A GT40 Detective Story

I thought I knew all there was to know about the GT40 - Ford's legendary race car from the 1960s. And then I saw a picture on Facebook of a GT40 at the Holman&Moody shop sometime between 1988 and 1990, taken by Russ Haines when he worked at H&M. Russ had asked if anyone knew anything about where this car was now. I thought this was going to be easy, but I would learn a lot more about the GT40 then I imagined before I figured it out. Not that I discovered something no one else had known, but this was a pretty obscure piece of GT40 history and putting it all together was kind of fun.

Many thanks to Russ Haines for letting me use his photos!

A bit of background for those who are not hardcore GT40 aficionados...  In the 1950s Ford cars had gained a reputation as reliable but dowdy. After the war, GM had developed new overhead-valve V8s for all of their product lines, but Ford kept flogging their flathead V8 that had its origins back in 1932. When Ford finally developed new V8s of their own, they were heavy, conservative designs with limited performance potential.

Then in 1960 Lido "Lee" Iaccoca became general manager of Ford. Iaccoca had worked his way up through the Ford sales and marketing organization, and he knew what made people want to buy cars. He would launch a new marketing campaign known as Total Performance, which focused on racing and offered big-motor versions of most of Ford's various models.

Ford's lineup was especially weak when it came to sports cars. Ford had dabbled with the 2-seater Thunderbird in the mid-1950s, but had pulled the plug in the face of limited sales.  What the bean counters failed to realize was that cars like the T-bird helped generate excitement that brought people into the showrooms, even though they might leave with a Falcon or Galaxie family car. Chevy's Corvette owned that market niche, and Ford had nothing in the pipeline that could compete (the Mustang was still just a glimmer in Iaccoca's eye, and would take another 4 years to develop).

As a stop-gap Ford would make a deal with Carroll Shelby to build Ford powered Cobras, but they lacked even basic creature comforts like roll-up windows and heaters. The well-heeled buyers who might buy a Cobra to impress the boys at the country club were unwilling to pay top dollar for a car that could only be driven on sunny summer days. So in early 1963 Ford decided they would buy Ferrari. Today that sounds a little ridiculous, but at the time Ferrari was only selling a few 100 cars a year and Ford was one of the biggest companies in the world; Ford was paying just $10 million dollars for half-ownership. And then at the last minute Enzo got cold feet and backed out of the deal. Henry Ford II was not happy, in an "I want revenge" kind of way.

Ford bought the design of the Lola GT from Eric Broadley, a thoroughly modern (for 1963) mid-engine race car built around Ford's new small V8. And then opened a production line in England to produce the cars necessary to qualify it to race in the FIA sports car races in Europe - races that had been dominated by Ferrari for a decade. It would take millions of dollars and years of development, but Ford GT40s would finally sweep LeMans (placing 1st, 2nd and 3rd) in 1966 and win again in '67, '68 and '69. Along the way, the GT40 would go through several iterations:

• The original Ford GT.  This first batch of cars were intended to be powered by Ford's 255 cubic inch pushrod Indy-car engine, developed from their new small block V8.  This sounded good on paper, but Le Mans is a lot longer than the 500 mile Indy race, and the engines - not to mention the transaxles - didn't have the necessary durability.
• The GT40 MkI.  This marks the point where Shelby took over development of the car, adding the "40" to the name.  The Indy car motor was swapped out for the same production based 289 inch version of the Ford V8 that Shelby used in the Cobras, and the bodywork was tweaked for 200 mph stability. The MkIs had some racing success, and were eventually sold in (theoretically) street drivable "road coupe" form.
• The GT40 MkII. This was essentially the MkI chassis with a NASCAR derived 427 inch "big block" V8, de-tuned slightly for reliability in endurance races. These were the cars that won all the big races in 1966.
• GT40 MkIIa and MkIIb. These were just MkIIs upgraded for 1967 with the latest engines, bodywork and safety equipment. Most notable differences were dual 4-barrel carbs on the big V8, a new dash and a roll-cage in the cabin. These cars were essentially backups for the new MkIV.
• GT40 MkIII. These were just MkIs modified to be slightly more street-legal (the headlights were re-positioned to meet height standards and mufflers were added to the exhaust). The revised bodywork was a little clunky and only a handful were sold.
• GT40 MkIV. This was an all new car, developed in the US by Ford's Kar Kraft subsidiary. It bore a family resemblance to the MkII, but was a completely new design with an aluminum honeycomb chassis to reduce weight. Power came from an uprated version of the 427 used by the MkII. Less than a dozen MkIVs were built, and they were purely race cars. Development of the MkIV had started in 1965, when it wasn't clear the MkIIs would be able to get the job done against the Ferraris; Ford continued the program even after winning Le Mans in '66 to allow them to notch an "All American" victory. The MkIVs would only enter (and win) a few races in 1967, including a 1st and 4th finish at Le Mans, before Ford pulled out of endurance racing.

