Carroll Shelby - The Lost Interview | Ford v Ferrari | Le Mans | GT40 | Complete Life History

I don't know better or something mama man yeah I'm sure you've done this a million times just you and I'll have a conversation and don't worry about what bills doing okay it's okay cross my legs oh yes you're on you're where you shootin from basically for mid-chest ya meter went really well speed okay Carol think back to your childhood when was the first time you really noticed you had a special passion for the automobile it started somewhere around three or four years old my father was a rural mail carrier in East Texas and my father was interested in cars and he drove what was fast to me at a time at the time I guess it was a 28 whip it so I know I remember having an Overland for that when I was maybe three and a half four years old and I used to always try to get him to go faster and then I remember a guy came by every morning long to school and an old 27 Dodge with a cutout on it and boy when he had when he had open that cutout up and he could hear it for about a mile that was a thrill of my life but I was just as interested in airplanes and I was on a little country town with his own direct flight from Hensley feel in Dallas to Little Rock in two and the early days of the of the Airways and I was very fascinated of the airplanes also but it all started when I was three and a half four years old I've always loved airplanes and cars and it was that fascination with the motor and the speed and do you think that's what it was or there's something that always fascinated me about something that went fast I've been very lucky to spent my lifetime around both of them doing what I wanted to do I'll say now let's say you were born in 1923 in Leesburg Texas yeah that's the little town that's no longer there it's a little area about a hundred and ten miles northeast of Dallas on right off of Interstate 30 and still have a farm down there and my wife and I go down there and spend a little time so the the pilots and the planes that you really saw and say the mid-20 mid-to-late twenties were almost Barnstormers in a way nearly my first my first experience with an airplane was at the State Fair down there at the County Fair down there and it was a Jinni and after the war first world war there were a lot of ginnis left old flying jennings ox5 indians and I wanted to go riding but and one i'ma take you up for four about what I actually had to wait till 1930 for that and a Ford tri-motor that was my first first time to go up in an airplane but I remember the the airplanes the kind that came over there the Kurdish p6e was the first air military plane that I saw it was the last biplane pursuit plane before the P 26 so I took notice of all those things and very early on I could tell one car from the other very early on I could tell way before I went the airforce I knew all the different airplanes just that's that's what I gravitated to I didn't like algebra I didn't like physics I didn't like any of that stuff I liked history geography anything mechanical and and commercial arithmetic that was the only math that I really cared anything about you were developing gearhead at very young age then I mean do you really when I was his nine or ten years old Brad I used to ride my bicycle to the various dirt tracks around Dallas and watch the races and one of the first things I did when I got my first motorcycle was roted up to see Gus trainer and Emory Collins and all the guys that that were in the old IMCA and up in Iowa and all all there and all across there they ran the big 380 Ava's there and that was you know the triple a didn't let you pull that much horsepower so that was one of the first things I did to go up there that's how interested I was in cars what did I guess would be fair to say that really early on you were probably more interested in airplanes and you were cars or as interested anyway no I was just as interested in cars as I was airplanes really I started going to the [ __ ] races soon as they started showing up in Texas about 1934 I started going to getting my dad to take me to the races when I was I moved to doubt we moved to Dallas a family did when I was seven years old and every chance I got after that I was out at a racetrack if there's race anywhere I still tell you all the old guys that that drove the race cars down there during AJ's dad's era geez so the the love of cars and in aeronautics really took you into the Air Force though I mean you had to choose something well that's not so much what took me I always wanted to fly and I was going to learn to fly on my own outside the Air Force but the war started in England and I mean in Europe and some of my friends went off and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and got into the war early on before we ever got into it I tried to do that and they found out they they contacted my doctor and found out that I'd had an early heart problem when I was seven or eight years old I had a leaking valve which I outgrew so I saw that those records were pulled away from I mean we've gotten out of the doctor's office when I lost that because I was afraid that I would never be able to pass a physical for flying it didn't turn out that way so then I joined it was a choice of being drafted I knew that a few very I was barely just barely eighteen years old I knew I'd be drafted and in fact two hours went down and volunteered at the same time and when I'm said I'm not joining unless you send me to the Philippines I want to go to the Philippines my buddy made the death march and long story I said I don't I'm not going to join unless you put me in the airforce they said that's no problem so they sent me right to Randolph yard wound up driving a fire truck and I didn't have our head was a high school education so this program came out that with a high school education you could become a flying sergeant which thank God for that because there be no Bob Hoover flying there be no Chuck Yeager and being or I wouldn't have flown because they open this program up and and I got right into that and and started flying went off to flying school in December of 41 you know right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor so that was a that was a thrill in my life that was the first time I ever accomplished anything that was a dream of mine like that I bet now after the war things changed a little bit I guess late Larkhill came back with kids came back with children still interested in cars interested in airplanes no I didn't want to be of an airline captain what much excitement there tried business in five or six different faucets I never found anything that was fast enough for me to sit and grind out a living running a ready mix concrete plant which I did which running a bunch of trucks which I did I tried a lot of things fried chicken farm and I loved animals and I did have a thing going that I loved I made a living lays and chickens that but I had all kind of other animals on the side and that was my interest it wasn't much fun just watered and feeding chickens but that was a way that I could had this farm that that I could raise everything else well the chickens died so I decided then a I've always loved cars I've been fooling around with sport car racing a little bit on the side which had just gotten started in this country and I realized that I could probably beat most of those guys and luckily turns I did luckily three years later I was driving for a factory team in in England so so that's really how it how it took a turn yeah yeah from a lot of details in there you know everything that happens to you in life in life usually has a great element of luck in it and I was lucky to meet John Wyer that ran the Aston Martin team I was lucky too to meet the guys the wealthy people that bought the cars for me they get to that point where where he took notice of me and from their own as far as driving race cars it wasn't that I didn't really start driving professionally till I was 30 years old 29 probably but I love to drive race cars but I wanted to get into the building of my own car and I started trying to do that in 1950 in a garage at a house that didn't go over very well at 2 o'clock at night where the neighbors to be banging around on trying to build a car so so when when did the the chicken ranching stop and in the car pursuit really happened is that in late 40 I've been on the chicken ranch stopped in 52 and then about 51 I'd started 50 51 I'd started fooling around with sport cars a little bit because I had some friends that were interested in them and they had the Jaguars and the MGS that were coming over from England they didn't have anything interesting from Germany or France in fact Ferrari was just starting then there wasn't anything really interesting that was coming out Italy but it was out of England and one of the first things that so I get out of the chicken business in 52 I'd been fooling around with sport cars we decided to build a this friend of mine ed Wilkins in Dallas and I decided to try to build our own car and between my neighbors and my wife that got stopped pretty quickly from there I kept on pursuing lasing and a great influence in my life was the fact that you had to drive an Allard back then or a Ferrari and nobody had a Ferrari in Texas time and I had a friend that had an Allard with a Cadillac engine I drove it a little bit and I had another friend that bought about an Allard for me to drive that's the one that took Argentina in January 54 and let all the Europeans down there at the Grand Prix and the thousand kilometer in Argentina so I'd been winning a lot of little local races in last of 52 53 and I got lucky with us brake meeting John Wyer and reason I say this lucky I really