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Excerpted from Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A.J. Baime, available in mid-May (pre-order at Amazon.com). Copyright © 2009 by Checkered Flag Media, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
In the spring of 1963 Henry Ford II—the larger-than-life grandson of Ford Motor Company’s founder and one of the richest men in the world—had a vision. He saw the future of the car market not in America but in Europe, and he invested the future of his family’s empire overseas, gambling more than he could afford to lose. How to prove that his American cars were the best in the world and that customers in Europe should line up to buy them? Henry II ordered his engineering brain trust to design and build a racing car that could win the most famous speed competition in the world—the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France—a feat no American manufacturer had ever achieved.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans was (and still is) a sports-car race. But in the 1960s it was much more than that: It was a remarkable marketing tool. A win instantly translated to millions in sales. The basic rules: an 8.36-mile road course, a team of two drivers to each car, one man in the cockpit at a time. The car that covered the most laps after 24 hours won. Le Mans was deeply controversial because of its extreme speeds and danger. In 1964, the first year Ford entered cars, Car and Driver called the event “a four-hour sprint race followed by a 20-hour deathwatch.” It was “probably the most dangerous sporting event in the world.”
Henry II’s nemesis would be Enzo Ferrari, who at the time was enjoying the greatest Le Mans dynasty ever. The cars that rolled out of Ferrari’s factory in Maranello, Italy had won Le Mans four years in a row. They were as famous for their speed as for their beauty. The battle between these two industrialists would make for one of the greatest grudge matches in sports history. Looking back, one can see this rivalry as the first chapter in everything that was about to unfold in the automobile business, a long story that has now reached its climax: Detroit car companies battling for international supremacy in the era of globalism.
Based on three years of research and nearly 30 interviews, this account of the 1964 Le Mans reconstructs the first battle between Ford and Ferrari, in which Ford unveiled a car called the GT40. The major characters:
Phil Hill: Racing for Enzo Ferrari’s team at the 1961 Italian Grand Prix, which took the lives of 14 spectators, Hill became the first American to win the Formula One World Drivers’ Championship. Now, in 1964, Hill had signed with Ford and was leading the American effort to beat his old boss.
John Surtees: Number one on Ferrari’s team. The Italian fans called this Englishman Il Grande John.
Carroll Shelby: A chicken farmer turned racing icon, Shelby was a Le Mans champion (in 1959 with Aston Martin), but a bad heart forced him to retire. That’s when he began building his own cars. In 1964 Shelby was attempting to win the GT class (made up of cars customers could actually buy, as opposed to the purpose-built prototypes Ford and Ferrari created to win the race outright) with his Shelby Cobra, a car that commands millions at vintage auctions today.
