This Ford GT40 prototype played a key role in Shelby and Ford's Le Mans program

A few years ago, we got a chance to see GT/104 up close, fresh off a restoration and one year before it sold at auction for $7 million.

As action-packed a film as Ford v Ferrari does not allow much time to admire the scenery—several years’ worth of racing and development have to be compressed into a two-hour runtime for moviegoing audiences. And a major Hollywood film doesn’t have the time to linger on any one particular car. 

But if there is a Ford GT40 in existence that tells the story of Ford’s early endurance racing program, it has to be this one.

A few years ago, we got a chance to spend some time around one particular Ford GT40, a car that holds the heady but enviable title of being the second-oldest GT40 left in existence, 14 months before it was sold at auction for $7 million. 

Ford’s GT40 program was launched, of course, for the purpose of dethroning Ferrari from dominating endurance racing in Europe. But it didn’t start as a collaboration between Ford and Carroll Shelby—that happened later. The GT40 development program got rolling under the management of John Wyer in the U.K., who used to be the Aston Martin team boss. Wyer took command of the development while Roy Lunn, the designer of the 1962 Mustang 1 concept, was selected to lead the design team. The development program started off not with Ford-engineered cars, but Lola GT chassis. Bruce McLaren and Roy Salvadori served as development drivers, among others, with the team running the Lola GT cars at Monza and at several tracks in England while work progressed on Ford’s own cars. 

The first two Ford GT40 prototypes were completed in Slough, England, in the spring of 1964, labeled as chassis GT/101 and GT/102. The 24 Hours of Le Mans being just weeks away, the cars were pushed into track tests just days after being completed, with the development program having only weeks to test the cars in the wind tunnel and on the track. Salvadori, along with test driver Jo Schlesser, pushed the cars to their limits on test tracks in England, while the assembly team at Ford Advanced Vehicles Ltd. in Slough worked to get more cars ready. These GT40 prototypes were powered by Ford’s aluminum 4.2-liter engine paired with a Colotti gearbox, producing 350 hp, with Girling disc brakes on all four corners providing the stopping power.

At Le Mans in 1964, GT/104 wore a different livery but suffered an engine fire early on.  

Salvadori and Schlesser discovered early on that there was not enough downforce on the cars’ tails at high speed, which made them difficult to control north of 150 mph. Some of the aerodynamic issues were solved, but not before GT/101 and GT/102 had been wrecked. Salvadori and Schlesser were not injured, but the program suffered a setback because of the loss of two prototypes just weeks ahead of Le Mans.

Of course, these being prototypes, each car was a little bit different. While GT/102 was repaired and received a spoiler, GT/104, the car in our photos, was built out of lighter steel to save weight: The car featured 24-gauge chassis steel instead of 22 gauge on the other prototypes. 

But GT/104 was completed very late in the development cycle and was sent to the 24 Hours of Le Mans after just 50 miles of testing. 

Piloted by Schlesser and Richard Attwood and Le Mans in 1964, GT/104 started off strong along with other Fords in the race, but by the fourth lap of the race a fire had broken out in the engine compartment. Attwood managed to stop the car quickly enough to allow for race marshals to put out the fire, but the car was finished for the day. It was down, but it was not out—GT/104 was still very salvageable—and was given a new engine once it was shipped back to Ford Engineering. The car returned to racing later that year at Nassau Speed Week in November of 1964 along with GT/103, but neither car finished the race due to rear suspension issues—a problem that also plagued other prototypes earlier in the year. 

One of the results of the 1964 season was that … someone else would lead the development program. Ford enlisted Carroll Shelby to take over after a disappointing 1964 season plagued with mechanical problems and handling issues.

The car was piloted by Richard Atwood and Jo Schlesser at Le Mans, wearing #12.

Soon, the cars were shipped to Shelby American in Long Beach, California, with chassis GT/104 arriving first. Ken Miles was now the development driver, working with Carroll Shelby, and he began testing the cars at Willow Springs and at Riverside. Under Shelby’s direction and after plenty of testing, GT/104 and the other cars received quite a few changes. 

The rear suspensions had been a problem with all of the GT40 prototypes in 1964, so Shelby’s team found a way to reinforce the suspension without changing too much. Shelby was also able to shave 75 pounds from the weight of the car by ditching the dry-sump oil system, and he replaced Borrani wheels with a much lighter magnesium design that also provided better cooling to the brakes. Speaking of cooling, the development team also reworked the car’s internal cooling system located in the nose, saving weight there once again and redesigning the ducting system under the skin. The car was also given a different paint scheme: Guardsman blue with white stripes in place of the original white with black stripes.

The most high-tech part of Shelby’s modifications to GT/104 and the other prototypes had to do with aerodynamics, which had rarely been used in a meaningful way with race cars until that point. But the GT40 prototypes had handling issues at high speeds, mostly due to the fact that there was not enough downforce in the back—a quality that hindered control at high speeds. 

Luckily, Ford had an entire aerospace division that could help with that, which applied its wind-tunnel testing technology to the car, also measuring the air temperature in various parts of the prototypes at various speeds. This allowed Ford to make changes to the car’s aerodynamic profile using the data gathered—something that had not really been done before when it came to race cars. The Cobra-spec 289-cid engine, which replaced Ford’s earlier engine, and the Colotti transmission also did not escape modifications, as Shelby’s engineers tuned both for better endurance over long periods running at high speed.

The team raced to get the cars ready for their first outing in February 1965—Shelby’s team once again had just weeks to make all the modifications that were needed after the cars’ disappointing performance in the 1964 season.

With a Shelby engine and plenty of modifications inside and out, GT/104 proved itself early on in the season, achieving a third-place finish at the Daytona Continental race in February 1965 with Bob Bondurant and Richie Ginther doing the driving, while GT/103 came in first, piloted by Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby.

We saw GT/104 up close in 2013, shortly after a restoration was performed by GT40 expert Paul Lanzante.

GT/104 continued to race through the 1965 season, but mechanical issues sidelined it at Monza and at Sebring, with the car suffering from suspension problems. While the car missed a podium finish at the Nurburgring race, it didn’t get a chance to return to Le Mans—Ford already had new variants of the GT40 design in the works and fielded them instead.

And that was it for GT/104’s racing days. The car was given back to Ford, which restored it with a few modifications while also returning it to its original color of white with black stripes. But Ford didn’t keep it long, selling it to its first owner in 1971. Over the next decades, the car traded hands several times with several owners starting restoration projects, but it spent many years in a disassembled state. It wasn’t until 2010 that the car, now wearing a much older and incomplete restoration, was sent to GT40 specialist Paul Lanzante for a complete restoration, who returned it to its Daytona look and configuration. At that point, the car was still believed to have been equipped with the engine that it used during the 1965 season, as well as its original Colotti transmission.

Four years later, it was sold at auction, bringing $7 million at the time. We got a chance to see the car about a year before the Mecum Auctions sale in Texas, when it appeared at Greenwich Concours.

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