"The story of the birth of the GT40 is legendary. Henry Ford II, outraged at Enzo Ferrari for pulling out of a deal to sell up his company to the Americans, ordered his engineers to come up with a car "
GT40 Love
It was an obvious choice – the definitive fast ford, one that will always be remembered as the Ferrari and Porsche-slaying slab of automotive sinew and muscle that rode to glory. And we’ll never get tired of posting onboard footage like the clip below from Le Mans, 1969.
The thing is about the GT40 is that it looked every bit as exotic and purposeful as anything circling the Circuit De Sarthe, but that it bore the Ford badge – and as such represented the brand that more people could identify with than any other on the planet. In having such great racing success Ford made sure that motorsport was not perceived as being confined to the rarified upper stratosphere of car consumption.
Wouldn’t it be nice if Ford made a bold entrance as a works team into F1? Can you imagine the support it would inspire?
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Nice sentiment but the debacle over the confused lotus brand, the pullout of BMW and Honda seems to indicate that true works teams in high end motorsport are really a thing of the past, Ferrari notwithstanding.