The story of the birth of the GT40 is legendary. Henry Ford II, outraged at Enzo Ferrari for pulling out of a deal to sell up his company to the Americans, ordered his engineers to come up with a car that could humble Ferrari at Le Mans, which the Italians had won six times in a row from 1960 to 1965.
The Mk1, 2 & 3 versions of the GT40 can claim to be largely British as they were designed and built by Ford’ Advanced Vehicles Ltd, in association with Lola engineers, at Bromley, then Slough, with the chassis made in Coventry.
Our shoot featured a Sbarro GT40 rather than an original — the scarcity of the original cars, and their value makes them very hard to come by — but Franco Sbarro has better claims than most to build authentic GT40 replicas, as he was part of the Ford Advanced Vehicles team. Even near-exact replicas such as can sell for around a quarter of a million, such is the regard for the GT40.