mean that because at that time the European the English manufacturers Porsche was just getting started they had a little sport car with a Volkswagen engine which wasn't very good the first ones they wouldn't appreciate me saying that because I drove for him later and I very Porsche turned out to be a good friend von Hans Stein was one of the dearest friends I ever had but they were all trying to sell their cars in America and what they needed was some exposure over here and the best way to get exposure if there was an American that was good enough to drive them then it was their advantage to hire Americans and if you look back on the history of sport car racing in fifty four or five six seven Masten Gregory and I were the first two that went over there well Briggs Cunningham went to a mom with his cars you always have to give Briggs his credit but John Wyer hired me I'm sure basically he thought well he said he though he drive a race car okay but I wore these overalls I was beginning to get quite a bit of publicity and he knew that it would that American magazines would pick up the fact that an American was driving and the first thing you know over the next few years it was then there was Phil Hill then Dan Gurney Masten Gregory went over there about the time the same year that I did later that year and we wound up this guy said that drives around here now Bobby said his daddy was running around over there driving some but that's the reason it was luck because they wanted to sell their cars so you know there wasn't it wasn't the fact that we were probably the best race drivers in the world because no novice had experience in Formula one not ours had experience on the circuits over there they needed us worse than we needed then and so while into it so even back then marketing was playing at right we fell into it you never be asked yourself about how things happen good point very good point but it as you said you turn out to be one hell of a driver you you gained the experience you needed to compete on the world like yeah yeah how was that that what's been a stock driven I probably I think as I look back without bragging that I had the ability to win a World Championship but I had three children and I had the ambition to build my own car and what I did is spend a lot of time around the factories that I drove for the summer of 55 I spent the whole summer in Modena in Italy with buying cars about 20 25 cars for Tony pare Ivana who wound up with a big stable of automobiles and I spent that whole summer with Dino Ferrari which is something that that as you look back on what Ferrari became and the stories about Dino and the history of it it's I was very lucky to have gotten to spend three months with him because he was a fine young man and in my opinion if he had lived Ferrari would have would have a much bigger and better company that we came under the old man because his love was racing he didn't love he didn't love to build streetcars Dino did Nino loved the streetcar aspects of it and and I'm sure that down the road Ferrari would have been what would have built a lot more and better streetcars because mr. Ferrari just let that side of it go but getting them I'm getting always get off the subject I greatly greatly when I was in the race it was if the car was capable of winning I'd try to win the race if the car wasn't capable of winning I wasn't gonna put it on my back and try to carry it because I had three children my survival is a very pretty strong instinct and all of us and I wasn't a John Bearer or a Jost lesser or Gio Villeneuve that said the hell with it I'm gonna kill myself or win the World Championship I've been around quite a few people like that that wasn't me I was I was interested in surviving to build my own car and that's what I did that I used that I used my race driving as a vehicle to get there were you I think you brought this up earlier were you older than most of these other fellas racing or not no there were there were Fangio was I say the new breed you know the your period you're talking about Phil Hill is a little younger than I am Dan Gurney is several years younger than I am Mastan was younger than I was yes I was younger I was older than Peter Collins I was Salvador's age I was marah's age I was I guess particularly the American drivers the American drivers I was older than any of the than any of them and you had John Fitch he and our world World War two people and so we were older than we were in the Duncan Hamilton hair a lot of the British a lot of the British drivers were throw backs from fighter pilots in in the war and how was their age catch you they were all a little too old to ever reach the pinnacle in Formula one now you obviously in the late 50s right at the end of the decade just started tearing things up I mean why do you want alum all right and that's when LeMond was kind of important to win and I was always very proud of doing that we did that with a slower car because John Wyer was probably the greatest team manager that ever lived well I don't think that there's any doubt about it he managed they talked about Noah or our I drove around when Lloyd Bauer was around I've seen all the great team managers this was there's there's been some great team managers since then by the way but back in the error in that era in the 50s and 60s there was nobody any better I mean John Wyer was the epitome as far as I was concerned and I learned a lot of I'm not a manager but I learned a lot of my automobile management building cars in limited production fashion as someone I learned a lot from John Wyer now around 1960 for several reasons I guess you decided to withdraw from active driving there was a lot of reasons to withdraw I was ready to build my own car I'd tried to make a deal with Chevrolet and did make a deal with Ed Cole in in 57 and 58 to take and build an improved version of the Corvette but Zora and McKenzie weren't about to let that happen they ran a Corvette program then rightfully so Zoar is one of the dearest friends I ever had and about that time I had a lot of heart problems I was driving race cars with nitroglycerine pills I mean when I I never intended I never set a time schedule to quit but I was in the last race and I remember at Laguna Seca and up in Monterey in 1962 the last race the season and I had to finish third to win a national championship and when I took that fifth nitroglycerin pillow I had to slow up for a couple laps I said why don't I just quit and get on with it because I'd been offered I'd moved California where I knew had to build my car couldn't build it anywhere else in this country because the hot rodders and I'd been offered a couple of deals that I could make a living with Goodyear distributorship which nearly 40 years later I still have and I decided to chunk it in I decided write a little the race I never announced that I was quitting I just never got another race car except in some of these old vintage things I've been in there a couple of times but I just decided during the race that there was no sense in and and I've always I think these big grandiose tours to announce your retirement on whatever you are I think their biggest bunch of crap in the world they might make you some money but there's other ways to make money and I admired the way faint I was there at the race in 58 at Reims with Fangio he pulled into the pit said that's it and I drove his car the rest of the season and then took it to New Zealand Australia but I didn't see any sense in making a big announcement ever got back in a race car and that's the way a lot of people used to do it then now some guy quits and it's earth-shattering news some mediocre race driver so anyway but looking back yeah your timing could have been more perfect no it was perfect that timing was it that's where I've been lucky in life and a lot of it I've calculated out and tried to make it happen and it has happened some of it but the timing was absolutely perfect because we were just moving into that that time that they call the Golden Age of Ray the sixties I'd lived through it as a driver in the 50s and we're moving into the muscle car thing with Detroit coming back with piles of money to get into it not knowing how to spend it they needed somebody to help them I lucked out again I'll say so I mean I think what you're saying is clear to me anyway is you've had this idea of building your own car for many years before this I mean it was a dream I saw back in the early 50s they were sending these cars over from England outside the Jaguar they built their own engine but they were sent in thousands of these cars Oh with 1918 model London taxi engines in the mg TC the MG TD the mg there you know they kept on the mga they still put that same old engine in there and right in that same hole you could stick a American v8 that pulled 300 horsepower so all you had to do was Jack around with a chassis a little bit the hot rodders had been doing it out here for 430 years and it looked to me like a golden opportunity so Sidney aller do it but he was under finance and he didn't he didn't didn't get to follow through he had the right idea and the cottage industry was starting in England about that time - so what the time was right yeah yes very much so yeah so you decide in the middle of a race that you're not gonna race anymore right and what what do you do next I mean what how do you make this come true or you're sitting there thinking to yourself I need to do what well I've been keeping my own where the opportunities were all this time I'm taking three Corvettes to England and scale yetis and we'd built some aluminum bodies for them that didn't work out for the simple reason that edco wanted me to do it but he hadn't be president and these