Posts Tagged ‘gt40’

GT40 Love

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

It was an obvious choice — the defin­itive fast ford, one that will always be remembered as the Ferrari and Porsche-​​slaying slab of automotive sinew and muscle that rode to glory. And we’ll never get tired of posting onboard footage like the clip below from Le Mans, 1969.

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The thing is about the GT40 is that it looked every bit as exotic and purposeful as anything circling the Circuit De Sarthe, but that it bore the Ford badge — and as such repres­ented the brand that more people could identify with than any other on the planet. In having such great racing success Ford made sure that motor­sport was not perceived as being confined to the rarified upper strato­sphere of car consumption.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Ford made a bold entrance as a works team into F1? Can you imagine the support it would inspire?

Many Faces of the Fast Ford

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Whichever way the Ford GT has been copied, replica-​​ed, repro­duced, slathered over, argued about, loved, fetishised and lionised, it remains one of the most intriguing sports cars ever produced.

It’s one of the those designs that seems to morph according to angle, light and graphic. But everything about it screams stripped-​​down menace and North American speed.

And here’s Mr Shelby himself adding his own perspective on the legend. You can’t help but dig the brawny Texan’s accent and his simple, straight­forward compet­it­iveness, especially against ‘those red Ferraris’.

Makes me want to go out and buy a Cosworth Sierra to plug in to that burly Ford tradition.

Ford GT40 - The Ferrari Slayer

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

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.