GT40 An Individual History and Race Record

When Ford decided to go sports car racing, they thought it would be easier to buy Ferrari than build their own racing cars. Though initially responsive, Enzo Ferrari, finding himself increasingly overwhelmed by the Ford corporate machine, eventually declined their proposal. Unable to join them, Ford decided to beat them. At the instruction of Lee Iacocca, then General Manager of Ford Division, a scouting party which included Britisher Roy Lunn and Carroll 'Mr Cobra' Shelby, was sent to England, via Le Mans, to find somebody capable of building a Ferrari beater. Initially they looked at Lotus but finally it was decided that Eric Broadley's Lola cars would be more suitable. The rest is, as they say, history, involving multi¬million dollar investment and intense development, resulting in total dominance of the sports car racing scene and four Le Mans victories. Whilst there have been other books about this exciting period in motor racing history, no one before Ronnie Spain has attempted to chronicle the individual history of every single car. A mammoth task you might think and you would be right. Ronnie worked for ten years to produce this definitive account of each and every car's life story. It traces the marque development from the early stages in Slough, through the big block theory, Holman & Moody, ultimately to Le Mans and finally back to England and the new Mark V. Included with the chassis records, which contain pictures of every single car, are comprehensive race records and full specifications. This is an accurate and complete marque and individual car history, which no fan of the Ford GT40 should be without.