guys that worked for him went over his head and went to the Chairman and got that stopped that pretty well stopped me from using Chevrolet engines Ray brought ran hot rod magazine from Bob Peterson he came by my office one day where I was selling Goodyear tires and I had been thinking of taking the the treasurer design chassis that AC cars was building and putting the little O's mobile in it the little aluminum oldsmobile you remember that they still got Land Rover at 40 years and I was working on the deal there and Ray said hey Ford has a new little cast-iron thin wall block and Ray introduced me to Dave Evans who was in charge of Ford Racing at the time I met him at Pikes Peak when I went up there to sell tires and he invited me back and Don Frye that you and I mentioned took me in to see Lee Iacocca who was sales manager at the time and a Ford division and and the young hotshot at the time that had gotten Ford's attention I asked him to told him I could build a couple of prototype cars for $25,000 that'd blow the Corvette off if he had loaned me 25,000 and I already knew that I could get the chasis from AC cars because they were putting a little six-cylinder forward in there the that wasn't creating any excitement there lost their bristol engine which that that was over for them so they had this production line and they were willing to work with me and so I coca supposedly I've heard he standing there will admit it to me he says give the guy 25 after I left the room he said you ever got $25,000 for he bites somebody because even at the time prototypes were costing them two or three hundred thousand in Detroit and how was I going to build two for twenty five thousand I guess that's what he thought but he gave me the money and the best thing that he did for me was went to the controller said vas afford division who put a young man named Ray Geddes I said I did I told them I need I want to build cars I don't count beans and when we built the after I got these two cars built I got where they put ray Gettys on board to take care you know when you deal with those people back in Detroit you're dealing with a bunch of slippery some of its slimy you might say but I've always said in Detroit 20% of the people do 80% of the work and you need somebody to handle politics for you because if you're out building cars and racing cars you're always getting the SHIVs in your back if if you're accomplishing anything working with them you create instant animosity with everybody that's not involved with a program because everybody that goes to work in Detroit has a dream of working around the performance division or if they're go into the design department 30 years later they're still designing door handles when they wanted to design a car so there's the Detroit is full of very bitter people and very jealous people when you come in with an exciting project and they aren't a part of it so I was lucky to have Ray get his handle that part of it for me and then I maintained my relationship with I coca when the cars worked but Don really cared about performance and he's the one that made that happen he's the one that when I decided to build the gt40 house Burlington where it is and I went over to to put the gt40 program together and I didn't know it Don and already gone over to Farrar and tried to buy yeah everything was working yeah your favorite that yeah those first few years yeah well yeah it's coming along pretty good how long we gonna talk quit blabbering so somebody tells you or has a new lightweight v8 and I think before I took in over Dean moon shop using his dynamometer built some Webber carburetor versions of the 221 before we ever put it in a car they built 260 out of it the 2/6 is what we built the first few cobras I think hundred of them or something then maybe not 100 less than it was seventy-five yeah right we built in with a 260 then they came out with a 289 and that was a wonderful engine they were coming right along with Chevrolet until they had elapsed there and stock car racing took the precedents and they built the start spending time building 427 and they let [ __ ] will I get ahead of them in the 289 business I mean in that size engine that's the reason we had cars and that would blow the chaparral off if we'd have 350 a change and they let stingray either they'd let General Motors come along and build the grand sports with their version of 350 and we had nothing to compete with I had to jump in a lot quick and start building 427 I never wanted to build a 427 yeah but we didn't have anything we had to jump from the small block to the big block we should have built a small block back then but unfortunately Don Frye left about the time we should have done that he would have forced it not really I knew it was a 20 year old chassis we had to do so much work to make it work over Dacey's before we shipped the first car and then after we shipped it over here we had to completely rebuild it the car the 289 that we wound up winning the races with and selling people think it was an AC chassis it macho Giro it was the same basic layout but there wasn't a nut and bolt in it that was in it the day I walked into the AC car company and said I'd like to put a v8 engine and in this car and by their I doubt if there was a single nut and bolt in it that was originally in it it just looked kind of like that chassis and the body looked a little bit like that we did some of the engineering at AC and then after we got to racing everything started testing it as a race car everything broke so we had to re-engineer it again over here but we basically made the thing work there was so much lighter than the Corvette we didn't have any trouble blowing them off then Ferrari had a GTO which was a sitting duck you know it was winning everything in Europe but it was pretty easy all I did all I won dude in the beginning was build a hundred cars so it would qualify as a production car I never even thought past a hundred cars because it was so much work and so many things had to happen just to get to build a hundred cars that it was beyond my comprehension right then to think about anything except getting those hundred cars built as soon as we built then built them I mean as soon as we started building the car we realized that there was a much bigger market out there and then than just 100 cars and we wound up building a thousand counting the 427 s of the Cobras but we could have built a lot more than that if if we hadn't been so concentrated on racing and meeting Ferrari in Europe if we had gone ahead and done what I wanted to before the gt40 and and all these other programs the Mustang program came along I wanted to build a version with roll-up windows weather protection and all that and we would have wound up then probably building a lot of cars by the standards back then only reason they handled so well is because Goodyear kept developing us wider and wider tires when we started all racing tires were about six inches wide we're the ones that started taking the stock car tires the ones from NASCAR that Goodyear had just gotten into and adapting them to race cars sport cars I mean and that's where the Cobra came from the reason it handles so well is because it had so much rubber on the ground and other people other sport cars didn't like the old chassis was so flexible that four wheels had for the four tires had to stay on the ground he couldn't lift them off the ground if we had had a modern chassis we'd had to do a lot more engineering work than we did so they weren't difficult no no they weren't a lot of people thought they were but that was because they had so much more horsepower than most of the sport cars of the day sure sure just like I used to love to drive the big Ferraris but wasn't very many people that they wanted to drive you know there was always political problems there were always people like that were jealous of what we're doing but basically that's the reason I've always beats the thankful for Regan is me Iacocca if it got real bad I could go to Lee but there were there were the factions that the Holman moody factions the stock-car factions that want anybody to spend money on my programs and it was a it was a car at any time you deal back there unless you take money out of your own pocket and use them for what they're good for you're going to have political problems so you always have that dealing with those people because there's always somebody in there that think that Leakey letter jealous because they didn't get to do it themselves working for the company they don't want to see anybody else do it so we had those problems but we also there was a lot of a lot of pluses to you we couldn't have accomplished what we did without them without any doubt and there's so many wonderful people that that I could mention Sully bill Ennis Don Frye all those people that made it happen that it was worth it that all the people that tried to see that it didn't happen we really had a bunch of good engine guys back then and transmission people and they all really came out when we had to go run the gt40s at lamar i mean there will never be another program like that now I go from I know from two employees to a thousand in in two years so well I'm not a manager in the first place so I just I didn't I didn't pay much attention to the rain Gettys was a tremendous help in helping and we brought some very wonderful forward people you always want to make sure that the fine at the finances are kept in order and one of the first things we did was bought brought a real good young finance person from Ford and his name was Frank Martin and he worked with me many many years until we sold our wheel company ten years ago Frank worked with us and he all you always want to make sure that that