SHELBY AMERICAN, THE BOOK!

Read about The Renegades Who Built the Cars, Won the Races, and Lived the Legend in Preston Lerner’s SHELBY AMERICAN, THE BOOK!

SHELBY AMERICAN, THE BOOK!

Carroll Shelby is an American hero and he’s been my personal hero since first meeting him in mid-1963. When he launched Shelby American and produced Ford V8-engined variants of the original British AC Ace, I was the editor of two hot rod and custom car magazines – CUSTOM RODDER and CAR, Speed & Style – and worked on the company’s flagship magazine, CARS, in New York City.

After riding shotgun with him in a black (Livery #198) competition Cobra at Riverside on June 11, 1963, Carroll Shelby became my hero. It was while I was covering Ford’s 1964 new model press preview. Shelby had been partying in his suite at the Mission Inn the night before and he was feeling no pain when I left at around midnight. There was an early morning breakfast call the next day and I was out at the track, not long after the sun came up, with Cobra racecar driver Dave MacDonald and Ford’s Fran Hernandez. I had signed up to ride with Shelby in a Cobra. They were tuning the 289’s Webers, making sure the Cobra was ready for the boss and out comes Shelby who couldn’t have had more than a couple of hours sleep. He tosses me a helmet and says, “Let’s ride.”

When I had left his suite the night before, I was pretty sure he would not make it to the track before lunch! MacDonald buckled me in and off we went. Bottomline, he joked with me all the way around the track, and I got the feeling he could have nailed it blindfolded. He knew the “line” as though it had been embedded in his brain, and he drove it like he was in a race. It was an experience I’ll never forget.

He was happiest when he was behind the wheel of a race car, especially on his home track. I still have the photo of Shelby wearing a white Ford Racing baseball cap, MacDonald cranking the engine and Hernandez making final adjustments on the Webers. Had it not been for serious medical conditions, Shelby could have been a world championship driver. He did win Le Mans, above, with co-driver Roy Salvadori, in a factory Aston Martin DBR1/300 in 1959. He was that good!

SHELBY AMERICAN, THE BOOK!Unlike the typical coffee table tomes covering Shelby, his cars, and his wins at Le Mans, Lerner has produced an old-fashioned book that you want to read and not skim for the art. What a concept! Don’t expect beautiful color photos, coated stock and endless racecar specs and chassis numbers. That’s not what this book is about.

Over my career as a magazine editor and photojournalist I had spent a lot of time talking with Shelby, mostly at the track and at Ford press events. Even though I had interviewed Shelby numerous times and visited his 12-acre facility at LAX, reading SHELBY AMERICAN, THE BOOK! I learned so much. Not necessarily about the cars. It was the people who worked for Shelby and built its winning cars that really made Shelby American: Phil Remington, Ken Miles, and an endless parade of fabricators, mechanics, managers, crew chiefs administrators. Working with Ford’s Roy Lunn (Godfather of the GT40, and Le Mans-winning 427 Mark II and Mark IV) and his team at Kar-Kraft, Remington, on loan from Shelby, was directly involved in the creation of the 427 Mark II prototype, and later sorting out the Mark IV (body design and aerodynamics) after Miles’ fatal crash during testing at Riverside.

There’s a laundry list of Shelby American alumni, in addition to Miles and Remington, who get their due from Lerner: Charlie Agapiou (crew chief, mechanic and serial trickster), Peter Brock, Chuck Cantwell, Gordon Chance, Peyton Cramer, John Collins, Al Dowd, Bill Eaton, Phil Henny, Max Kelly, Bernie Kretzschmar, Frank Lance, Dave MacDonald, Steele Therkleson, and many more. Because I had spent all of my time with Shelby or one of his PR people, and spent little to no time with most of the car building and racing team members, SHELBY AMERICAN, THE BOOK! proved to be a real treat for me.

