Ford v Ferrari
- Ford execs are meeting Enzo Ferrari to finalise a deal. For an aging US company, claiming some racing pedigree and European heritage would be massively cool. For a financially struggling company, the backing of one of the biggest car companies in the world would be a lifeline. But at the last minute, Enzo backs out of the deal, and Henry Ford II vowed to take revenge on Ferrari everywhere possible.
This is the famous setup for the legendary battle between Ford and Ferrari at Le Mans, there’s a whole Oscar-nominated movie about it even. But the story doesn’t end there. Henry Ford II didn’t just vow to beat Ferrari at Le Mans, he vowed to beat him everywhere. This was all but one battle in the war against Enzo.
In 2026, Ford is said to “return” to Formula One. Not “enter”, like Cadillac. Return. Sixty years earlier, in 1966, Formula One Team Lotus was looking for a new engine. Colin Chapman approached Cosworth, a reputed engine manufacturer, but engines aren’t cheap and he needed funding. Having worked to tune up the Ford Cortina into one of the first sports sedans, Chapman knocked on Ford’s door. Henry Ford II was interested for a simple reason: Ferrari was in F1. Ford threw a bunch of money at Cosworth to finance the new engine as long as it bore the Ford logo. Development was completed during the 1967 season, and from then until 1982, the Cosworth Double Four Valve engine won 12 drivers’ and 10 constructors’ championships. It didn’t stay a Lotus exclusive very long, in 1968 already 5 different teams used the DFV. As it accumulated wins, it became the go-to engine for a decade. But more importantly for ol’ Henry, it made Ford the most successful engine supplier in Formula One history at the time, ahead of Ferrari.
Argentinian interlude
And now, for something completely different, let’s discuss Argentinian politics.
There was a man named Antonio. Antonio’s family emigrated from Italy and landed in Argentina, he himself was born in Buenos Aires. Antonio married, had children, and he also joined the Socialist Party of Argentina, becoming a member of parliament in 1914. In the political twists and turns of the 1920s, he founded his own dissident Socialist party, and supported a military coup on the winning side in 1930. He was appointed minister of agriculture for over a year before dying of a cardiac disease in 1933.
Though he died, Antonio had established his family as an affluent one, on top of being already pretty rich. For one of his sons, Alejandro, born in 1928, that would be of great benefit. Alejandro grew up in power and luxury, and at 20 years old he was managing the family cattle ranch business. But he had another hobby, moonlighting as the editor of an anti-government newspaper. This would land him in trouble, but since his family was rich and powerful, it wasn’t too much trouble. At least, until 1955, when Alejandro did like his daddy done and joined a military coup against then-president Juan Perón. Problem was, the coup wasn’t immediately successful. Alejandro was implicated and he fled the country in his own plane. It’s said he left his wife and children behind to a fate unknown (likely unpleasant), but still grabbed a few suitcases of cash on the way out. Priorities.
Alejandro landed in Italy in Modena, the land of his ancestors, and where he still had some family. He started a short career as a racing driver and met Isabelle Haskell. She was a racing driver too, but also a businesswoman, and the daughter of a General Motors vice president. She, like him, was loaded and ambitious. In 1959, Alejandro stopped racing and started to work on his dream: to become the next Enzo Ferrari.
There is no dramatic record of an interaction between Enzo and Alejandro, no record of a meeting even. It appears Alejandro was simply ambitious, and likely envious of Enzo’s success. He wanted to reshape what Italian excellence meant, and that implied taking aim at the king. And so, together with his wife’s wit, money, connections and business acumen, they founded the company that would bear his hispanicised family name: De Tomaso.
The company’s first car was the 1963 Vallelunga. De Tomaso had procured the inline-4 of the Ford Cortina, not quite as impressive as a Bizzarrini V12, but with a good chassis and light body, the Vallelunga was quite capable. It was a flop however. The De Tomaso name was unknown, and with no pedigree and a car that was still very Italian, i.e. with questionable reliability and build quality, becoming the next Ferrari was easier said than done.
Luckily, after 1963, there was someone else looking to dethrone Enzo. That’s right, this isn’t something completely different, this is still the Ford v Ferrari story. After giving him access to the small block V8 for his second car, the Mangusta, another fine car and commercial failure, Ford invested in the company and acquired a majority stake to push the development of a new car: the Pantera.