that the money is accounted for when you're spending somebody else's money because you're always accused of stealing and that way if I had a Ford guy in there right two checks I'll bet I never wrote ten checks and Shelby America in all the years that I was there and that was just because somebody wasn't there and they and I happen to be there but there were some wonderful people that that that Reagan is helped pick up from forward and from the outside to manage those thousand people we had the Mustang program building five thousand a year we had the gt40 program spending more money than has ever been spent on any racing program before or since we had building Cobras we were having to move into building the midship engine car and we decided to build a Pantera light car and that's when I bailed out I didn't I didn't I'd had enough the politics and stress and I bailed out and went to Africa kiddies went on the bill the Pantera tomaso gets credit for it but ray get isn't home repair and really built it yeah now that the 289 Cobra your year into it you're starting to win races things are 64 things are going really well for you sure and I think you just pointed out that yeah we were having a struggle held our ground we had to build a 427 which I said I said I never wanted to build because I never wanted to build a Mustang what I did after we got to building but we were just very holding on we were out horse powered by Chevrolet and that's when we had to make the decision to quickly build a 427 when they came out with stingray they weren't supposed to be in racing but they came out with a stingray and that's when we quickly built the 427 for the very simple reason that when you put something like that with so much torque you increase your weight tremendously your drivetrain has to increase in weight and size all the way down it's just not a bigger engine you have to have a gearbox that'll take the torque you have to have a bigger car a heavier car you you lose a lot of your agility and an automobile it never handled as good as a little 289 did and yet we were forced to do that because we we had to have something to blow off the Corvette we didn't know that what they weren't going to build a thousand of the Grand Sport yeah the Cobra became too muscled on you know what it was a weight lifter now yeah that's right that's right same way the Mustang that little Mustang one first built race cars and 65 we went out and blew off all the Corvettes if we'd had to race the 69 we couldn't outrun a Rolls Royce probably because they kept getting bigger why I don't know why Detroit does that but they have a habit of coming out with a nice small car that's the right size and they just keep on adding to it until it's a monster and finally they'll drop it just like the Thunderbird they just drop the Thunderbird because it wasn't what a Thunderbird was supposed to be the story on the Mustang is that it goes back to politics it forward Hal Sperling and Don Frye were the people that believed in the Mustang and house Berlocq got a promotion to product planning and he's the one that put it together along with Don Frye Iacocca gets the credit and I'm not taking anything away from Iacocca because I copal pushed it from the top but the people that built a Mustang were Don Frye and the house work that were in charge of it they built it and I coca had a great sense of he didn't know anything about cars too much but he knew what kind of Vee what are the concept of what vehicle had to come out and sell at what price and he knew that if we came out with a little sporty little car that the secretaries had paid 2395 for that he because he thought he could sell a lot of them they put that car together from out of Falcon parks and when they finished it I coca wanted it to have an image of performance to is an afterthought we put the 289 in it other than rather than all six cylinders he had a meeting back there and he said we want to make this a sport car we should we should race this car and the guys from Ford that were in charge of the racing program at that time they sent a jerk back to SCCA and says we want to make it John Bishop was running SCCA at that time said we want to make this car a sport car we're building this new car called a Mustang we want to make it a sport car a race version and John said but it's not a sport car it's a it's a Secretary's car it's not a sport car so they went home and it got back to Iacocca that it couldn't make it a sport car and he called ray Geddes and I in and said we want to make this a sport car well I can't would do that I said I don't know I don't know why but I got a feeling that that we might make it a sport car if we do certain things if it were make it a two-seater and he didn't he thought right I said yeah we probably have to take the back seats out anyway I called John Bishop made an appointment with him said John what do we have to do to make this a sport car I asked him instead of telling him that we're going to like that like Detroit sometimes tries to manhandle people and he says all that simple Shelby says you got a first of all I'll be a two-seater second of all you got to have a special engine for it that is something more than I think there's a hundred and fifty horsepower in the 289 engine the regular version and said you got to put some kind of racing suspension some shock absorbers on it so I said I got the message in we went back and had built a prototype in about two or three weeks and show John what we'd done and we got it got it homologated that's a terrible word I just mean license as a sport car by the FIA and consequently we went out and went won the national but we probably built 25 or 30 thousand I don't know how many cars built a lot of them sold a lot of them won a national championship the thing won a national championship for three or four years and but I didn't want to build it first place because I didn't I didn't I wasn't sure that we could build something out of it that would be why it was because if you remember the Mustang it had an old stamped tin chassis and I didn't think we could build enough rigidity in it and I'd forgotten my lesson of the Cobra you don't have to have a rigid car and and that era to win races and production car races go ahead so you know I was interested in building a car beat old man Ferrari you know and that was the thing that I wanted to do and it looked like we were going down that road that looked like that this was a deviation I never wanted to have a company that built a lot of automobiles because you see what happens in Detroit all the dreams get punctured it's all business and no more fun I'd tell you a lot of stories the Sunbeam tiger for instance there were a lot of things that we had to do to try to make money but Tiger was one of them but the Daytona Coupe was just a natural progression when we went to Lamar the first year we realized that on the twisted part of the circuit we were just as fast as anything over there any of the Ferraris any of the beat types you go down and straight though it's like trying to push a brick down there so we sat around and we decided to build a coupe I had a young man working for me named Pete Brock who put the the coupe project together he was the one that really did the the body sketches and the body design and Ken miles and John Olsen and two or three of the other guys took the chassis and modified it to the point that lengthened it some too to where it was a little more modern than the other chassis had been and we first took it out to Riverside had Tufts of cotton there we didn't have a wind tunnel and all the Tufts went forward instead of backwards so that's when Phil Remington and John Collins and Ken miles all went to work cutting holes here changing changing the shape a little here changing the shape there and when Pete was was a great help in that - what if we had done if we had done things right in hindsight although we went out and blew the Ferraris off as much superior to the GTO but there was a there was a friend of mine named Benny Howard that had built the Howard D G the Howard mr. Mulligan that won the Bendix and he had won the Cleveland air races and he had a little shop over old he had retired as the executive vice president General Dynamics and he had a little shop on Washington Boulevard that he was building hop up kits for dc-3s and I asked him to come over and look at it at what we were building and he looked at it and he said oh it's okay says I can see some things I changed but they're not serious well what you ought to do is drag got tail out about three or four feet out there to a point but he says the shape of the tail has a lot to do with whether you get lift or not well we discussed that and and decided you know that was too much work we were increasing the length of the car about three or four feet and a a lot of people were Ferrari and a blood job we're using the cam effect at a time with cutting it out cutting the back end off just whacking it off like he took a meat cleaver and whacked at all but that there's been a lot of stories done about this aerodynamicist it didn't know what he is talking about and how we wound up that's a bunch of bull because four years later the the Porsche 917 came out with exactly what it'll be any Howard wanted us to do and race cars have been built that way since so there's there's been a lot said about how this aerodynamicist didn't know what he's talking about he was right all along and that's not to knock anybody that's just the facts and then a jaanwar and I were talking about that when I went over one of the races when he was managing the Porsche team and and he said that they picked up 14 miles an hour down the straight where those little three liter Porsches when they