All of the MkI-MkII-MkIII cars used chassis built in England; the mechanicals and bodywork were added at either FAV in England, or shipped to the US for completion at Kar Kraft or Shelby American or H&M.  The earliest cars were issued 3 digit serial numbers starting with 101;  with the name change to GT40 the numbers switched to 4 digits, starting with 1000. Since the cars were repainted frequently and were driven by a number of different drivers at various races, GT40 aficionados use the chassis numbers to keep track of their favorite cars, and throw the numbers around when discussing their racing history. For example car 1075 is well known as the Gulf sponsored two time ('68 and '69) Le Mans winner.

Back to that picture...  What jumps out at you is that this is a red GT40 with white stripes, like the factory cars wore in the 1966 racing season.  The doors are missing, but there is a bit of a roundel visible on the rocker panel under the door with the bottom curve of a number that could be a 3, 5, 6, 8 or even a 9. The rear bodywork and wheels are also missing, but the engine is all there - and it looks to be a big-block 427 with a single Holley carburetor. The dash looks to be the original MkI/MkII item. According to the Facebook post the car was rumored to have a Le Mans history.

Taking all this at face value suggests this is a 1966 GT40 MkII. I say "face value", because there were a lot of these cars built and it is fairly common for a pedestrian MkI with no racing history to be done up as a more famous car. But leaving aside that possibility, I checked racingsportscars.com to see which car (or cars) it might have been.

And the obvious answer is chassis 1047 - driven by Dan Gurney and Jerry Grant. This car had started from the pole and was at the front of the pack (trading the lead with Ken Miles and Denny Hulme in MkII 1015) when its radiator was damaged, putting 1047 out of the race after 257 laps. 1047 was painted red with white stripes and wearing a big number 3.

There are a few websites with fairly complete histories of all of the GT40s, organized by chassis number (like this one).  According to the registries, after the 1966 Le Mans, the 1047 car was upgraded to MkIIb specs and raced again at Daytona in 1967 where the engine would fail.

After Daytona, 1047 was sent to H&M to be prepared for Le Mans. And then something curious happened.  GT40 1031 was a sister-car to 1047, and it too was at H&M being updated to MkIIb specs in preparation for Le Mans. While the details are fuzzy, it seems that when the two cars were put back together their chassis numbers were switched, with 1031 renumbered  as 1047, and the "real"1047 becoming 1031. In 1967 the MkIIs were repainted several times, and parts were constantly being swapped, making their identities somewhat fuzzy.  Given the number of cars H&M was readying for Le Mans it would have been easy to mix up parts, and as long as the two numbers matched the Le Mans registration no one may have noticed.

At Le Mans the car previously-known-as-1031, painted light blue with black-striping similar to that used on the new MkIVs and wearing number 57 - would lose an engine. The car now-known-as-1031, painted gold with white-stripes and wearing number 5 - would crash into a MkIV in rather spectacular fashion. After the race both MkIIs were sent back to H&M to be repaired. Ford had promised Ford France a MkII to run at the smaller European races for the rest of the season, and the car they sent back across the Atlantic was 1031-wearing-number-1047. 

Some big-names believe that the number swap happened after Le Mans, when H&M quickly salvaged the two cars to ready a replacement for Ford France. One theory is that the renumbering was intentional, to match the registration paperwork at 1047's next scheduled race at Riems - where it would win. The current thinking, based on carefully comparing photographs, is that the number swap happened before Le Mans, and some of the online registries have changed their chassis listings for Le Mans - and some haven't - which can really make things confusing!

What is certain is that at the end of the 1967 season 1031/1047 would be sold off to the first of several French collectors, who kept it in their private collections for the next 30 years. Meanwhile H&M would put the "other" car back together; now wearing 1031, and sell it to a Japanese collector. That car seems to have spent most of 3 decades in a storage container in Japan. Being on opposite sides of the world, no one noticed the number foul-up until both cars were bought by US collectors in the early 2000s and sent out for restoration (details here).

Back to the picture taken in the late 1980s: neither of the two cars that might have been 1047 were in the US at this time. So much for the obvious answer.  Back to the theory that this was a MkI car that had been turned into a MkII (there were only a bakers dozen of MkII cars built, and aside from the 1031/1047 mix up their history is fairly well known). Assuming the mystery car was at Le Mans in 1966, there were only a handful of MkIs, and only 1 was red. Car 1040 belonged to Scuderia Filipinetti, a private team owned by Swiss businessman Georges Filipinetti; at the 1966 Le Mans it was painted red with white stripes, and wore number 14.