Preston Lerner also takes you behind the scenes – post-1967 Le Mans – at some of Shelby’s less successful ventures like, how he got and the results of, Toyota’s first 2000GT, above, racing program and the overly complex Turbine Indy car, below, project sponsored by Botany 500 that ended up costing $500,00 over its one-million-dollar budget. They ended up with a pair of cars, that never made the starting grid. Lerner explains the why and how the cars had to be withdrawn from the race. It was not a pretty picture.

SHELBY AMERICAN, THE BOOK!Brock Yates wrote about the Indy 500 Turbine cars in his Car and Driver, August 1968 column: “They were the Ken Wallis/Carroll Shelby turbines that have to be included with the Titanic and the Gallipoli campaign as one of the great debacles of the Twentieth Century.”

After winning Le Mans in 1967, Henry Ford II got what he wanted but the company’s bean-counters wanted more. They wanted to end its relationship with Carroll Shelby. But not completely. There was still a contact to run Mustangs, above,  in the Trans-Am Series and Shelby delivered with Ford winning the 1967 Championship. And, even after Ford cleaned-out Shelby’s LAX facility, taking trailer loads of everything related to GT40s, Mark IIs, and Mark IVs and delivering them to Holman & Moody, Ford contracted with Shelby in 1968 to build and field a Can-Am car. That was another debacle.

Carroll Shelby never really wanted to build low-volume production cars like the GT350 and GT500 Mustangs. He wanted to build and campaign racecars, but they were a valuable profit-center. Losing control of the 1968 GT Mustang program was both financial and public relations losses. Shelby made a lot of money with the Mustang GT program even though the cars were incredibly hard to sell. They often languished at Ford dealers until they were discounted. Today they are pricy collectibles, not unlike the Cobras that challenged the status quo before the Mustangs, and won!

After losing control of Shelby GT Mustangs, Carroll Shelby spent a bunch of years exploring business opportunities in Africa, building his chili brand and other ventures. Lee Iacocca left Ford to go to Chrysler and brought his old pal in to get involved with a line of Shelby performance cars. He worked with Ford once again during the 2005-2006 Ford GT program, and once again Carroll Shelby was welcome in Dearborn!

The publisher’s press release copy for Preston Lerner’s SHELBY AMERICAN, THE BOOK! says a lot about the man whose name is on so many cars that are topday considered iconic. “Always standing above it all was Carroll Shelby himself. Dynamic, charismatic, mercurial, mercenary, and a little bit dangerous, he had to fight Ford bean-counters as fiercely as he dueled with Enzo Ferrari. But for a few magical years, Shelby managed to beat both of them at their own games.”

True that is. However, what Ford had given, Ford had also taken back! One of those contacts that Ford and Shelby had signed included a multi-million-dollar loan agreement and ended up giving Ford use of the COBRA name. Add that to the wins at Le Mans; over decades Ford has certainly gotten its money’s worth out of the relationship.

SHELBY AMERICAN, THE BOOK!Books written about Carroll Shelby and Shelby American during the 1960s and 1970s, rarely ever delved into the negatives and glossed over Shelby’s less-than-successful projects. Preston Lerner’s SHELBY AMERICAN, THE BOOK! opens doors rarely opened before to see the man with all his warts as well as his genius. And, pays tribute to the people who supported him during the golden years of Shelby American. All the great road and race cars bearing Shelby brands and cars are covered as well, including the Cobra Daytona Coupe, above.

SHELBY AMERICAN, THE BOOK! is a great read and, best of all, you can take it along when traveling unlike all the coffee table books that best remain on coffee tables!

Published by Octane Press, the 328-page hardcover SHELBY AMERICAN: The Renegades Who Built the Cars, Won the Races, and Lived the Legend is available at, https://octanepress.com/book/shelby-american-carroll-cobra-mustang-GT350-GT500-Ford-preston-lerner

https://www.amazon.com/Shelby-American-Renegades-Built-Legend/dp/1642341215

GT40 UNCOVERED!

