FORD GT 101 RECREATION
The original GT40 prototype lives again
AS THE AMERICAN generation born right after the Second World War came of age, so Ford’s management sought a way to sell cars to them. Marketing chief Lee Iacocca suggested to Henry Ford II that the company should start racing again, promoting a sporting image which would attract the ‘baby boomers’. And surely an entry in the Le Mans 24 Hours would prove the quality and abilities of Ford’s products.
At the same time, after several meetings in Modena, the difference in character between Enzo Ferrari and the Americans meant Ford failed to take over Ferrari. The company’s negotiator Don Frey had to tell Henry Ford II the news. The result? Ford would go racing on its own.
Ford’s Dearborn HQ appointed British-born engineer Roy Lunn to kick-off the program. Lunn was a design engineer who’d joined Ford UK in the mid-1950s and went to Dearborn to work at Ford’s design centre. He was selected for the racing project as he had been part of the Aston Martin team at Le Mans in 1949. In June 1963, Iacocca announced that Ford would enter the 1964 race: that meant there was less than a year in which to prepare. John Wyer, who managed Aston Martin’s victory at Le Mans in 1959, was taken on as team manager and contracted the young Eric Broadley, who had just built his Lola Mk6, a revolutionary mid-engined sports car that happened to use a Ford Fairlane powerplant. This car would be the basis of the new Ford GT.
The very first car built, chassis 101, was ready for its debut in the spring tests in Le Mans over the weekend of 18-19 April 1964. On that rainy Saturday afternoon, veteran driver Jo Schlesser managed only two laps before he lost control at Les Hunaudières straight. Due to its poor aerodynamics, 101 got airborne and crashed severely. Although the car was badly damaged but repairable, Ford decided to use it as a donor car for the next chassis to be built. So, the life of the very first, original Ford GT ended before it even entered a proper race.
Almost 50 years after chassis 101 crashed at Le Mans, Swiss collector and racing driver Claude Nahum decided to recreate it using as many original components as possible. Although the chassis and the bodywork were to be all-new, the engine, gearbox, wheels and tyres would have to be of the correct period. That meant the whole project started with the search for these parts.
Being a Ford aficionado, Nahum had long been collecting as much information as possible on Ford GTs, including the original drawings that came from Ford Advanced Vehicles. These drawings were bought from Andrew Newall of Gelscoe Motorsport, a company best known for the excellent work it does in manufacturing Ford GT40 replicas. The drawings came in a chest from John Etheridge, who used to work with John Wyer at Ford Advanced Vehicles in the 1960s. Newall agreed to sell the drawings to Nahum as a package that included the construction of an exact replica of GT 101.
Newall and Jonathan Brevin at Gelscoe began a painstaking and precise preparation for the reconstruction of the chassis, which was very different from those that the subsequent GT40s had employed. For the new chassis they used all the photos and drawings from Nahum’s extensive collection. It appeared that they could use only a very limited number of parts from the chassis they had manufactured and all the rest had to be custom-made.
However, the most difficult aspect of the recreation of the car was the 255ci engine that was used in the original Ford GTs. These V8s had specifically been developed for the Lotus-Ford Indianapolis racer in 1963. Only 12 sets of parts were produced by the Ford Motor Company, from which – after inspection – only nine complete engines were built. Four engines survived the 1963 Indianapolis 500 and were sent to Slough to be installed in the first GTs. A total of six engines were damaged or destroyed and two are currently being restored for the Lotus Indianapolis 500 cars as driven by Clark and Gurney. The final engine is with the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.
Since there were no complete engines for sale, Nahum contacted Curt Vogt from Cobra Automotive in Connecticut, USA, who agreed to attempt to recreate a 255ci unit. Working from research and SAE papers, as much detail as possible was gathered. Meanwhile the search for a block and cylinder heads was undertaken – they were eventually found in the USA. However, con-rods, pistons, distributor, camshaft and pushrods, camshaft gear drive, Weber carburettors, valve covers and flywheel were still missing. A damaged Colotti gearbox was found, and sent – together with the block and the engine’s front cover – to Gelscoe to be used on the chassis manufacturing jig.