changed it to that type from the cam effects how many how many hours we got program yeah but we beat Ferrari sixty-four and he canceled the last race of the year so we had we beat Ferrari with Cobras fair and square oh yeah oh yeah so there was some discussion or actually there was a yeah we we started to build it but it became it became obsolete because it was a front-engine car we were building it and it probably could have won Lamar and probably could have beat the Ferraris but we were much better off to move the engine to the back at the time and we raced the gt40 John Wyer raced at some we raced it took at Lamar and 65 we decided that we'd let forward build the engines because they had done a lot of work on a 289 then and as far as reliability is concerned and forward built the engine in 65 well lo and behold Henry Ford was over there with his new wife and his 15 year old son and so and a supplier at the last minute had hadn't heat-treated the head bolts right and every one of them was the self that all the engines were gone and man Henry was cranky and he called he called Don Frye and I and he hired Leo Beebe who had been his commanding officer and a Navy who was Sales Manager I think in Belgium he brought Leo II and put him in charge the racing program called us in and says and he already had a little sign mate says we're going to win them all in 66 said Ford wins Lamore in 66 sign hf2 so don fryin i sat around there in his office and listened to it yes sir mr. forward yes sir mr. forty walk back down the hall that Don says he didn't mention anything about the fiscal part of this thing did he I said I don't remember then we walked back in he said mr. Ford what are our fiscal restrictions he said just what it says on that sign we win Lamar in 66 and that was the beginning of of the darndest racing program that has ever been because when Henry Ford said you that a program was going to go it forward I mean everybody stood at attention and he was absolutely monarch around there and everybody got out of our way we built the cars hell we'd built in his so he put all the best guys on the engine the transmissions we had we must had 15 nine O's that were owned nothing but a LeMond program we had run ten lamang ten miles went back there program the computers for Lamar and then run those engines those are engines at 485 horsepower something like not much horsepower running 410 Lamar we started 66 we started 67 we started engines that are in gearbox had already run a little more we knew we were bulletproof and even for pushrod engine I was a hell of an accomplishment put things like windshields cracked in practice a 707 arrives in Paris with six windshields from Detroit the next morning things like that had the support of Ford we went to England and hired John Wyer and Reagan is and Reagan is John Wyer was my friend in England he wasn't with Aston Martin anymore Reigate is in-house Berlocq and i went over there to put a program together and we were going to see Eric broadly who had built a coop about building the car but we also wanted John Wyer in on the program we put a deal together with Eric broadly at John Wyer but we we put a proposal together brought it back to Don Frye John Don for our Don Frye approved it we started the gt40 program John Wyer was to design and build the gt40 Eric brought in last about three months with a ford politics and he bailed we built the first gt40 gt40s and we'd bring them over and and and we were doing the racing did I explain it house Berlocq and radiators and I went over to try to buy the the yeah the gt40 there's been a lot of misconceptions where the gt40 came from done for I went over to tried to buy Ferrari and got turned down so then he says we're going to build our own car and I said there's already a car built that'll be at Lamar this year that that might have some potential and it was built but it was a coupe built by Eric broadly and so House Berlocq who was the really the father the Mustang along with Don Frye and Ray Gettys and I went to Lamar talk to - Eric broadly took John Wyer with us put a proposal together to take the Don Frye that they put a program together buy it buy the car from Eric broadly and they put a program together oldest of coop and that was before we ever called it in gt40 I think somebody called it gt40 cause it's 40 inches high if I remember the story right but Don bought onto the program and and and Eric broadly left after three months because the politics at 40 saw that it was impossible to him it was anyway John Wyer stayed on built the first cars and we'd send them over to make race cars out of them at our shop and we raced them in 64 and 65 and in 65 we did quite a bit of testing we probably could have won them all in 65 but at the last minute for the engines at Ford built that had been working so well on a dyno we got some soft head bolts and all the engines went out Henry Ford happened to be there with his new wife and his son and he went ballistic and came back we had a meeting he hired Leo Beebe who had been his commanding officer to completely revamp the racing programs he had been his commanding officer in the Navy and called Don Frye and I in and I don't remember seemed like somebody else was in the room might have been Beebe but he said he had a little sign that the clip on his shirt pocket says Ford wins Lamore 1966 hf2 we knew that there's something special going on we knew we figured we were in a hell lot of trouble for not winning in 65 but anyway we walk down the hall after the meeting and and got to thinking about the fiscal you know in a big corporation everything's built on a budget we went back in and asked him about that and he said if I had a man if I to mention that I would have talked about that he said do what it says on the sign something that effect anyway we went to work and bill Ennis Sully took the 427 engine and really went to work on it and with a lot of people probably 100 people and and we took the gt40 and turned it into the mark 2 version did a lot of wind tunnel work on it a lot of a lot of things that we never had done before we had done some wind tunnel work Don fry had up in England but anyway we took 10 miles in and put Lamar on a computer the course on computer and then when I run those engine we probably had 15 test cells there and they'd run 10 lamar on those engines on the engine and gearbox and when we won lamar in 66 we started engines ahead of a mile and then gearbox at the head of the mall so you can imagine what also house on the program was to in practice the windshields cracked the next morning the 707 comes in from Detroit with six windshields and two pilots don't and that's all and so you see what the the the project you see the priority that it had inside the company and we had a wonderful man that was overseeing all this that just moved everything out of the way when it got in in our way and what was his name I just mentioned his name stop in a second because that has to be in there ready feedback own we had a wonderful person named Homer Perry that was a political and he moved everything out of the way he Homer was one of these rare individuals there wouldn't have been a pantera without home repair we wouldn't have one Lamar without Homer Perry he was just one of these people that that could stay focused and didn't let anything get in his way and they're so so seldom do you see people like that in and middle-management in a big corporation anyway we won the race the fiasco about the three cars finishing they had to make that rule up because we decided to finish that I actually talked to Leo Beebe and we said let's have three of them come across the same time and then Ken miles was killed the next year testing the J car so it was always have had a guilty complex about instigating that now there wasn't anything messed up we just decided that we've crossed that it was just proved to Ferrari one two three I mean he had never been beat so bad in his life and no they all came across together and then LeMond decided to cook up a rule that said that the car that started that had traveled the farthest distance one there was no rule like that what they had to do something to save face because they couldn't have three winners could they we thought it would be had to be fun to give him so give him give him a decision to have a hard decision yeah and we got more publicity out of doing it that way but Ken miles won the race he had done everything that you've supposed to do all the way and I always felt very guilty about that and I still feel guilty about it till to to this day right yep he would won all three of me yep all three of them all the three big races Daytona Sebring and and LeMond but we lost him for the next year I think it might be important for you to talk about the downside of racing for a second in that that's what happened to Kenton I mean what there is a realistic side to racing yeah you used to death back in old forma 1 days in the fifties we if we didn't kill 4 or 5 in a year you'd had a very good year now these guys get 15 million dollars a year and they're all crybabies and and they run into the wall at 200 miles an hour and jump out of the car and go back getting up get in their backup car and get back out there and gripe about how underpaid they are you know no sense in getting into that because I'm not I don't say that the old days were better than the goods I just it's it's a different world but then we won in 67 and there was there's a whole story there that there's no sense in going into and then John Wyer took the still a little gt40 with a 289 after they changed rule said no more 7 leaders and 1 in 68 and 69 because they built the engines for that race the same way they built them for us in 66 and 67 interesting