SPIRIT OF '66

After just four years, Ford’s GT has retired from endurance racing. We get the inside story on the car and its 50th-anniversary triumph at Le Mans from the mastermind behind it, then try the GTLM-spec machine for ourselves

- RICHARD MEADEN

HOLLYWOOD COULDN’T HAVE WRITTEN it better. Ford – that most American of automotive behemoths – makes a triumphant return to the Le Mans 24 Hours with a pure-bred, low-slung, mid-engined racer a full half-century after Henry Ford avenged Enzo Ferrari’s snub to score an outright victory in the world’s most prestigious endurance race.

OK, so the 2016 sequel was a class win, but when said conquest also came after a race-long (and ultimately acrimonious) battle with Ferrari, the symmetry with that historic weekend in 1966 is utterly intoxicating.

Unfortunately, what the Blue Oval giveth it also taketh away, so while Ferrari (and the other pure-bred sports car brands) are obliged to plug away season after season, decade after decade, Ford preferred to mount a brilliant smash-and-grab raid. History made, lucrative run of supercars sold and halo polished, Ford Performance pulled the pin on its endurance racing adventure after a scant four seasons.

It all looked so easy. And so predictable. But this ignores the fact that the entire Ford GT programme was one of the best-kept secrets in the automotive industry. Until it was announced at the 2015 Detroit motor show nobody knew much about it at all, though this is perhaps due to the fact that a return to Le Mans hadn’t been discussed internally at Ford until mid-2013.