Bundle of snakes?

[Clois Harlan]

I just got a card from the Franklin Mint and they are selling a 1:18 scale die-cast metal replica of the 1966 Ford GT40 Mk II. They are showing it with a 427. I am sure this is the real deal but I have never seen GT 40 with a 427 cu in engine. Very impressive looking model but a bit pricy ($169.00).

Are there any GT40's running a 427 today?


Clois

[Cobra #42]

Clois, Are you coming down to Austin next month, we are wanting all our out of town brothers to be there, if you are interested check the Texas web site, Later , db

[Ron61]

Clois,

The first GT-40s did have 427s in them. I saw the one that won LeMans in 1966 at the Harra's Collection in Reno years ago before they broke it up. I received the same brochure you did but mine is from the Danbury Mint. They put the smaller motors in them after Ferrari had lost at LeMans two years in a row and complained to the rules committee. Ford then sold the cars as they to quote Henry Ford 11, " Had kicked Ferrari's ass on their own ground" and now we don't have anything to prove. Does the Franklin Mint model come with the display case and hardwood base ?

Ron

[jhein]

That is correct, and I think that the next season the GT-40 still beat the ferraris with a 289 instead of the 427.

john
spf1421

[Ron61]

John,

You are correct and I believe it was some Frenchman who bought one of the cars and won with the 289 in it. I think they won two years in a row with the 289s. Somewhere I have some papers from the Harra's Collection that has repos of the newspaper articles about GT-40s winning 4 years in a row. They were great cars and still are. Wish I could afford one of them. They did let me sit in the one at Harra's as I was over there so much.

Ron

[Clois Harlan]

DB

Yes, I plan on Thursday night and stopping in Dallas to see my daughter and then leave early Friday morning. I will be trailering my Cobra since it will probably still be quite cool here in Tulsa. I plan on meeting up with Jay in Dallas on Friday if possible.

Looking forward to some seat time soon. It was 65 deg here last night so after work and my wife and I took the Cobra to dinner and cruzin until about 8:30. I just love rolling through those gears and letting the beast backoff just a little between gears.

By the way is anyone bringing their wives?

See you all soon.

Clois

[Bob Putnam]

We're finally finishing up the first "production" MK2. It should eventually look like our prototype, but use a T44 transaxle.

[snakeeyes]

The GT40 was originally a small-block-powered car. There were even attempts to run the aluminum overhead-cam "Indy" motor in them, but the 289 was ultimately settled upon. Those cars are known as "Mark 1" GT's and it was in that configuration they ran Le Mans for 1964 and '65. Although plenty fast--I think the 289-powered cars ran up to 217 mph on the Mulsanne--they did not finish either race. A lot of this was probably due to Ford being new to the game and learning as they went (similar to the Audi team the last few years, which followed much the same timeline before becoming dominant). Shelby got involved in '65 and in many ways completely rebuilt the cars, replacing the wire wheels run in '64 with alloy Halibrands, strengthening parts, revising the bodywork, etc. Ken Miles was the chief development driver and Phil Remington lent his master fabrication skills to the task.

With the advent of the FE 427, it was decided that bigger was probably better and the engine was transplanted into the '40. These cars were known as MkII models. They had bigger front fender bulges and greatly revised rear bodywork in order to cope with the big-block's cooling needs. These cars were tested in several different body configurations, with longer noses, rear "fins", etc. Roadsters were built along with coupes (as had been the case with the Mk1). An automatic transmission was even tried at one point, and cars were run at least once with "Mercury" badging replacing the Ford logos, to give that division an advertising boost (good trivia). The MkII was tested and tested, engines were run on Ford's dynos with programs designed to replicate the Le Mans gearshift and rev range demands, and the cars became world-beaters. The MkII had its shining moment at Le Mans '66, with three team cars participating in the controversial "photo finish" where some felt Miles had been robbed of victory by a rules technicality.

