Instruments of War

As wars go, Le Mans 1967 was definitive: Goliath 1, David 0. We drive the antagonists.

Any war worth winning is worth winning unconditionally. Ask Patton. And any war worth the name involves a Pearl Harbor or a Bataan. The Ford GT40 program needed two expensive, agonizing years of failure before winning Le Mans in 1966.

But Dearborn’s winning GT40, although undeniably a Ford, was also undeniably not American. Called the GT40 because its roof was 40 inches off the deck, it was built at Ford’s Advanced Vehicles operation in Blighty and run by Shelby-American. And it was driven by two New Zealanders, Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon. Being a four-square sort, Henry Ford II decided $72 million ought to buy a by-God American Ford driven by by-God American drivers to, by God, win Le Mans.

The Dearborn-born-and-bred Ford Mark IV you see here is that all-American car. As conceived by Ford’s Kar Kraft racing shop, it was called the “J-car.” The FIA, racing’s international governing body, had just published Appendix J, a revised set of proportions and dimensions that allowed narrowing the full-width GT40 windshield and reducing frontal area. Eight ultralight aluminum “honeycomb sandwich” J-car tubs—twin aluminum skins sandwiching a honeycomb of formed aluminum—were bonded and baked in aerospace ovens. The result was the most advanced featherweight racing chassis in the world.

Powered by a brawny twin-carb pushrod Ford 427 V-8, the first cars had an awkward lobster-claw nose that looked as if it owed more to Ford Styling than the wind tunnel. An old aeronautics dictum says: If it looks right, it’ll be right. It didn’t. It wasn’t.

A new bluff nose similar to the GT40 Mark II’s was tried, but it resulted in a catastrophic top-speed crash at Riverside on August 17, 1966, that killed brilliant expatriate-Brit Ford test driver Ken Miles. The J-car was almost dropped. A redesigned J emerged, using a smooth new nose and long, swooping tail. The car was referred to exclusively now as the Ford Mark IV. ( Not “GT40 Mark IV”; the chassis plate takes no note of the GT40’s British lineage.)

Meanwhile, Ferrari was preparing its Le Mans 1967 weapon. The car we drove at Lime Rock, in Targa Florio livery, was the key to Ferrari hopes. Chassis 0846 started life as a 1966 Ferrari 330P3. It became the test mule for the improved 1967 330P4. (A combination of a P3 chassis with a P4 engine, it is thus a P3/4.)

Wheelbase, transmission, and engine were revised, the new four-liter V-12’s Lucas mechanical fuel-injection replacing the P3 carburetors. Tests were promising, and 0846 went on to win Daytona 1967, the three victorious Ferraris finishing in formation, mocking Ford’s formation finish at Le Mans in 1966. The P3/4 crashed out of the 1967 Targa Florio and then was repaired and entered at Le Mans for Chris Amon and Sicilian legend Nino Vaccarella. Three other Le Mans P4s were entered for Scarfiotti/Parkes, Klass/Sutcliffe, and Mairesse/Beurlys.