Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans

[A.J._Baime]

There is a lot on Ken Miles in the book. I interviewed his son Peter. The way the book ends is tragic. (Sorry! I'm giving away a piece of the ending.) Miles got screwed out of the '66 Le Mans win. "I had considered that we had won," he said after the race. "But we were placed second on a technicality. I feel the responsibility for this rests with the decision made by Ford, over my protests, to make the finish a dead heat. I told them I didn't think it would work." Two months later, Miles died while testing at Riverside. The cause of his accident has never been determined, not to this day. Here's what Ford said at the time, specifically Don Frey (also a character in the book, whom I interviewed twice), who had just taken over as head of the Ford division, replacing Iacocca, who got bumped up: "The evidence is that it was not mechanical. We can't pinpoint anything which failed in the car before the crash." Shelby: "We don't know what caused it. The car just disintegrated. We have nobody to take his place. Nobody. He was our baseline, our guiding point. He was the backbone of our program." I found this quote by an LA Times writer, in a kind of personalized obit: "We don't have to feel sorry for people who choose to live dangerously, and lose. So the bull wins one. The matador must take the risk. The closer he plays to the horn, the better the show. Well, Miles, good show."