For '67, Ford prepared another assault on the 24 hours with a car that, in many ways, was not a GT40 anymore, the MkIV. The IV retained the 427 but had new, aircraft-style honeycomb material for its monocoque and used completely revised front and rear bodywork that made it appear much longer than any Mk1 or II. The MkIVs--there were 12 built, I think--have serial numbers that start with the letter "J", a nod to the prototype that spawned them, the "J" car. The "J" was originally intended to be the successor to the MkII GT40. It had different bodywork from how the MkIV's ultimately appeared, but many of the underpinnings eventually became the MkIV. Ken Miles was killed testing a J-car at Riverside in 1966, which set the whole program back quite a bit. The cause of his accident was mysterious, and cast a cloud over the whole J-car program, which may have led to it ultimately being scrapped and reappearing as the MkIV. At any rate, Gurney and Foyt scored their famous win in a IV at Le Mans '67. They decided before the race that, since nobody gave them a chance to survive to the end, they were going to drive the hell out of the car and have fun with it. About 20 hours later they realized they might win, and then started to worry about whether they had abused their MkIV too much. It didn't break, they set new speed and distance records, and Gurney started a tradition of the winner spraying champagne that continues today (another bit of trivia).

After Le Mans '67 Ford felt it had nothing more to prove, and pulled out of endurance racing. Also, the FIA, in an attempt to slow the prototypes down (the MkIV's were running close to 240 mph on the Mulsanne), limited engine capacity to 5 liters. This obviously eliminated the 427 as a viable option but opened the door back up for the use of the Ford 289-302 series of engines. John Wyer, famous race team manager who had worked for Aston Martin for several years, had already been runnning modified Mk1s at Le Mans in '67. His modified cars, which featured a narrower cockpit area, were called "Mirages". For '68 he returned his cars to more "standard" Mk1 spec, albeit with much wider rear fenders to cover wider tires, and took the fight to Ferrari and Porsche in the now-famous Gulf-liveried GT40s. Car #1075 won in '68 for Wyer. The same car returned in '69, and, in the closest Le Mans finish ever, Jacky Ickx and Jackie Oliver won by a few yards over a Porsche 908.

The GT40 was really a dinosaur by 1969. Its reliability won the day after many much faster cars had left the race. The next year saw the beginning of the domination of the Porsche 917. Wyer had switched his Gulf sponsorship over to them by then, and the '40's days in the sun were over...

Sorry for the rambling post but I thought you guys might find it interesting. I apologize for any historical inaccuracies but this is from memory...

Bob

[Carroll DeWeese]

snakeeyes,

You are disproving your label of "I don't know nothing" -- unless it means that you know alot.

I am just amazed as the knowledge of people participating in Club Cobra. Guys like you are amazing.

[TimG427]

Those three winning GT40's from the 1966 LeMans race were reunited at Road America in 1996. They had them line up on the track next to each other. There were a total of 42 GT40's at that 1996 reunion. Jim Click won the event in a green GT40. They were hitting 200 MPH on the back straight. What an event.

[snakeeyes]

Carroll, thanks, but I just read a lot. I was an embryo when most of this stuff was happening, unfortunately.

Tim, I hit Chicago the afternoon of that GT40 Reunion and decided with the blessing of my wonderful wife to make a banzai run to Elkhart. We made it to the track about halfway through the race. By the time we got parked, etc., it was essentially over, but it was still neat to walk through the paddock and check out the history. I am hoping to make it to Monterey this August for the same reason; should be an eyeful of historic Cobras and '40s there with Ford the featured marque.

The John Allen GT40 book has many, many pictures from that '96 Road America weekend, by the way. It is available from Amazon, etc., I believe, and should be reasonably priced as it is a softcover book--

Regards,
Bob

[Ron61]

Bob,

In an interview I saw back in the late 60s with Shelby and some of the Ford racing people they said the first GT-40s that never finished the races had some head bolt problems. Something about them not having been heat treated correctly or something and after they got hot they basically fell apart. I am not sure if this is actually the real problem but that was what the interview was about. Shelby also said that to this day the GT-40 racing program was the most expensive in history as Ford told them they had no limit to the money they could spend but they had better win or not return to the United States. I tried to find the tape of that interview as it was about 45 minute long but I either lent it to someone and never got it back or have misplaced it along with some other things that I amtrying to find.