Showcasing original technical drawings, cutaways and period photos, GT40 UNCOVERED! treats readers to a unique look at the engineering story of Ford’s multiple Le Mans winners: GT40, Mark II and Mark IV.

GT40 UNCOVERED!GT40 UNCOVERED is more than simply a book. It’s a lavish production of a condensed research library, giving the reader rare access to the evolution of Ford’s iconic Le Mans-winning GT racecar via an almost endless cache of archival blueprints, drawings and photos. There are more than 250 original technical drawings, plus illustrations, graphics supporting period photos. Coverage also includes the Mark I and Mark III GT40 road cars. Calling GT40 UNCOVERED! “a book” is akin to labeling Ferrari’s 250 GTO, “a car.”

GT40 UNCOVERED!

From birth as Roy Lunn’s Lola MK6-influenced Ford GT to the retired Le Mans winning Mark IV, this museum-quality book not only covers the interior and exterior details of each car line, but chapters are devoted to Concept, Chassis, Engines & Transmissions (transaxles) as well as Suspension, Brakes & Steering. The engine chapter covers the 255 Indy, 289 race and road, small-block Gurney Weslake and the 427 that powered the 1966 and 1967 Le Mans-winning Mark IIs. Plus, stunning cutaways of Claude Nahum’s GT/101 R, and GT40 P/1078 and Mark II P/1016.

To better understand the quality presentation of this book – a 176-page, cloth-covered hardback measuring 16.5 x 16.5 inches – one only has to look at the resumes of its author and co-author, Claude Nahum and Steve Rendle, respectively. Nahum raced while he was going to engineering college and in 2002 bought his first GT40 and competed in historic racing. Since then, he has owned a second GT40 and has commissioned two concours-quality recreations. He owns a treasure-trove of original GT40 drawings, but is probably best known for his GT/101 R, a superb recreation of the long-gone first Ford GT prototype, above, currently on display at the museum at Le Mans.

One of the high points Nahum experienced while working on this book was taking legendary Ford racing engine builder Mose Nowland for a ride in GT/101 R at Goodwood, above. Nowland was involved in the building of 427 Le Mans engines at Ford Engineering and was the recipient of the Spirit of Ford award in 2005 for 57 years as a Senior Motorsports Engineer. Co-Author Rendle is a passionate motorsports enthusiast, technical writer, editor, author, and publishing project manager.

Considering its size, price ($420 to $600) and quality, exactly who was this oversize, highly technical tome actually written for? Certainly, not the enthusiast looking to add another coffee table book to his collection. However, if you own a real Ford GT, GT40, Mark II, are considering buying, or in the process, of restoring one, or constructing a replica, it was written for you. Racing historians, research libraries, and racecar museum curators should own copies.

GT40 UNCOVERED!

As an automotive journalist, author, editor of Hi-Performance CARS magazine in the 1960s-1970s, who road tested the prototype GT40 Mark III in 1967, was longtime friend of the late GT40 Godfather, Roy Lunn, left, and owner of a 2006 Ford GT, I highly recommend this impressive tome.

Because of the limited number produced (365 copies), I suggest ordering now or be prepared to pay a lot more when copies pop-up on the secondary market. For more information about GT40 UNCOVERED! ordering details, pricing and its publisher, please visit, https://porterpress.co.uk/products/ford-gt40-book

BIRTH OF THE FORD GT40

Racing historian Mike Matune represented the CarGuyChronicles at the Simeone Museum’s BIRTH OF THE FORD GT40 Seminar, and produced this feature.

BIRTH OF THE FORD GT40For an oft-talked about and much analyzed subject like Ford’s iconic GT40, the amount of interest that it still elicits is amazing. A full-house crowd filled the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum near the Philadelphia, PA airport to hear a panel of renowned GT40 aficionados bring the GT40’s history into sharper focus.