interesting time but I wasn't there for that because I'd had enough of it and I went to Africa I didn't want to build the Pantera and and we knew that we had to go build a midship Tengen car so that's when I dropped out for 12 years 68 I was phasing my way out in 68 but actually I lost all interest in 68 yeah it just got to be too much when we were trying to get things done and Henry Ford brought bulking Lutz men who was a fine guy which really pissed our coke off and they got they was too busy fighting each other cutting each other's throat that nothing got done around there for a couple years and it was - nobody's fault I guess just something that happens in a big company and I said I didn't want any anymore that I guess I might have been kind of childish I didn't have my guy to throw an arm or proof vest around me when I wanted to do something so I picked up my marbles and went to Africa oh I lived in Africa most of the time I had to bypass surgeries a lot of surgeries but I'd come back over here and get him go back to Africa because I always loved Africa and I want to see Africa before it disappeared and I traveled around Africa for 12 years most of the year most of every year and I saw it and I've never been sorry for it I didn't miss anything in the automobile industry because the one of the reasons I was so discouraged was because we had emissions and safety coming on the Mustangs that I was building Ford didn't have anything else coming along that we could build a decent car out of to race they were talking this Trans Am thing was kind of a farce and as far as I'm concerned it didn't last very long and the factories were halfway in it there for two or three years and and I didn't care anything about that I didn't care anything about taking those cars and and running in the Trans Am and Ford wanted me to do that and I didn't want to and so I just lost interest burnt out and with emissions and safety coming on you see what the cars were in 1/7 is even the four-cylinder BMW became the the performance car of the seventies with a hundred and fifteen horsepower I think so you can see how far down we the American industry went and the Japanese were making big inroads with their little economy accountable psa's and Detroit said it would never happen and you can see how many horrible decisions were made in Detroit by everybody in the 70s and I thought I was pretty lucky to be in Africa and then when I coca left forward and went to Chrysler he asked me to come back over there and so that's another story well when I went there I said I went I went around to the guys in engineering says what do we have and as we got 90 horsepower and a low four-speed gearbox cable shift gearbox with one track in it and I sue well within two years we had that little 90 horsepower engine thanks to a couple of real good engineers that that they gave to us we had our Performance Center out here in Santa Fe Springs and Scott Harvey and then John Fernandez who's in charge of the Viper program now we were pulling 700 horsepower I that little 2.2 liter engine building little cars that that made a lot of money for the company they were little nothing's a little $7,500 cars but eventually that led us to the Viper which turned the image of Chrysler around and right in the middle of that I had have a new heart put in well and and then it became time for me to leave because I got tired of living on airplanes and going back Detroit all the time so I probably will deal with all companies I'm building a new sport car now with an Oldsmobile engine I'm looking at cars I mean oh there's three or four companies now that want me to bill new sport cars sport cars are not popular right now in a little two place card but if you build the right thing when the things are unpopular that's that's the time to go build something so here I am I got me a wife that loves cars we're going to spend a lot of time together and in Las Vegas got us a new factory that's just being completed there and we're really looking forward to having a very interesting next few years yeah I get to wrap man I can't I don't care I have a hard time with a script well I was a consultant but I Coakley let me do about anything that I wanted to do I had a place out here in California that John Fernandez ran that we took pickup trucks we took the little different little cars that that Chrysler built and built little special versions of them and had a real nice little engineering company out here and now what's the concept of that car as I have read to rebuild the original yeah yeah we've sat around build a prototype out here John Fernandez and I had and Bob Lutz and I had a conversation and they just be able to be 10 truck engine could put added 2 cylinders we didn't have any money when he came to work there so they added two cylinders to the v8 and we we knew we needed a sport car and I hadn't been able to shake our Coca loose 2 for the money and between Lutz and I and the the beautiful rendering that Tom Gail's guys did we we talked our coca and letting a start right as we moved into a recession in 88 or that was tough because if I Cocos anything he's he's a brilliant financial guy that always had his timing right and always made sure he made money until he started to rebuild the Statue of Liberty but anyway we talked him into letting us build this car and we copied after the old Cobra we called it the nineties Cobra and my job was to see that he didn't cancel it I had to meet with him every week and tell him how I couldn't tell him how much over budget we were and Blut said his guy is in Tom Gail building the car and I guess it's a little heavier than we wanted but it turned the whole image of Chrysler around it's been a wonderful thing for them and there's gonna be another Viper that comes along that will maintain that image it was it was something that we needed so badly and following that were all these other wonderful cars that Christ has done and but it was time for me to walk because we didn't have an engine that the kind of car that I kind of had in mind that I wanted to bill no no bad feelings at Chrysler no bad words about anybody I enjoyed it very much but I the Oldsmobile engine was coming along nearly 1:00 Lamar won Daytona two years one says it was the best day the Northstar engine at the time was the best engine built in America for a sport car and I want to build a little car with it that's what we're doing we're coming out with it now and and I have two or three other cars on the board that we're going to build my I want to build them another Cobra and I know exactly what it'll be and it'll look just like the old one but Ford has some wonderful new pieces and parts coming along and we've done a lot of work we have some of the most wonderful young engineers I'm hire about the people that we have working for us higher than I've ever been since 1962 and three and four they're the modern hot rodders they're kids that we have that have spent six or seven years as engineers in a space industry that love their cars and boy I'll tell you what they can do when we got a like the body on the new series one weighs less than 100 pounds carbon-fiber built in several pieces so you don't have to put a whole body on it when you when you crunch it beautiful aluminum chassis that we can build a lot of other cars off of so I think right now is a golden era of being able to build cars with air conditioning electric windows see if you can build them I want to see if I build them at weight 2,200 pounds with 700 horsepower yeah with cup holders got to have cup holders yeah how are we doing on tables just about out what is your what's your favorite favorite sixties creation I don't have every one of them was a thrill and a surprise I was surprised that the Cobra did as well as their the 289 I was surprised that the Mustang did as well as it did we never really got to maturity with the 427 because the other programs the GT 40 programs took precedent and spending so much time on production when we were building so many Mustangs and I don't have a favorite if I want to drive around on Sunday afternoon my favorite slow 289 Cobra with an automatic not very many people like that probably I just assume if I'm driving down a freeway in Dallas or Los Angeles I rather drive a van and anything else for a pickup truck I love to take a 427 out on Sunday afternoon when when I'm down in East Texas I love drive down through those pine trees you can ride down there to 80 miles an hour and you think you're doing 150 so I can do that about anything I wake up every morning with with ten new ideas sure he brought a brilliant young man Pete brought and due to many things Pete Brock's our good is a fine artist Pete Brock is a fine designer Pete Brock is a fine writer Pete Brock can do just about anything you throw at him he he is like me and then he has a new idea every day and then pizza dreamer and admire what he what Myers mind very much Fred Goodell is a Pitta meal of a fine engineer that could stay focused and there wouldn't be any of the Mustangs or a lot of the things that we built there without without Fred Goodell in fact that's the beauty of working with a big company you have such a vast array of talent to to draw from and these people get the dream of their life getting to go do things like that when they've been working on these shoe box on four wheels as I call them all their life only our cochlear you can't there's nothing that I could ever say - he's been my friend for nearly 40 years whatever I've done in life it would have been impossible to do without him I trust him completely i Lee as as much integrity as I've ever found in Detroit he's very very he was very very ambitious as a young man but he knew what he had to do he has a