But a little digging ruled out 1040 as well. In 1967 that car crashed at LeMans and then caught fire at Monza; it was repaired but painted gold until 1989 when a full restoration began that would take 18 years to complete; it was not in pristine red paint in the 1988-90 time frame.

This whole time I had been chatting with Russ; he found another picture of the car in one piece on the road outside the H&M shop.

All of the details in this picture scream GT40 MkII. For me, this picture was the last nail in the coffin of my theory that this was a MkI rebuilt into a MkII; everything just looked right.  Below is a picture of MkII 1032 I took at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum just after it was completely restored to Le Mans specification by a group of retired Ford engineers; it looks just like the red mystery car (several of the Le Mans cars got gaudy day-glow graphics like this to help the pit-crews tell the cars apart at night).

MkII #1032 restored to the way it looked at LeMans in 1966.

I was ready to admit defeat.  And then while looking through the chassis number registry, I noticed there were a few cars listed way down at the end of the page that did not have 3 or 4 digit numeric chassis numbers. Instead these cars had numbers mixed with letters, like AMGT-1 and XGT-1.

A little more Googling turned up yet more GT40 trivia.  Enter Alan Mann, a British version of Carroll Shelby; Mann was a weekend racer who had wrangled a job at a British Ford dealership, and would use his connections to get Ford to sponsor a small racing team that had a fair amount of success in the early 1960s. In 1964 Ford would use the team as a sort of skunk works to test the racing capabilities of the new Mustang; the team would get several Mustangs before they even appeared in American show rooms. As John Wyer struggled to turn the early GT (with Ford's Indy engine) into a proper race car, Mann had an idea for a lightened version of the GT40: he would replace some of the steel chassis with aluminum, and instead of the high-strung Indy engine the car would be powered with a hotted up production Ford 289 like the ones H&M had sent for his Mustang race cars. Mann would use his connections with Ford to buy 5 MkI chassis (not complete cars) from Ford; they would be delivered unnumbered.

Mann would actually build two lightweights, attaching his own chassis numbers AM GT-1 and AM GT-2, and while the idea showed promise, by that time Ford and Shelby had settled on the 427 powered cars as the path to greater performance and reliability. Some Mann insiders claim Ford intentionally delayed sending the latest 289 performance parts to make sure the big-block cars had an edge; the parts would only arrive after Le Mans. John Wyer would use this basic strategy in his Gulf sponsored cars, dominating the '68 and '69 racing seasons, including back-to-back wins at Le Mans. The three remaining, unnumbered chassis were sent to Shelby to be modified to MkII specs, and returned to Mann, who would run a third team of MkII cars at European events during the 1966 season. These three cars would receive chassis numbers XGT-1, XGT-2 and XGT-3.  Mann would race XGT-1 and XGT-2 at Le Mans in 1966, although neither would finish. XGT-3 was at Le Mans too, but as a spare - it did not run during the race.

After Ford's big 1-2-3 finish at Le Mans in 1966, most of the MkIIs in the race were repaired and sent back into the fray, running at various European races or sent back to H&M to be rebuilt for the 1967 season. Even car 1046, the black-with-silver-stripes MkII that won the '66 Le Mans for Ford for the first time ever would race again the next season, and eventually be scavenged for parts before finally being restored years later.  In 1967 the drivers had yet to become racing icons and the GT40s were just worn out and fast becoming obsolete race cars; after Le Mans most of the team cars would be sold off to private racing teams to flog a few years longer, or sold to a celebrity looking for something outrageous to drive to Hollywood parties. A few left over MkIs would bounce around the US for a few more years, some would eventually sell for as little as $8000 versus the original $18,000 asking price (in 1969 $8000 was still a lot of money - it would have bought two BOSS 302 Mustangs with plenty of change left over for gas).

But XGT-3 had never raced; it was in pristine condition and painted an eye-catching red. It and a few other MkIIs were sent back to the States for publicity purposes, touring Ford dealerships and county fairs on a trailer behind a Ford Ranchero. Most of the MkIIs from the tour eventually made it back to the race track in '67, but XGT-3 was special: it had become the star of a series of Autolite sparkplug advertisements. After a few years having its picture taken, it would end up in storage at Ford headquarters until years later when Ford did some house cleaning and sold it off to a collector.

1967 Autolite Ad featuring XGT-3.

Needless to say, typing XGT-3 into Google image search turned up a bunch of pictures of a car just like the one in Russ's photographs; today it seems to make regular appearances at the Pebble Beach Concours.  The final bit of confirmation: the registry showed that XGT-3 was offered for sale through H&M's brokerage service in 2003, which would make sense if it was being maintained at H&M prior to that. This is about as sure as I'm going to get that the car in Russ's photo is XGT-3.