Gathered on the stage, were (L to R) Janos Wimpffen author (Time and Two Seats) and authority on sports car racing, Mike Teske, author (Ford Racing Century), archivist, and creator of the continuation Kar-Kraft/Ford Mark IV and Allen Grant, Shelby American driver. The entire event was ably moderated by Harry Hurst, author and curator of the Glory Days of Racing Facebook Group. Janos Wimpffen (forefront with microphone) kicked off the seminar by setting the stage for the world of international sports car racing Ford entered in the 1960s.

Then Mike Teske, right,  told the story of Ford’s ill-fated efforts to buy Ferrari and their subsequent approaches to English racecar constructors Lotus, Cooper and Lola. Mike’s presentation was backed up by rare documentation from his personal archives. And as if that wasn’t enough, in front of the stage were Allen Grant’s Lola Mark V1 GT and Benjamin Levy’s race-spec, road-worthy GT40 P/1030, below, (originally used by Ford and Shell Oil for advertising, never raced) along with the Simeone Collection’s Alan Mann lightweight XGT-1 (GT40 Mark II) and Ford Mark IV Chassis # J-8). To the back of the lecture area were numerous examples of the First (2005-2006) and Second (2017-2022) generations of the modern Ford GT.

After the BIRTH OF THE FORD GT40 presentation portion of the Seminar, all the cars were exercised behind the museum. In the background flags and lights indicate all is green! On “track” and separated by some 60 years, Alan Grant’s Lola Mark VI GT waits to rejoin the fun as a Second-Generation Ford GT moves past. To some the Lola is the basis for Ford’s subsequent efforts, to others merely the inspiration; either way, it was an important benchmark along the timeline of the original Ford GT/GT40.

In short order, Ford’s Roy Lunn who had been responsible for the Mustang 1, took four building blocks (the Mustang 1 suspension, Indy car engine & Colotti transaxle and Ford Styling’s body shape) and created the Ford 1964 GT. Quickly the development cycle pushed the Mark 1 forward. The original body-shape would be refined to better address aerodynamics. Borrani wire wheels would be replaced with Halibrand cast wheels and powerplants shifted from the 255-inch aluminum Indy small-block to the race-prepped, production-version cast-iron 289, but still with four 48 IDA Weber carburetors.

BIRTH OF THE FORD GT40But racing never stands still and Ford realized they would have to improve the GT40’s overall power to weight ratio to gain a competitive advantage. Enter the Ford GT40 Mark II. Among its advancements were an aluminum-head Ford 427 backed by a Kar-Kraft transaxle, and the resulting chassis modifications to bring it all together.

Long proven in drag and stock cars, the 427 fills the engine bay of the Simeone Collection’s yellow (Alan Mann Racing) XGT-1. Topped by a familiar Holley four-barrel and utilizing an impressive “bundle of snakes” exhaust system, it raced in the fabled 1966 Le Mans contest where Ford scored an impressive 1-2-3 finish. In answer to a question during the BIRTH OF THE FORD GT40 Q&A, the panel acknowledged the race’s controversial finish, but concluded it was accurate based on the rules in effect at the time and a thorough analysis of all available documentation, including lap charts and timing paperwork from ACO/Le Mans, IBM and Shelby.

BIRTH OF THE FORD GT40What could top Ford’s 1966 domination at Le Mans, quite simply, why another victory in 1967 of course! This would be an All-American victory in the new Ford Mark IV. Dan Gurney and A. J. Foyt came home first in the car constructed by Kar Kraft, Ford’s Detroit-based “Skunk-Works”.

The Mark IV also featured a Ford 427, considerably improved by the use of aluminum Tunnel Port heads and intake manifold with a pair of Holley four-barrels. A Kar-Kraft T-44 four-speed transaxle completed the powertrain, same as used in previous year’s Mk IIs.  Simeone’s blue J-8 was the last Mark IV built at Kar-Kraft, with the final four chassis set aside for other projects. The Mark IV platform was all-new, constructed of lightweight honeycomb aluminum in place of sheet steel and aluminum. This Mark IV was raced at Le Mans in 1967 by Holman & Moody, but did not finish the race.

