Took the wife to see it last night. Both of us enjoyed it a lot. Just curious how factual the story was. Anyone know?
As I have known the story for years, it is fairly accurate. Ford wanted to get into GT racing to promote the Mustang and the Pony cars. Ford was all into "Win on Sunday sell on Monday" with NASCAR so LeMans was the next logical entry.
Shelby had already been racing his Cobras and the Daytona Coupe, which was why Ford approached him. Ferrari was hurting for money. Enzo Ferrari was passionate about racing and only built cars to allow him to race. Most models had only enough production numbers for "homologation". Enzo was all about racing and was passionate and egotistical about it.
Ford offered to buy all of Ferrari's holdings, but Enzo wanted to keep control of Ferrari racing. Ford wouldn't go with that, so deal was off and FIAT bought Ferrari production cars and Enzo kept control of racing division.
Henry Ford II was proported to be an egotistical prick that surounded himself with Yesmen. Ford II was into the good life of win, women, and racing. He took it as a personal affront when Ferrari told him to buzz off.
The first year at LeMans Fords were running very well but did all retire with transmission troubles. That lead to the design of the "top loader" transmission that they used in in not only the GT 40 but Mustang GT and drag cars. It is indestructible. Yes, Ford did finish 1-2-3 and yes, Ken Miles did get screwed out of the victory becasue of it. The story I read years ago was that the French agreed to Miles being the victor when Ford asked if they could stage the photo op, then with a few laps to go renigged on there promise and Bruce McClaren was declare the winner.
Yes. the phot finish was Leo Beebe's idea. I'm not sure he was as big of jerk as they make him out in the movie. Beebe made sure Shelby and the boys got all of Ford's resources to build that car.
Ken Miles was a hell of a driver, but so was Bruce McClaren and Dan Gurney, Chris Amon and Denny Hulme and Dick Hutcherson. This movie focused on Miles but there were other very talented drivers.