lot of compassion for other people he was being Italian he's a fine family man and and I just can't say enough about him because I wouldn't be here without him you got to throw another one in there ray Getty so well ray was was was the glue and making all these things worked and and Ray and I've gone on we're still friends he runs unique mobility he has this this kind of mind that he's a very good manager and they're the leading world-leading have the world's leading technology in in hybrid vehicles power plants the electric motors and controllers in 1980 we started that company in Denver didn't start it but he went up there I want to work with him and we had a cover of mechanics illustrating and Popular Mechanics that we stated that hybrid cars in 20 years would be the wave of the future and that's what's happening now and that's probably that's probably Detroit is so far behind in hybrid cars Toyota's selling theirs and I'm so glad that we could see that 20 years ago I just wish that I could have gotten the people in Detroit to realize what direction they should have been going well Don as I said was the early enthusiast in Ford and there wouldn't have been any racing programs without Don it wouldn't have been any performance cars and and Don left about the same time I did kind of got disgusted with politics and went off made him a fortune at Bell & Howell and he's like me he's a happy old man contented and and I love him and don't get to spend enough time with the people that helped us do these things I have a great great admiration for that man because he always stayed above the squabbles he knew he saved the company to start with when he came out of the Navy and he was anytime I ever had any dealings with him he was absolutely honest objective and he knew a hell of a lot more about how that company ought to operate than anybody ever gave him credit for and I have a great admiration for him I think he's one of the I don't think he's ever gotten a credit that he should have gotten you touched on this earlier what about Zora Oh szura's my friend we were mortal enemies but we always had time for a martini together no matter whether I was beating them or they were beating me or we were beating each other or whatever it was and one of the greatest thrills I ever had in my life I hate I hate cruises but there's people that put cruises together that use people like myself resort for Chum to get all the other enthusiasts together and Zora and I two years ago shortly before he died were invited to go on this cruise and we had to make a ten-minute speech a day and ZOA and I found the bar where the crew drank way in the bowels of the of the ship and we would make our little ten-minute speech and go back there and disappear for 22 hours together and we had the greatest time of our life we've lost him and I lost a dear friend and I've known azureus since he built that push rod here that overhead valve head for the Fords and well if they'd listened to Zora if they'd let Zora bill what he wanted to there were never any reason to build a Cobra though the people at General Motors were cruel to Zora because of the and I don't mean that critically either that's just the way big companies are Zora knew what to do he was way ahead of his time they should have let him done it and gotten out of his way instead I had all those politicians surrounding him that wanted to take credit for what he got done he had he had to pull a 10-ton sled behind him every minute that he worked all of his life at General Motors and got what he done got what he did done in spite of having to pull that 10-ton sled I'm sure I'm not a 427 Cobra no no yeah okay some people call that a super snake talk okay all right one blood what and what did Don say well Don I get that it was built in his dealership they drop 427 yeah side oiler aluminum and from Fred Goodell I get that you guys for time now what are you talking about the drag that the Cobra 289 Cobra a drag car no this was the 427 that was supposedly built for I believe was a good year tire testing that it's the way I'm hearing it anyway and it was built it was a 67 and it was it was white blue stripes it was the only 500 with supposedly to most people the only factory built for 27 oh are you talking about a a Mustang a Mustang oh yeah oh well I didn't know what you were taught y'all that thing the Super Snake okay my vocabulary but you know there were so many programs going on to tell you the truth I lost I was I was completely sometimes I used to in the mall program a couple of times I had to go to Lamar three times a week and if you can imagine what that does to you when you already have heart trouble there's things that went on that that I don't recall every day somebody brings up something to me that happened at Shelby American that their version of this is different than my version and I've challenged them several times and I've been proven to be wrong so I don't try to recall a lot of those things I remember somebody came in one day and says let's put some 427's and and the Mustang built some drag cars and I remember I okayed it that's the way we did things Don might have put that together in his dealership Fred Goodell might have done some work on it in the place I can't get into those things because I can tell you a funny story if you won't watcher the gt500kr sale for twenty thousand dollars more than a regular gt500 the kr does I was I went back to the Detroit one day and Henry carlini my old friend that went over to Chrysler and we worked together on the programs there he was in charge of the spies for I cocoa back back in 68 and what they what they were building I went in he says hey did you know Corvettes building a king of the road I said oh no I didn't know that he says yeah I said here's the brochures on it that was the 427 they were gonna call it the king of the road I somebody stole all of memorabilia that I had a lot of the memorabilia but they were gonna call it king of the road I picked out the phone and called my copyright attorney I said excuse me see if king of the roads been copyrighted within three hours he called me back and he says he can't find anything in Washington it has I said I don't care if you work all night you get on an airplane you be there at eight o'clock in the morning and you copyright K are king of the road if it hasn't been I called three em and told them to build to make the little decals that went on the side of the offender I said we're gonna run us a hundred steps off who else did I have to call I called the production guys Jack Corey I said we're going to build subject I said by noon tomorrow I'll tell you whether we're gonna build them or not but we'll build a hundred K rs.50 I don't remember how many it was now we built those cars and didn't change a nut and bolt on them they sell for fifteen to twenty thousand dollars more than the ones that don't have kr on in that amazing yeah but that's the kind of decision we used to make when we're you know you can make decisions like that that's a wonderful part of having a little company and that's reason I'm still interests of revive my interest and we're going to Las Vegas and build some more cars - just two questions left one tell me about your other interest your passions your hobbies you've been on some of them I like my animals very very much but I'm like Pete brach I like to do too many things my life keep about four pots on the stove all the time they're all boiling over and I'm more contented in my life right now than I've ever been because I have Mia I'm a partner in my wife that'll help me do these things and with my health the way it is as fragile as it is I know now that I have somebody to help take care of the details I have a wonderful crew here and in Las Vegas and I have a way to now to see that it's perpetuated and and the cars will be built after I'm gone and that's a wonderful feeling to know that what you've worked for for 50 years is not going down the tube the day you croak so I'm more contented than I've ever been in my life and got more going on probably than I've ever had in my life now other things I'm interested in it right how would you like to be remembered oh god I don't care whether I am remembered or not because life's too interesting every day I got too many things to do to remember I've got enough sense to know that nobody's remembered very long maybe Julius Caesar or Shakespeare's but and I know Julius Caesar Shakespeare so I want I'm very interested in in living my life today I've been fortunate enough to have a heart transplant I've been fortunate enough my dear son Mike gave me a kidney and saved my life because I would never have lived lived the rest of my life taking died being along the dialysis three times a week got to kill myself here I have a kidney that works I've got a heart that's seven years old I'm into it soon be eight years and and I'm able to have a little company that that can build the cars now that's capable of it that I'm not interested in having a thousand employees again and I have a wonderful partner to help me do it and she and I spent a lot of time in Las Vegas building cars and I don't care how I'm remembered because whatever I've done will dictate that and what I want to be remembered as doesn't have anything to do with it that's already written down how I'll be remembered but you're still a car not aren't you oh sure still an airplane nut my wife doesn't like think too much of that but she likes animals with me so I got her going with me on two out of three have our little miniature horses in East Texas and all my crazy chickens with hair on her legs and top knots and all that and life's pretty good to me I'd say so yeah thanks for being with us my pleasure Brad thank you guys

