A Storied Racing Rivalry With Real-Life Characters
In 1963, Henry Ford II tried to buy Ferrari, hoping the Italian sportscar brand would bring a cool factor to his family-owned firm, then known for selling sedans and pickups. When Enzo Ferrari nixed the deal at the last minute, Ford wanted revenge.
That’s the back story of the new movie “Ford v Ferrari,” which dramatizes how the American automaker assembled a team led by the driver-turned-designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to create a car to beat the Europeans on their own turf — France’s 24 Hours of Le Mans — in 1966.
An American vehicle had never won the race, which takes place on a 13.45-kilometer course through often-treacherous rural roads. Ferrari had triumphed seven of the previous eight years.
In 1966, “Ford caught lightning in a bottle with the right engineers, mechanics, drivers and manager,” said Shelby’s grandson Aaron Shelby.
The facts of the story are remarkable, but the filmmakers still tweaked details. “It’s fairly accurate, but they embellished a lot of things with drama,” said Charles Agapiou, a crew chief for Carroll Shelby’s 1966 team. The British-born Mr. Agapiou is played by Jack McMullen.
One scene depicts Shelby taking Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) for a terrifying ride around a track in the GT40 racer, leaving Ford in tears. “I can almost guarantee that didn’t happen,” Aaron Shelby said.
But in other ways, Shelby’s character is toned down. The Texas-born onetime chicken farmer was known for wearing bib overalls, a choice that Mr. Damon’s subdued character never makes. And while Shelby doesn’t have a love interest in the film, “he was not often without a lady by his side,” Aaron Shelby said of his grandfather, who was married seven times.
Shelby, who died in 2012 at the age of 89, made a name for himself in the early 1960s by designing and selling the Cobra, a lightweight sports car that ran on a powerful V-8 engine. “He could sell a one-legged dog,” said A.J. Baime, author of the 2009 book “Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans.”
“Ford v Ferrari” focuses on Shelby’s friendship with Ken Miles (played by Christian Bale), a British engineer crucial to Ford’s team.
Though the filmmakers tinkered with the conclusion of Le Mans in 1966, they got the major details right. To grab attention, Ford executives asked Miles, who was leading by a wide margin, to slow down and create a photo finish with two of the manufacturer’s other cars. But French officials ruled another Ford driver was the victor because he started about a meter further back.
“That was one of the worst nightmares of Carroll’s life — it just crushed him and Ken Miles,” said Bruce Meyer, Shelby’s friend. “To all of us enthusiasts, Ken Miles will always be that race’s winner, but for the record books, he wasn’t.” Less than two months after the event, Miles was killed while testing cars.
Ford would go on to win the race for the next three years. That helped redefine the American company: Ford became an international force.
“Henry Ford II relaunched his company in Europe during the dawn of globalism by going over there and winning the most famous race in the world,” Mr. Baime said. “Le Mans wasn’t just a sporting event. It was the greatest marketing tool the car industry had ever known.”