There are no spoilers here if you don’t know who wins the battle of Le Mans, and don’t want to know until you’ve seen the movie. We’ll cover some of the background behind the Ford v Ferrari rivalry, the Le Mans 24 hour endurance race in general, and some of the men behind the machines. 

Though the Le Mans 24 hour race continues to this day, pundits generally agree its’ heyday has long passed. Many believe the pinnacle of Le Mans endurance racing was the 1960s – the decade in which Henry Ford II took on Enzo Ferrari with everything in his arsenal.  A real life David and Goliath story, though more complex owing to the fact Le Mans was Enzo’s playground. Ford were the new kids on the block in many ways, and with a lot more to lose. At Le Mans in the early 1960s, Ferrari was the undisputed king and Ford the challenger.

Enzo Ferrari - aka Il Commendatore, joined Alfa Romeo in 1923 as a test driver, mechanic and competitor. After winning his first race for Alfa Romeo in 1923, while standing on the winner’s podium a man pushed through the crowd to introduce himself as Count Enrico Baracca - father of ace pilot and war hero Francesco Baracca. Shot down and killed in June 1918, Francesco flew with a black prancing horse on his fuselage - the symbol of his squadron.

The Count recommended Enzo use the Cavallino Rampante logo on his race cars. Ferrari agreed, and put a yellow shield behind the horse - yellow being the color of his hometown of Modena. Thus was born one of the most recognized and prestigious badges in all autodom. Six years later Ferrari formed Scuderia Ferrari, taking over Alfa Romeo’s racing division. Enzo won his last race as a driver in 1931, a year before the birth of his beloved first son Dino. After WWII Enzo built cars under his own name rather than racing Alfa Romeos.

Enzo’s early masterstroke as team manager was to sign Tazio Nuvolari. Many regard Nuvolari as the greatest racing driver of all time, Enzo himself noting Tazio’s “near superhuman courage”. Ferrari’s lifelong mantra for racing success was “50% driver 50% car”. He knew he needed the very best drivers to achieve victory, and in Nuvolari he knew there was none better. During practice early in their partnership, Ferrari chose to ride alongside Nuvolari, an experience he described thus:

At the first bend I had the clear sensation we would end up in a ditch. I felt myself stiffen as I waited for the crunch. Instead, we found ourselves on the next straight with the car in a perfect position. I looked at Nuvolari. His rugged face was calm, just as it always was, and certainly not the face of someone who had just escaped a hair-raising spin. I had the same sensation in the second bend. But the fourth or fifth bend, I began to understand. I noticed through the entire bend Tazio did not lift his foot from the accelerator and that, in fact, it was flat to the floor.”

Ferrari had 50% of his successful formula with the signing of Nuvolari, and the other 50% was taken care of by VIttoria Jano. Regarded as a mechanical maestro, Jano would go to work on the stable of Ferrari racing cars, turning them into race winners. In 1935 Scuderia Ferrari achieved one of the all time great victories, Nuvolari in his dated and outgunned Alfa Romeo coming from behind to beat the might of Nazi Germany, finishing in front of eight 5 liter V16 Auto Union ‘silver arrows’. This victory set the benchmark for Ferrari as a team, whereby he would attract the most skillful, and critically, the most fearless of men to race his cars. Enzo himself wrote in his memoir “A man who is willing to die at the wheel is always likely to beat a man in a faster car - if he can survive until the end of the race”

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a four hour sprint race followed by a 20 hour death watch

The dye had been cast. Those who drove for Ferrari were expected to win. At any cost. They pushed themselves harder, and some have said they died in fiery crashes more often than those who raced for other marques. Enzo himself was said to be devastated when he lost a driver, but high mortality rates didn’t dampen his desire for victory. With the re-commencement of Gran Prix racing after World War II, Ferrari would build his own cars. His beautiful, potent road machines were tamed race cars, and were only made and sold to fund his passion for racing. The legend was born.

In the late 1950s a talented American driver declined Enzo’s offer to join Scuderia Ferrari, instead going on to win the 1959 Le Mans 24 for Aston Martin. He later claimed he didn’t like the way Ferrari drivers had a habit of dying, and pointed the finger directly at Enzo, implying Il Commendatore didn’t have enough respect for his drivers. That 1959 Le Mans winner was none other than Texan Carroll Shelby. The same Shelby of AC Cobra, Cobra Daytona and Mustang Shelby GT350 fame.

Shelby was the man Ford would hire in their quest to beat Ferrari at Le Mans. Having retired from motor racing due to a heart condition, Carroll Shelby wasted no time putting his home-spun engineering skills, racing nous, and business smarts to good use - forming his own company to build the Cobra. As Ford management watched Shelby’s Cobra blow away Corvettes in racing across America, they knew he was the man to make their GT40 a winner at Le Mans. Not only that - Shelby wanted to beat Ferrari as bad as Henry Ford II did. And he wanted to beat Ferrari at Le Mans.

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Le Mans. The most famous endurance race of them all...the most dangerous, the most taxing on drivers. From the inaugural  race of 1923 it was Immensely popular not only in France but across Europe and the world. In North America, the name was so revered that from 1962 General Motors used it for a new intermediate model, the Pontiac LeMans. The following year the new Pontiac would spawn the first true muscle car - the legendary GTO (another name taken from European racing!)

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Unlike fixed distance races where the winner is determined by minimum time, the 24-Hours of Le Mans awards a win to the car that covers the greatest distance in 24 hours. A little less than 8.5 miles in length, Le Mans was a street circuit (today it is part street, part closed track) with all that it brings - undulating road surfaces, hedges, trees, light posts, even cows in meadows. In 1964 the prestigious Car & Driver magazine described Le Mans as “a four hour sprint race followed by a 20 hour death watch” and “probably the most dangerous sporting event in the world”.