Channel: MyClassicCarTV

Views: 1,655,602

Rating: 4.9147859 out of 5

Keywords: fordvferrari, carroll shelby, shelby ford, carroll shelby interview, carroll shelby complete history, shelby mustang, gt40, fordvsferrari, ford vs ferrari, ford v ferrari, ken miles, le mans, ford le mans, ford shelby, le mans shelby, le mans carroll shelby, shelby racing, shelby interview, life of carroll shelby, ford racing, ac cobra, race history, car racing, american car racing, lemans, 24 hours of le mans, shelby africa, auto industry, car designer, shelby american

Id: Rzq4DeTjZ1A

Length: 98min 46sec (5926 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 07 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/6RolledTacos]

For anyone interested, the whole interview is pretty damn interesting. Favorite tidbit, when Ford said that there was no budget in beating Ferrari, he/they meant it. During practice for Le Mans, they suffered some cracked windshields, the next morning a 707 flew into Paris from Detroit with six windshields, two pilots and nothing else.

[u/Philys411]

Still my favorite car story of all time. Think of the money ford dropped just out of spite! Then to pull it all off, had to be a great feeling.

[u/GTEAEYE]

Factor of safety: 10.

Well done, boys, pack ‘er up and move on

[u/BlueKnight44]

The red blooded car enthusiast in me: That's awesome!

The engineer in me: Wow they really left a lot of performance on the table. They should have added more power or cut some structural/thermal weight out of the motors.

[u/89LSC]

Really love that they put the beatdown on the field with some good ol pushrod v8s

[u/verdegrrl]

During that era, the gearboxes were as suspect as the engines. There are a lot of changes under full power.

[u/BountyHNZ]

For comparison, Gibson Le Mans engines have a 50 hour service life.

[u/ECrispy]

The new movie wants to have its cake and eat it too - they paint Ferrari and the Ford execs as villains, but want viewers to root for the Fords to win.

The fact is this wasn't much of a battle. Ford would've beaten anyone with that much money. You take the worst team in history in F1 and give them 100-1000x times the budget and they will crush today's Merc/Ferrari/RedBull, it won't even be a contest.

Ferrari had more talent and more skill and what they achieved was nothing short of a miracle. Ford's win was a foregone conclusion but its nice to romanticize the story and act like they were some underdogs who pulled off an upset.

[u/Pick1eMorty]

WOW, that's the best thing I've read on internet today. :)