Sixty Years of Ford vs. Ferrari: The 1966 Le Mans That Changed Everything
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Quick Takeaways
- The 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans marked the end of Ferrari's six-year run of overall victories and the beginning of Ford's brief but dominant period at the top of endurance racing.
- Three Ford GT Mk IIs finished first, second, and third — the result of a program that began with a failed attempt to purchase Ferrari in 1963.
- Those three automobiles are reuniting this September at the Goodwood Revival, marking 60 years since one of the most consequential race finishes in motorsport history.
- The Ford GT Mark IV, which completed that rivalry with a second consecutive Le Mans victory in 1967, is available in the Concours Photo Art Racing Legends collection.
How It Started
In 1963, Henry Ford II made a serious attempt to purchase Ferrari. Negotiations proceeded far enough that Ford's lawyers drafted terms. Then Enzo Ferrari ended the discussions, reportedly unwilling to surrender control of his racing operation under any arrangement Ford would accept. Ford left the table without a deal and with a grievance that would prove expensive for everyone involved — most expensively for Ferrari.
What followed was one of the more remarkable corporate responses in the history of motorsport. Ford committed substantial resources to building an automobile capable of beating Ferrari at Le Mans, the race that mattered most to Enzo. The GT40 program, developed initially with assistance from Lola, produced its first competitive results in 1965. By 1966, the Mk II variant — running a 7.0-liter V-8 producing more than 500 horsepower — was ready to settle the argument.
June 19, 1966
The 1966 race is remembered for many things. Ferrari's factory entries failed to finish. Ford's organization, fielded by Shelby American and Holman and Moody, ran efficiently enough over 24 hours that three Mk IIs were still running at the flag, in first, second, and third position. The photograph of that formation finish — three automobiles crossing the line virtually together — remains one of the most reproduced images in motorsport history.
There was controversy in the result. Race management's handling of the finish — specifically, the decision affecting which automobile was declared the winner — created a dispute between Ford and Ken Miles that still generates discussion among historians. But the essential fact was not in dispute: Ferrari had been beaten, comprehensively, and the dominance that Maranello had maintained at La Sarthe since 1960 was over.
1967 and the Mark IV
Ford returned in 1967 with the Mark IV, a ground-up American design developed by Kar Kraft in Michigan. Where the Mk II had been built with British input and European components, the Mark IV was entirely domestic. It was also, by most accounts, the superior automobile. Seven were constructed. The Mark IV won Le Mans in 1967, again with a dominant result, before Ford withdrew from prototype racing at the end of the season.
The Mark IV in the Concours Photo Art Racing Legends collection is that automobile — the machine that completed what the Mk II had begun and gave Ford a second consecutive victory at the race it had set out to win. Automobiles like it appear at concours events where the major periods of American racing history are properly represented, and they command the kind of attention that only machinery with a genuine story behind it can generate.
The Goodwood Reunion
This month, the three Ford GT Mk IIs that crossed the line at Le Mans in 1966 are reuniting at the Goodwood Revival, running together on the Goodwood motor circuit for the first time in more than a decade. It's a rare gathering of historically significant machinery, and a fitting way to mark 60 years since the result that changed the balance of power in endurance racing.
For anyone who wasn't able to travel to Sussex for the occasion, the story those automobiles tell is the same story the Mark IV tells. It's a story about what happens when a large organization decides to solve a problem with engineering rather than politics, and keeps at it until the problem is solved.
Bottom Line
The Ford vs. Ferrari rivalry at Le Mans lasted three years and produced some of the most significant racing machinery of the twentieth century. The Mark IV was its final word. Sixty years on, that word still carries weight.
The 1968 Ford GT Mark IV is available in our Racing Legends collection in Color, Black and White, and Stylized finishes.
