 mph and reach 0-60 mph in 2.9 seconds. We suppose it was time for the GT500 to lose after witnessing it dominate most of the other vehicles it has competed against. In comparison to the Mustang’s time of 11.4 seconds at 132 mph, the Ferrari completed the quarter-mile in 10.5 seconds.