Ron

[snakeeyes]

Ron, I 'd be interested to see that tape. The "official" reason usually given for the multiple early retirements is the Colotti 4-speed gearbox, which apparently gave the Ford Advanced Vehicles boys fits until they were replaced by 5-speed ZF units. The cars also had problems with brakes, chassis strength--the welds kept breaking on some of the rough European circuits--and aerodynamics. The GT was touching speeds that were pretty much an unknown quantity in the early 60's, and that sleek-looking body wasn't necessarily up to snuff. There was a whole lot of tweaking required, both front and back, to get the cars stable enough to run 200+ mph, at night and in the rain (that always makes me shake my head, thinking about that), for 24 hours.

Shelby's involvement was hugely responsible for the car's improvements. For instance, there is an anecdote, no doubt true, about how it was discovered that the internal ducting designed into the original car robbed it of a whopping 76 horsepower. Through the hard work of Miles, Remington, et al, problems like that were worked out. There were other companies who were also valuable to the development of the '40, such as Alan Mann Racing in England, and Holman & Moody, both of whom prepared and raced GT's with success. Although Shelby typically gets the credit for the '66 Le Mans win, there are documents out there that suggest that the Holman & Moody-prepped cars had been ordered by Ford to run at a reduced pace in the event that the Shelby cars broke, leading to eternal debate about what those cars could have accomplished had they been allowed to run free. Regardless, it was a great era for American racing...

[Ron61]

Bob,

I am in the process of trying to track that tape down and getting madder by the person. The friend I loaned it to loaned it to another person who claims he loaned it to another and so on. I specifically told the friend that I wanted the tape back and now I don't know if I can ever track it down. It was one that I taped and so I can't go buy one. There was a lot of stuff talked about that I have never seen mentioned on the TV shows and the gear boxes you mentioned were also among them. I remember Shelby said Henry Ford 11 just pointed to a name tag he had on his desk when they asked him how much money they had to work with and all it said was Ford Wins LeMans 1966. That was after the 1965 debacle. I am still trying to track the tape down but after goping through this many people I have a sinking feeling I may not get it back. Another hard lesson learned. Don't lend something that is a more or less one time thing to anyone unless you are there to take it back home. Everything you mentioned above was talked about in the tape plus some other things that they also figured out how to improve and get a little better handling and speed. I will keep trying to find it.

Ron

[Excaliber]

What was the name of the movie Steve McQueen made that used so many GT-40's? LeMans? I was watching a documentary of the making of the movie and a couple of comments were made about the "instability" of the GT-40's at speeds of 200 and over.

They were quite surprised and wondered how in the hell those cars could be driven at that speed lap after lap and no one crashed.

Ernie

[snakeeyes]

The McQueen movie is called "Le Mans". Incidentally, it is just being released on DVD--for Spring delivery--and can be preordered on Amazon.com.

The movie was filmed during the 1970 race, sadly the first time the famous "Le Mans" running start was not used. After complaints regarding the safety of the drivers--many of whom jumped in their cars and took off without belting up, steering with their knees at 200+ mph down the Mulsanne straight while buckling them--1970 saw the cars making a standing start from their pit stalls, drivers already belted in. The next year saw another change and the first use of a rolling start behind a pace car, the method still used today.

Interestingly, there were no GT40s in the '70 race. I haven't watched my copy of the McQueen film in a while but I think one or more might appear in a few scenes, probably a result of McQueen obtaining some footage during the '69 race. In '70 McQueen's production company, Solar Studios, entered a Porsche 908 and obtained permission to use it as a film platform. It is an open car and can be seen in some of the scenes, especially of the start; it is an ungainly-looking thing because of the huge covers front and rear that held the cameras. Solar not only had to practice normal pit stops, they had to become versed in quickly changing film rolls when the car stopped. In spite of all of that the car made it all the way through to the finish but was not classified because it didn't cover the minimum distance; I think the car would have been in the top ten had it gone far enough.

I'll have to watch that documentary again; I have it on tape somewhere. I'm surprised by their comments. The only GT that I'm aware of that had any connection to the film was a former Wyer team car, s/n 1074 I think, that had its roof chopped off to be used as a film car for some of the staged scenes. Perhaps that had something to do with its stability...other than when the cars were new and under intense development I don't really recall anyone else complaining about that issue.