Before we return to the Shelby American Collection to look at a bunch of Ford GTs (a big bunch by anybody's standards) it might be worthwhile to review how Ford Motor Company's crash program to win Le Mans began. Most historians credit the Lola Mk. 6* prototype which first appeared at the London Racing Car Show in January 1963 as the takeoff point for the GT40 design. Lola chief Eric Broadley's car attracted Ford's interest because it used a mid-mounted Ford 260 V8 behind the low, glassy cockpit. After the prototype's steel monocoque chassis with fiberglass body, two more cars were built with aluminum chassis panels, and Ford bought two cars to assess their performance. John Frayling's body design had some features which may have influenced Ford's thinking, including extremely low overall height which prompted door openings extending into the roof...
Eric Broadley worked on the GT40 program as a consultant for one year, as Ford began to ramp up its Total Performance marketing scheme based on success in road racing, rallying and also the Indy 500. At the 1963 Indy 500, Jim Clark piloted a mid-engined Lotus Ford V8 to 2nd place, and he won convincingly in 1965... But the Lola (and Lotus) boosters among Ford historians sometimes forget that in 1962, Ford had already shown a mid-engined 2 seater car powered by their German subsidiary's 1.5 liter V4, with stressed-skin aluminum body, predictive side-mounted radiators, and integral roll bar. This was the Mustang I*, and it was conceived by British-born aeronautical engineer Roy Lunn, who ran Ford's Advanced Vehicles team...
After this warm-up act, Ford put Lunn in charge of the design effort on the GT40 project. Five open GT40 roadsters were built alongside the more numerous (and famous) coupes, and on these the increase in aerodynamic drag was (from a driver's perspective) offset by a vast increase in headroom…The only aluminum chassis GT40, the X-1 roadster, won the Sebring 12 hours in 1966. But that victory, and the 4 Le Mans wins notched by Ford in the 1960s, only came after lots of trial and error in 1964, when the racing effort was run by former Aston Martin team manager John Wyer. Ford handed their endurance racing program to Shelby American late in 1964, and though the Shelby team notched a win in their first race at Daytona early in 1965, the real breakthroughs came the next year.
The Shelby American Collection displays at least one of each type of GT40, including road and race versions...
There are even two Mark IVs on display, and there were only a dozen Mk IV chassis completed. The yellow and bronze cars below are Mk IVs. Unlike the previous Ford GTs, these were built entirely in Michigan, so the 1967 Le Mans win by Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt in a Mk. IV was the first Le Mans win in a car entirely of American manufacture.
This view below of chassis #GT/104 is one many competitors would've seen during its racing heyday. A "pre-production" Ford GT, it was the first of 4 chassis built with thinner gauge steel to reduce weight. The original engine was the Ford 256 Indy engine, and like Clark's Indy-winning Lotus, the car had an Italian Colotti T37 4- speed transmission, while later versions used a ZF 5-speed, and the Mk. II ran a Ford-designed Kar Kraft 4-speed. The GT40 chassis and body were constructed at Ford Advanced Vehicles in Slough, England. Considering that Henry Ford II had originally tried to take a shortcut to endurance racing success by purchasing Ferrari, perhaps the international flavor of the GT40 effort should not be a surprise. In some ways, it was a preview of the transnational car industry of the 21st century...
Early GT40s like this one featured short front overhangs, and the team tried various air dams and nose contours to deal with the front-end lift which had shown up at the car's first Le Mans effort in 1964...
The Mk I shown below sports the longer and deeper nose contours, wider rear wheels, and also the Gulf Oil colors which appeared on the GT40s raced at Le Mans in 1968 and 1969. After victories in 1966 by the 7 liter Mk II and in 1967 by the Mk. IV, the FIA limited prototypes to 3 liters, which obsoleted the Mk IV as well as the 4 liter Ferraris. But the 4.9 liter Mk I counted as a production sports car, so it was eligible to race at Le Mans. John Wyer brought the Gulf-sponsored cars back, and amazingly, the same car, GT40P / 1075, won in '68 (driven by Pedro Rodriguez and Lucien Bianchi) and '69 (driven by Jacky Ickx and Jackie Oliver).
The Mk. II below can be identified outside by the convex air intake behind the side window (note the concave intake on the Gulf Mk. I above) and also under the engine cover by the 7-liter FE series V8 which put the car into the Group 6 category. A Mk. II was the first GT40 to win at Le Mans, in 1966, and Fords finished 1-2-3 that year, also winning Sebring, Daytona and the Manufacturer's Championship.
The blue car pictured below is the Collection's Mk. III, part of Ford's effort to offer a more practical road version of the race car. Total production of the Mk. III amounted to seven; only three had right-hand drive as shown on this example. The front fenders were raised and 4 round lamps fitted to meet lighting regulations. The tail of the car was also extended to permit more luggage space, and the Mk. III featured a center-mounted shift, unlike the right-hand drive (and right-hand shift) racers.
This view below of the yellow Mark IV shows the narrower cabin which reduced frontal area compared with the Mk II. What it doesn't show is the Mk. IV's innovative aluminum honeycomb chassis, which reduced weight by about 300 pounds compared with Mk. II. Some of the weight advantage was negated by the steel roll cage Ford fitted to the cars after a fatal accident during a prototype test by Ken Miles. Another aspect of the Mk. IV which in not obvious in the photo is that it manages to be even lower than the GT40, measuring 38.5 inches from road to roof. Dan Gurney's 1967 Le Mans winner featured a famous bump in the roof to clear his helmet...
This survey of the Shelby Collection's Ford GTs doesn't touch upon each car, and we haven't even started on the Shelby Mustangs. The Collection is supported by generous donations of cars and automotive memorabilia, and includes models, books and documents. Operating expenses are offset by an annual raffle. The car being offered this year is a new Shelby Mustang GT-350R. The winner will be announced in September, and details are available at the Collection's website: shelbyamericancollection.org.
*Footnote: We featured the Cobras in the Shelby American Collection in Roadside Attraction: The Shelby American Collection Part 1, on Dec. 28, 2017. For more detail on the Mustang I, one of four Mustang proposals rejected by Ford management, see our post for August 26, 2015 entitled The First Mustang: Ford's Forgotten Mustang I.
*Postscript: We finally encountered the most original of the three Ford-powered Lola Mk. 6 coupes, and featured it on August 28, 2018 in 1st Impressions of the Monterey Historics: Whatever Lola Wants.
Photo Credits:
Top (Lola Mk. 6): lolaheritage.co.uk
2nd (Mustang I): Ford Motor Company, reproduced at silodrome.com
3rd (GT40 roadster): girardo.com
4th (Roy Lunn + GT40): Ford Motor Company
All subsequent photos are by the author.
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