Ford icon GT40 will have much to live up to

Ford Division President Jim O'Connor announces Ford GT40 production plans.

When I was a student in the 60s, I was fascinated by the American ambassador’s Galaxie 500 which used to pass by my lodgings every breakfast and tea time. I didn’t realise then that the gently burbling 4.2-litre V8 engine under its hood was already powering the to-become-iconic GT40 supercar to its early victories, and very soon a 7-litre engine from the Galaxie would be howling a trio of Ford GT40s down the Mulsanne Straight on their way to giving the brand its first Le Mans win in a stunning 1-2-3 formation victory.

Which all has what to do with today? Well, this week, Ford Motor Company announced the ‘dream team’ who will oversee the building of the 21st century version of the GT40, following overwhelming positive reaction to a concept shown in January at the North American International Motor Show.

The team is a drawing together of some of Ford’s top engineers and racing experts under the leadership of John Coletti, the director of Ford’s Special Vehicle Team programmes. And 38 years on from the launch of the original, the involvement of the Carrol Shelby car racing company is a totemic link between the GT40 development teams of then and now.

The 2002 brief is to bring to the market a limited production supercar as one of the symbols of Ford’s upcoming centennial celebrations. It will be launched in 2003 and go on sale in 2004.

Two Gulf GT40s running together in the 1968 Le Mans.

The original GT40 was produced following a decision by Henry Ford II to develop a Ford racing car that would compete in the key endurance races of the time, at Daytona in the US and Le Mans in France. It took just two years from that decision for the car to win at the Daytona 2,000-kilometre race. One year later came the amazing 1-2-3 at Le Mans. And the GT40 dominated Le Mans for the following three years before the Gulf-Ford team took the car out of endurance competition after the 1969 victory of Jackie Ickx and Jackie Oliver (below).

It wasn’t quite the end for the GT40 at Le Mans, though, because in both 1975 and 1980 privately-owned cars, powered by the 3-litre DFV engines developed by Ford for Formula 1, won the classic 24-hour race.

It is arguable that, to those of us not permanently on a drip-feed of high-octane racing petrol into our veins, the GT40 is the one car whose form embedded in our memories of all the other famous brands that preceded and succeeded it - notably the Ferrari 250Ps before the Ford Years and the Porsche 917s that immediately followed.

I mean, can you SEE either of those other two cars in your mind’s eye, right now? I can’t. There was something intrinsically sexy about the GT40, and maybe it had something to do with the fact that it was a Ford. A name synonymous with everyday cars, so that anyone driving an ordinary Ford (as I was), could relate to this magnificent machine.

That was one of the things too: instead of developing a specialised racing engine from scratch, Ford in those days used mildly improved versions of its ordinary road-car power units for its racing activities, in which Galaxies like my American ambassador’s were whacking the competition on US racing circuits.

The early GT40s used engines from the Galaxie power unit lineup, and from the then-new Mustang sporty convertible. Even then, at between 4-5 litres depending on the engine used, they had relatively awesome power outputs. The 4.2-litre, for instance, produced 350bhp and a 200mph speed along the Mulsanne Straight.

Oddly enough, the 0-60mph performance was only around 8-9secs, one that today is easily managed by any Mondeo. But the key thing for endurance racing was the ability to maintain high speeds for more than 3,000 miles, the distance typically travelled on the Le Mans endurance race. American large-capacity and relatively understressed V8s were perfect for this.

(As a relativity curiosity, the distance travelled in the first Le Mans 24 hours in 1923 was 1,373 miles, at an average speed of 57.21mph. In 1967, a GT40 piloted by Dan Gurney and A J Foyt travelled 3,250 miles at an average speed of 135.48mph. And the 2001 winning Audi covered 2,712 miles at an average speed of 113.09mph. Over the years the track length has changed from its original 10.7 miles to today’s 8.45 miles, and chicanes were introduced to the Mulsanne Straight in 1990 to slow the race down.)

The 7-litre V8s which powered the GT40’s first Le Mans win in 1966 produced 485bhp. Apart from the fact that they were by then also fitted into high-end Galaxie road cars, they were also outgunning most of the Pontiac GTOs and other competitor hardware in NASCAR racing in the US. The engine had been used by the GT40 the previous year at Le Mans and had led the field for much of the time.

In the 1966 event, the three Ford cars remaining out of an original eight GT40s were 175 miles ahead of their nearest competitors coming up to the finish. The lead driver, Ken Miles, was ordered by Ford to slow and let the other two team cars, one driven by New Zealander Bruce McLaren, catch up for the formation finish. He did so, and McLaren drove on past him to take the actual win. History doesn’t record Miles’s words ...

There’s an apocryphal story about the 1967 race, that drivers Dan Gurney and A J Foyt (left) weren’t all that keen on staying up all night and decided between themselves to drive the car so hard that it would bust up. It didn’t, though, and they ended up breaking all records.

After that, the racing authorities introduced engine size restrictions, and the 1968 race was won by Pedro Rodriguez and Lucien Bianchi in a 5-litre engined car (below) that had a power output of 425bhp and a top speed capability of 210mph. That same year, because GT40s won so many other endurance races, Ford won the World Sports Car Championships.

The final Le Mans 1969 win by the Ickx/Oliver driving team was in the same car that had won the previous year. It had already won five World Sports Car Championship races before coming back to Le Mans.

And that was it for Ford’s official involvement in Le Mans. It remains to be seen if the 21st century car will live up to the legend that provides its name. Though Ford hasn’t officially said anything about racing the new car, it would be a pity if it merely became just another retro commemorative of the ‘greats’ of the supercar 60s.

July 2002

by Brian Byrne

'The original GT40 was produced following a decision by Henry Ford II to develop a Ford racing car that would compete in the key endurance races of the time, at Daytona in the US and Le Mans in France'

'The 7-litre V8s which powered the GT40’s first Le Mans win in 1966 produced 485bhp. Apart from the fact that they were by then also fitted into high-end Galaxie road cars, they were also outgunning most of the Pontiac GTOs and other competitor hardware in NASCAR racing in the US'