As for the engine, no work could start without the missing parts. There were no drawings or specifications to be found. Help came from Ford itself, as Dennis Mondrach, manager of the restoring, licensing and performance parts departments at Dearborn, came up with the name Mose Nowland. Nowland was one of the engineers who’d worked in the race engine department
‘THE MOST DIFFICULT ASPECT OF THE RECREATION OF THE CAR WAS THE 255CI ENGINE’
at the time and still had memories of all the details. He contacted Vogt and provided him with drawings, blueprints and pictures to complete the rest of the puzzle. Vogt himself, in the meantime, had found a complete set of extremely rare 48 IDM Weber carburettors that, although exorbitantly priced, were bought immediately.
John Garuti, Vogt’s engine man, started manufacturing the missing parts according to the specifications received from Nowland, a time-consuming process as many items had to be made from scratch. It also took time to get all the aluminium castings checked for heat treatment: one cylinder head casting was not up to required standards, which meant an additional two months had to be factored into the schedule.
The cylinder block had been fitted with all the main caps and integral oil pumps that are attached to them; the block’s lifter bores had been prepped for sleeves so that standard-design camshaft lifters could be used; and the cylinder heads were in the process for first fitment of valves and valve guides. After this was completed, the valve geometry could be set for rocker and associated valvetrain components. Only then, with the clearances known, could the pistons be ordered.
With the engine being dealt with and all other components practically ready, full attention was turned to the body. The chassis was off the jig by the beginning
‘AFTER MINOR PROBLEMS HAD BEEN SOLVED, THE ENGINE DELIVERED A HEALTHY 396BHP AT 6900RPM’
of February 2014 and the engine cover was shipped back to the USA. The chassis was completed in the April and immediately sent to the body builder, which, from blownup photos, re-worked the body panels used by Gelscoe to manufacture MkI GT40s in order to convert them to what they looked like on GT 101 when it was presented for the first time. Photos of the car thus modified were taken at the beginning of May, but the result was not satisfactory and Nahum immediately requested that moulds should not be made from these panels. The car did not look at all like the one in the famous photos.
The main problem was that there were no hard data or drawings to refer to. The body panels of the GT and the GT40 had never been drafted. As nobody at the time thought of modelling the original panels to evolving aerodynamic requirements, there was nothing left to refer to. Therefore photos were taken of the prospective body shape at exactly the same representative angles and, where possible, with the same focal length and therefore perspective as the 1964 photos.
The new photographs were then superimposed over the original ones in full and traced versions, taking wheel centres and other cutlines as reference points to outline the differences. The model body was then reworked and
re-photographed to reduce the apparent differences to an unnoticeable level.
Finally, the body and chassis were sent to be finished and painted and the complete car wired and fitted with all the bespoke components and trimmings. At the end of August it was ready to await the engine and, by the end of October, all special parts – including the completely reconditioned Webers and bespoke valve covers – had been received, ready for the final assembly.
This was carefully executed and the engine tested on the dynamometer. As is often the case, some problems were discovered, including a disguised weld in one of the heads, which had been badly executed and was leaking. After these relatively minor problems had been solved, on 5 December the engine delivered a healthy 396bhp at 6900rpm. At the end of 2014, the engine was assembled with the gearbox and the car finally finished.
After a two-year recreation, the Ford GT 101R made its first appearance at the Goodwood Members’ Meeting in March 2015, then participated in the Ford GT40 parade on the morning before the Le Mans 24 Hours race. In the autumn of that year, the car was part of the Bruce McLaren Tribute at Goodwood, where Claude Nahum had the pleasure of driving both Mose Nowland and Howden Ganley during the procession laps. In 2016, the car was among the prizewinners at the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance and later that year was seen again at Le Mans and at Pebble Beach, as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of Ford’s first outright Le Mans win.
Five decades on, Ford’s first attempt at a Le Mans winner finally found its place in the spotlight.