Ford at LeMans

As part of my retro look at LeMans, this being LeMans weekend, today is the first of a two-day look at Time magazine's coverage of LeMans. Such was the might of Ford that when they took on Ferrari at the great 24 Hour race, Time was there to cover it, and did a fine job capturing some other sides of the race.
What follows are articles from the 1966 race and the 1967 event. Tomorrow it's all about Porsche.

"An Affair of Honor"
Friday, July 1, 1966

Nothing intrigues a Frenchman like an affair of honor. Last week in the farming town of Le Mans, France, 250,000 spectators turned out to watch a duel to the death.
The weapons were in keeping with the times: automobiles. The battle ground was the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the world’s toughest, most famous auto race, the one the French themselves call “La Ronde Infernale.” The combatants: Italy’s canny old Enzo Ferrari, whose heraldic emblem, a rampant black stallion, has been the proudest marque in racing for more than a decade; and the U.S.’s Henry Ford II, a businessman-turned-sportsman mostly because he had a score to settle. Three years ago, Ford tried to buy control of Ferrari. Ferrari turned him down.

“Or Else.” History was against Ford. No U.S. car had ever won at Le Mans; Ferraris, on the other hand, had won nine times, including the last six years in a row. But Ford also had two things going for him, money and determination. The eight sleek Mark II prototypes on which he based his hopes last week cost $100,000 apiece, and they were the last word in automotive sophistication. Only 40 in. high, each packed 475 horses under its hood. Henry himself was on hand to watch them run, and he made no bones about how he expected them to finish. “You’d better win,” he told his director of racing, Leo Beebe, “or else.”
Beebe heeded his master’s voice. Pre-race speed trials proved that the Fords were far faster than the three lighter but less powerful (by 70 h.p.) P3 prototypes entered by Ferrari. California’s Dan Gurney set an unofficial lap record of 142.9 m.p.h. in a Mark II, and Fords won the first four places on the starting grid. That made it easy for Beebe. Start in front, he ordered his drivers, stay in front, force the Ferraris to press, and wait for them to break down. It worked. Pouring on the gas, nudging 210 m.p.h. on the 3.5-mile-long Musanne straight, Ken Miles in the No. 1 Ford broke the official lap record five times in the first 20 laps. Then Gurney took over. Driving the No. 3 Ford, he bettered Miles’s mark three times, finally equaling his own practice speed of 142.9 m.p.h. on the 39th lap. Gurney’s mechanical-rabbit act ended when his car conked out on the 270th lap. But the damage was done, to the Ferraris.
“I Bet $1,000.” In the eighth hour, a Matra-B.R.M. and a C.D.-Peugeot collided in the tight Tertre-Rouge turn directly in front of Ludovico Scarfiotti’s speeding Ferrari P3. Scratch one P3. The second P3 went out with a broken gearbox after only ten hours, and the last of the Ferrari factory prototypes ground to a stop six hours later with a blown head gasket. With Fords running one-two-three and no more challengers in sight, Team Manager Carroll Shelby ordered a slowdown. Then Beebe got an inspiration. To make the inevitable Ford victory all the more impressive, he decided to stage a deliberate dead heat between the leading Mark Us—No. 1, driven by Miles and Denis Hulme, and No. 2, piloted by New Zealanders Bruce McClaren and Chris Amon. Headlights blazing, the two Fords coasted across the finish line side by side at 15 m.p.h.
“It was worth all the effort,” bubbled Henry Ford II, downing a glass of bubbly. Indeed, the only even slightly sad face in the Ford pits belonged to Henry’s Italian-born wife, Christina. “I bet $1,000 on Ferrari,” she confessed. “I like to see Italians win.”

"A Second for Ford"
Friday, June 23, 1967

There is one place in France where Americans still have some clout: Le Mans. For a while, after a trio of U.S. Ford Mark 11s finished one-two-three in last year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, officials talked about changing the rules of the race — to require that cars go 30 laps between fueling stops (the Fords needed gas every 20 laps) and have room inside for four persons (the Mark 11s could barely squeeze in two). They changed their mind when Ford threatened to pull out of this year’s race altogether, leaving the field wide open for Italy’s Enzo Ferrari, whose siren-red racing machines won every 24 Hours from 1960 through 1965.

A Better Idea. If the thought of another Ferrari runaway was too much for Le Mans officials, the thought of another Ford runaway was too much for Ferrari. Still smarting over last year’s debacle, the “Monster of Maranello” entered three cars in last week’s 35th 24 Hours: brand-new, 330 P4 prototypes, little hand-tooled bombs that weighed only 1,875 Ibs., were powered by 4-liter,450-h.p. engines, and could nudge 200 m.p.h. on Le Mans’ Mulsanne Straight. Unfortunately for Enzo, Ford had a better idea: a new prototype of its own, called the Mark IV, that carried a 7-liter engine and 500 horses under its hood. In pre-race trials, Ferrari mechanics watched disconsolately as four Mark IVs lapped the 8.3-mile track at better than 144 m.p.h., hitting speeds as high as 215 m.p.h. on the straight. The best any of the P4s could muster was a 142-m.p.h. lap.

Still, speed is one thing at Le Mans — and survival is another. The Ford Mark IVs were obviously faster, but could they outlast the Ferraris? Gambling that they could not, Ferrari Team Manager Franco Lini ordered his drivers to hold back, bide their time, and wait for misfortune to hit the Mark IVs. The gamble almost paid off. One Mark IV went off the course, got stuck in sand and never got out; another lost its rear hood, had to pit for repairs and dropped far behind. Then there was Mario Andretti. Running second in the No. 3 Mark IV, Andretti barreled into a turn at 150 m.p.h., only to lose control of the car when his right front brake grabbed. The Mark IV caromed off one wall, then another, bounced back and finally spun to a stop in mid-track — directly in the path of two other Fords, Mark II-model backup cars driven by Roger McCluskey and Jo Schlesser. “I didn’t know if Mario was still in the car,” McCluskey said later, “and I knew I would kill him if I hit him. So I had to put her into the wall.” So did Schlesser. Scratch three more Fords.
One in the Run. That left only one Mark IV in the running — driven by Dan Gurney and Indianapolis 500 Winner A. J. Foyt. But it was exactly where it was supposed to be—in the lead. “We kept expecting mechanical trouble,” Gurney said later, “but it never came. The Ferraris were no real threat.” With Foyt at the wheel, the first man ever to win at both Indy and Le Mans, No. 1 merely coasted across the finish line, 32.5 miles ahead of the pack. In 24 hours, Gurney and Foyt had covered 3,251 miles at a record average speed of 135.4 m.p.h.—10 m.p.h. faster than the old mark set by last year’s winning Ford Mark II. In the winner’s circle, Gurney sprayed champagne on Henry Ford II—and Foyt waved an arm at a group of beaming Ford executives. “Well,” he announced, “we saved those guys’ jobs again.”