The goal was clear, the Pantera wasn’t going to be a dud like the Vallelunga and Mangusta. Ford provided the 351 Cleveland V8, a top-of-the-line ZF transmission similar to that of the GT40, they signed frequent Ferrari-antagonist Giampaolo Dallara to design the chassis, and most importantly they brought the Pantera to Ford dealerships. For half the price of a Ferrari, you could have an Italian supercar with the heart, power, and reliability of a muscle car, that you could buy and service in the Ford network. And with a bit of extra advertising, the Pantera became a massive success.
Though it had major quality issues in the first months, Ford managed to sell over 6000 Panteras from 1971 to 1974. For contrast, this is in line with Ferrari’s production numbers over the same period, while it took until the 1990s for Lamborghini to actually manage to sell 6000 cars at all. De Tomaso was certainly becoming a contender, and had everything to become an existential threat on Ferrari. Unfortunately for them, Henry Ford II and Alejandro De Tomaso didn’t see eye to eye, leading just a few years after the release of the Pantera to Ford’s disengagement in the company and De Tomaso’s slow downfall.
Shelby
There was another man in the Ford, De Tomaso, Ferrari hate triangle. Carroll Shelby and Alejandro de Tomaso were working together on the De Tomaso P70 racecar when Shelby got a call from Ford to help them work on their new prototype. Shelby took the work he had done on the P70 and shamelessly reused it on the GT40. This inspired Alejandro’s second car, the Mangusta, designed specifically (though not really successfully) to “eat” Shelby’s car, the Cobra.
But the GT40 wasn’t Shelby’s first shot at Ferrari. Before that, he had made it his mission to beat Enzo’s 250 GTOs. This was again more professional competition than true animosity. Carroll Shelby already beat Ferrari as a driver, but he wanted to do it as a car maker too. He went to Europe looking for the perfect base and struck a deal with British automaker AC: big engines for light chassis. Shelby took the chassis of the AC Ace roadsters, shoehorned an American V8 in it, and the Cobra was born.
Though Ford only provided the engines initially, after 1963 they started to offer more support to Shelby. They had heard the man was looking to beat Ferrari, so whatever Carroll needed, parts, budget, engineering support, he could easily get it. On their first attempt at Le Mans in 1963, the Cobras finished well behind the winning 250 GTO. Shelby realised aerodynamics were the prime limiting factor of the Cobra if he wanted to win Le Mans. The 250 GTO had a roof. The Cobra didn’t. That led Shelby’s team to review their work and design a new body for the Cobra, roof and all. The Daytona Coupe was born.
In 1964, in its first participation, the Daytona Coupe won Le Mans (‘s GT category), one lap ahead of the first 250 GTO. The first GT40s were much less successful that year, but with his personal sidequest completed and some ideas borrowed from De Tomaso, Shelby could focus on fixing the GT40 leading to the famous full podium sweep in 1966.
Through the Ford GT40, the Cosworth DFV, the De Tomaso Pantera, and the Shelby Cobra and Daytona Coupe, Henry Ford II accomplished what he set out to do: to spend more company money than was ever reasonable with the explicit goal of annoying Ferrari everywhere possible.
The Italian Avengers
If this is the end of the Ford v Ferrari story, there is another man that needs a mention.
Ferruccio Lamborghini was conscripted during World War II and served in the Italian air force as a mechanic, and then did the same for the British after he was captured. When he returned home after the war, he opened a garage and saw a great opportunity before him. There was a lot to rebuild in Italy, and both the Axis and Allies had left a bunch of jeeps and trucks laying around. So, Ferruccio had the genius idea to buy a bunch of cheap, abandoned surplus vehicles and to turn them into tractors.
In less than a decade, Lamborghini Trattori became the third tractor manufacturer in Italy, behind FIAT and what is now Massey-Fergusson. Ferruccio became stupidly rich, and with his affinity for mechanics, he loved fast cars and fiddling with them. He bought the best cars money could buy at the time, Jaguar E-Type, Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, Maserati 3500 GT, and of course a few Ferraris. He had a particular affinity for a Ferrari 250 GT, a great car but with a capricious clutch, and perhaps a few things that could be improved.
This is another known story. One day, at Ferrari’s Maranello factory, he met Enzo in person. There are a few versions that differ on what exactly was said. Some say Ferruccio approached the conversation very politely. Some that perhaps let his frustration speak loudly. What’s certain is that he came with complaints, about the clutch and the ride quality, and he offered to partner with Ferrari to fix it.
Now imagine this. You are Enzo Ferrari, the Enzo Ferrari, and some guy comes to your factory, comes talking to you in person, and tells you your cars are no good. There are a few versions that differ on what exactly was said. What everybody agrees on is that Enzo not-so-politely suggested Ferruccio was a peasant who wouldn’t know how to drive a Ferrari and that he should go back to driving tractors.