Lethal not just for drivers, but also spectators; barely two hours into the 1955 Le Mans race a Mercedes 300SLR piloted by veteran Pierre Levegh clipped a car as he tried to steer around it, causing his Mercedes to become airborne. Levegh’s car cleared the barrier in front of the grandstand, simultaneously disintegrating and exploding into a fireball. The silver projectile scythed through the crowd at over 120mph, killing 77 and injuring an equal number. Incredibly, the race continued (won by Englishman Mike Hawthorn in a Jaguar D-type)

In the 1964 race, one of Carroll Shelby’s Cobra Daytonas blew a tire in the dark, clipped a Ferrari and sent both cars spinning out of control. The Cobra landed on its roof in bushes while the Ferrari bounced and slid to a stop in the grass. The drivers survived with only minor injuries, but three boys crushed by the overturned Cobra while watching the race from the bushes did not. If Car & Driver weren’t including spectators in the ‘twenty hour death watch’ - they should have.

The race traditionally began with what became known as the Le Mans start, with cars lined up along the length of the pits. Until 1962, cars were lined up in order of engine capacity, but beginning in 1963 qualifying times determined the lineup. The starting drivers stood on the opposite side of the front stretch…when the French flag dropped to signal the start, drivers ran across the track, climbed into and started their car without assistance before racing off. This became a safety issue in the late 1960s when some drivers ignored their safety harnesses. Drivers often ran the first laps either improperly harnessed or not harnessed at all. Ever tried doing your seat belt up at 185mph with cars jostling all around you? Several deaths were attributed to unharnessed drivers when cars were involved in accidents due to the crowded field at the start.

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The element of danger, the possibility of sudden, violent death only added to the mystique of Le Mans. And so winning the event became the ne plus ultra for manufacturers, teams, and drivers all. An added degree of difficulty for those not driving a car with a cavallino rampante badge was the utter dominance of Ferrari through the early 1960s. It was the very success of Ferrari in Europe that lead FoMoCo (Ford Motor Company) to consider buying the Italian firm when they heard rumours it was up for grabs. Ford had visions of a racing partnership, with the envisaged ‘Ford-Ferrari’ name dominating not only Gran Prix racing across the globe, but also Le Mans. Henry Ford II knew full well that racing success in Europe would be a surefire way to bring instant credibility to his brand as he planned a huge expansion of FoMoCo in western Europe. 

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When the word got out that Enzo was considering selling a stake in Ferrari, Ford was interested. Serious negotiations commenced and initially, Mr Ferrari seemed genuinely keen to do business. Late into the process, with Ford having spent millions on legal fees and an audit as part of the potential take-over, there was just one stumbling point: Enzo Ferrari’s insistence on retaining control of the company’s racing programme – and in particular the possibility of racing at the Indy 500. To Ford, that was non-negotiable: the Indy 500 was to be Ford’s race. Ferrari wouldn’t budge. The deal was off, leaving Mr Ford furious, and suspecting he’d been played the fool. To this day there are many who believe Ferrari never seriously considered selling his firm to the Americans, the country that bombed his factory into the ground during World War II. 

So why the overtures? It may well have been in response to strong criticism in the Italian papers after yet another fiery death involving a Ferrari, this time closer to home - the final race of the season at Monza in 1961. On the second lap the dashing, popular German Ferrari driver Wolfgang Von Trips lost control after clipping Jim Clark’s Lotus, sending his Ferrari careening up a crowded embankment. Spinning on its own axis, the car flung Von Trips to his death and ended the lives of fifteen spectators.

Unbelievably, the race continued and was won by Von Trips’ Ferrari teammate Phill Hill. The win gave Hill the drivers’ championship by a single point from Von Trips. For Scuderia Ferrari, the victory brought home the coveted team and manufacturer titles. For many, Ferrari’s triumph in the face of so many deaths was further evidence that Il Commendatore was without feeling and utterly ruthless. Ruthless - without question. Without feeling? That was unfair, and Enzo thought the best way to refresh the public’s memory of how much prestige Ferrari had bought to a ravaged post-war Italy, was to threaten to sell to a non-Italian concern. 

If indeed this was his plan, the ploy worked. Italian papers switched from personal criticism of Mr Ferrari, to pleading for the company to remain in Italian hands. Later, Ferrari would sell, but only his road car division, and to a local company - Fiat.

We’ll never know what might’ve happened had Ford bought Ferrari, but a fair guess would be that the Ferrari name might well have vanished, both from racing and the road. Would Ford have wanted to continue hand-building Ferrari’s magnificent, complex road cars? Probably not. Which means we may never have seen the sublime Ferrari 275 GTB/4, the Dino Spyder or 365 GTB Daytona. Not to mention the plethora of other beautiful, exotic road cars Ferrari produced throughout the 1960s and beyond. 

And we would never have seen the incredible rivalry between the two great marques play out at Le Mans over the mid-to-late 1960s. What an amazing time it was - Ford’s GT40 powered by a big, brutal 427 cubic inch Nascar V8 up against Ferrari’s overhead cam, multiple carburetor V12. Which leads us full circle…back to the movie based on this mechanical joust - Ford V Ferrari. I can’t wait to see it again…and again.

About the author

Raph Tripp is a passionate classic car enthusiast and writer, and founder of TunnelRam.net. If you wish to publish this article in part or in whole, please credit Raph Tripp and tunnelram.net . This is an original Tunnel Ram production ©2019 Tunnel Ram. All images remain the property of the original copyright holders.