It would prove to be the end of the line for the Ford factory effort as rules changes limited engine displacement to five-liters, eliminating 427 racecars from competition. John Wyer’s “Gulf” GT40 (P/1075) would win two additional times in 1968-1969 before the curtain finally came down on the Ford GT40 at Le Mans.

 Words & Photos (engines, Lola GT, Mark I) by Mike Matune.

Event photos by Andrew Taylor, Simeone Museum.

For more information on the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum, ranked #1 in the world, please visit https://simeonemuseum.org/

Follow Harry Hurst, racing historian and author @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/527146584145263

SIMEONE MUSEUM: DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORD GT

The birth and evolution of the Ford GT, GT40, Mark II & Mark IV – the iconic cars that won Le Mans four times in the 1960s – will be explored at SIMEONE MUSEUM: DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORD GT.

SIMEONE MUSEUM: DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORD GTThe “Birth and Evolution of the Ford GT” will have on display in Philadelphia on June 4th, for the very first time at the same place, all the racing variations of the Ford GT: Mk I, Mk II, and Mk IV, as well as a Lola GT Mk 6, a car many believe was an inspiration for the Ford GT.

Three noted authorities will discuss the origins and development of the Ford GT: Allen Grant, former driver for Shelby American and owner of the Lola GT; Mike Teske, author of Ford Racing Century and builder of the Kar-Kraft continuation Mk IVs; and Janos Wimpffen, the author of the most comprehensive history of endurance racing, Time and Two Seats. Historian/photographer Harry Hurst will moderate. After the discussion, several cars in the display will be taken out for demonstration runs on the Museum’s back lot. The event begins at noon and is included with regular museum admission. In addition to the cars above, the display will also include a 2005 and 2019 Ford GT, both cars designed and developed with the original cars as inspiration.  The cars will remain on display at the museum until June 12th.

SIMEONE MUSEUM: DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORD GTA second event is scheduled for June 11th at 11 AM featuring Camilo Pardo, the Ford designer who penned the 2005 Ford GT. The very car he used as inspiration, Ford GT-40 Mk I chassis #1030, will be on display for Pardo to use in his discussion. The Ford GT-40 Mk I (chassis #1030) that will be displayed is owned by Benjamin Levy. The Lola GT Mk 6 (#LGT.P) is owned by Allen Grant. The Ford GT Mk II (#XGT1) and Mk IV (#J-8) are both part of the permanent collection at the Simeone Museum. A street model of the Ford GT-40, the Mk III, only seven were built and was not intended for racing. During the discussion, participants will use the cars on display to illustrate design details that are important in the evolution of the car. Video will be projected on the large screen above the stage so attendees can see it close up. The event is scheduled to be streamed live on Facebook.

The Ford GT has its origins in the early 1960s when the Ford Motor Company was looking to improve its stodgy image with Baby Boomers who were beginning to enter the car market. Executives, led by Lee Iacocca, determined that the growing sport of auto racing would be a good way to project a dynamic image. Rebuffed after trying to buy Italian sports car manufacturer Ferrari, Henry Ford II gave the order for Ford to build a car that would win the torturous Le Mans 24-hour endurance race. To expedite the design of the car, Ford put Roy Lunn, above, in charge of the program and he contracted with Lola, whose owner Eric Broadley had built a compact sports coupe with a mid-mounted small-block Ford V-8.  While this car, the Lola GT Mk 6, was not the first Ford GT, it was, along with the 1962 Mustang I, a design inspiration for the first Mk I built in 1964. This car came to be called the Ford GT-40 since its roofline was only 40 inches above the ground.

For more information about SIMEONE MUSEUM: DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORD GT, other displays, hours of operation, and directions, please call 215-365-7233 or visit https://www.simeonemuseum.org/