Shortly thereafter, Ferruccio founded Automobili Lamborghini, and less than two years later produced his first car, the 350 GT. It was everything a Ferrari was but better, sporty and powerful, but also comfortable and reliable… or at least that was the mission statement. In practice, the 350 GT had a few problems. It was less reliable than a Ferrari. The clutch wasn’t working very well. Basically it had all the problems of a Ferrari, but worse. And it was a big flop.
But it wasn’t a total loss. In his vendetta against Ferrari, Lamborghini had unwittingly assembled the Avengers.
The first was Giotto Bizzarrini. He was the designer of the 250 GTO. He had left Ferrari in the Great Walkout of 1961 with a number of other engineers, co-founding ATS with the intent to do just about what Lamborghini had endeavoured, except even less successfully. Although ATS was short-lived, Bizzarrini ended up being hired by Lamborghini to develop a V12 engine for the 350 GT. If Giotto moved on to greener pastures afterwards, the Bizzarrini V12 was the beating heart of all Lamborghini flagships until the end of the production run of the Murcielago.
The second was Giampaolo Dallara, the same that would later help Alejandro de Tomaso. He was a junior engineer at Ferrari and quit to further his career elsewhere. After a short stint at Maserati, he was hired by Lamborghini. To assist him, Lamborghini hired a fresh graduate, Paolo Stanzini. Together, Dallara and Stanzini worked on the 350 GT, and once the job was completed they started working on a new kind of chassis, not only mid-engined, which was virtually unheard of on a road car at the time, but transverse mid-engine, and that would be world premiere.
Last to help them iron the kinks was Bob Wallace. Bob Wallace was a New Zealander who came to Italy hoping to get a job at Maserati but instead became a mechanic for smaller racing teams. He was hired by Lamborghini to help with the production of the 350 GT, but his talent for troubleshooting was quickly recognised and he became the test driver in chief for Lamborghini. If you wanted to make a car, he was the guy to help you find and fix everything wrong with it.
Dallara, Stanzini and Wallace worked in secret on Project P400. And when Ferruccio learned about it, he was initially miffed. Ferruccio Lamborghini wanted a GT, a grand tourer, a car that’s sporty but also comfortable. He didn’t care about racing, that was Enzo’s shtick. But his team saw things differently. What they were building was a pure, unadulterated, high-performance car. In dire straits after the flop of the 350 GT, Ferruccio recognised that he needed to sell cars and to make a name for himself. Somewhat reluctantly, Project P400 was greenlit. And it needed a body.
If Lamborghini was to do this, it had to be done in style. Lamborghini hired the rising star of Bertone, one of Italy’s most renowned design houses, by the name of Marcello Gandini. Gandini had a slight frustration with Ferrari in that they wouldn’t let him design a car for him. But Ferruccio did. And it would be low-slung and wide, wedge-shaped and aerodynamic, unlike anything in production at the time. It would be a design so ahead of the curve that it would mark history, a design that wouldn’t be just a simple sports car.
Project P400 was unveiled as the Miura, what is usually considered the first supercar in history. And in its most powerful version, it was the first production car to reach 300 km/h. It was the fastest car in the world, faster than a Ferrari 365 GTB/4. It wasn’t the car Ferruccio Lamborghini really dreamt of, but it was the car that accomplished his dream, it was the car that beat Enzo Ferrari. At least briefly.
Epilogue
Despite all the challengers, Ferrari survived. The DFV was successful, but it didn’t stop Ferrari from taking home a few titles in the 70s and 80s, and it wasn’t long before it reclaimed the top spot. The Pantera and Miura were threats, but despite slightly better sales or a slightly higher speed, Ferrari remained the most prestigious sports car manufacturer in the world. Only the defeats at Le Mans seem to have caused Enzo any real damage. Ferrari exited endurance in 1968 in a mix of frustration against Ford and against changing regulations, and largely disengaged from prototype and GT racing until the 1990s. By that time, Enzo had passed, though not before leaving his signature on perhaps the most legendary sports car of all time, the F40.
Enzo Ferrari was known to be a somewhat difficult man. He managed to instill both spite and respect, prompting many to take a shot at il Commendatore, but at the end of the day, there’s only one brand that makes everybody shiver both on the road and on the track, known by enthusiasts and laymen. That’s Enzo’s enduring legacy, that in the end, Ferrari always wins.