Cobra Ferrari Wars

Building a race car is an art form like no other.

It has a clearly defined purpose - to win.

The skills, passion and artistry of many craftsmen are combined to create an object of great beauty.

But if it doesn't win...you may as well hang it in an art gallery.

Many have tried to master this elusive art. Few have succeeded.

Because winning takes something more.

In the battle that was the Cobra-Ferrari wars,

that something was personal.

ENGINE ROARS

The battle between the two of them was a personal thing

between Shelby and Enzo Ferrari.

It went way back into Shelby's early racing career.

It was very personal.

Ferrari was a little dictator.

The thing that fuelled me to challenge Ferrari was that he was the kingpin on top of the heap.

This is the story of two cars, two men and one race.

It is the story of one man's dream to build a car

that would take on the aristocracy of European racing and win.

That car was the Shelby Cobra.

The man who named it? Carroll Shelby.

I got my driver's licence at 14.

The first thing I did was take my dad's car out and get caught for driving 85mph.

Got grounded for that.

I wasn't a very good student,

because I was always dreaming of my cars.

I tried several businesses, but I really wasn't happy.

I wanted to do something with automobiles.

Shelby pursued a career as a racing driver.

He had a raw talent for driving and became a favourite gun for hire,

mainly at the wheel of cars owned by local wealthy racing enthusiasts, hungry for the kudos of a win.

In three short years, Shelby rose to the top of the US scene.

He then set his sights on conquering the exotic world of European racing.

Shelby's stateside success

had not gone unnoticed across the Pond.

The British Aston Martin team approached him first,

not only for his ability, but because an American driver might generate sales in the US.

What's more, this American driver arrived complete with gimmick.

When he first arrived in England,

he had a sort of overall on. When he was a younger man, he had a chicken farm,

and he was on the farm one day when he got a telephone call

from a racing friend. He left his chicken farm with his overall on

and went down and tried this car out and got the drive.

Somebody said, "That's an unusual bit of kit to wear.

"You ought to stick with this and people won't forget you." He came to Europe wearing his chicken overalls.

In Europe, motor racing had been shaped by the wealthy aristocracy.

They'd formed automobile clubs to pursue their love of road racing.

Shelby found himself on the circuits of Monaco, Monza and Spa.

This was the home of Maserati, Jaguar and Ferrari.

The paddock was populated by men like Sir David Brown, Fangio and Moss.

These gentleman racers typified the wealthy amateur pursuing their passion for speed.

He had joined the European elite.

As a race driver, he was very good.

We didn't appreciate him so much in England,

because we didn't know his history in the US - he was champion and won race after race after race.

Shelby was a natural - kind on the machinery and with a cool head,

he battled around Europe for Aston Martin with much success.

But the highest achievement in European racing remained unconquered.

In 1959, Shelby and Aston Martin set their sights on the cruellest, toughest race in the world -

Le Mans.

This is Le Mans - the most prestigious circuit in international road racing.

For a decade, Ferrari has dominated the field. American cars...

From its beginnings at the turn of the century, a win at Le Mans was the highest racing accolade.

It was a punishing race - 24 hours around the clock,

an indiscriminate destroyer of man and machine.

Merely finishing was an achievement.

24 hours, different weathers, constantly passing cars -

it is THE race.

It's always talked of as "The Race" in terms of sports cars.

Le Mans wasn't a race - it was an endurance contest.

But it was the contest everyone wanted to win.

To do it would mean beating the pinnacle of race-car engineering - the vehicles of Enzo Ferrari,

a man who had won here so many times, he may as well have owned the track.

Shelby and his team-mate, Roy Salvadori, were partnered for the event.

We thought our chances were reasonably zero

prior to the, er...race.

In practice, we didn't treat it very seriously. We drove in one practice session.

There were three there. He said we shouldn't practice more than one day because we'd wear the car out.

He said, "I'll teach you a good card game, Salvadori. It's called gin rummy."

And, er...I knew a bit about gin rummy.

I think I did better out of that than the tape we had from Aston Martin's old race!

At 4pm the next day, they lined up for the start.

Shelby and Aston Martin versus the might of Modena - Ferrari.

Shelby paced himself and the car, driving night and day through the gruelling marathon.

Lap after lap, the race wore on.

As much larger teams fell by the wayside,

at 4pm the following day, the crown of European racing was waiting for him.

Unbelievably, Shelby had mastered the most prestigious of all races

AND beaten Ferrari on his first attempt.

To Aston Martin, Great Britain and the United States, he was an all-conquering hero.

The accolades poured in. He was voted Sports Illustrated Driver of the Year.

His ascent was remarkable, and now he would reap the rewards.

But Shelby harboured a secret.

I knew that I had hereditary problems.

My father died in 1943 at 46 years old...

with it, so...I figured there was nothing that could be done.

I didn't know there was anything wrong with him. He was fit as a flea.

I had to take probably six or eight pills

during the Le Mans 24 Hour, then I had to take them all the next year.

I was driving a Lotus with Jimmy Clark. We finished behind him.

That was the first time I met Carroll. I had no idea he was suffering from a heart condition.

Nobody knew about it.

Shelby had angina.

The world was astonished when, at the peak of his career, he announced his retirement.

Doctors had finally forced him to face the inevitable -

the seat of a race car was no place to be with a heart condition.

Having reached the top, he returned to California

and with his girlfriend, Joan Cole, tried to figure out how he would earn a living.

I think that, coming from his background, which was very poor,

and having experienced the world as a race driver...

he was concerned about what he was going to do

in his...race-car retirement.

The racing scene in California in the '60s was very different to the European one.

This was a rough, tough world where duels were fought on simple tracks

in unsophisticated cars.

Shelby stuck close to this rapidly developing scene, albeit a long way from the driving seat.

Most people who enjoy motor racing find the more they study good driving techniques,

the more interesting the sport becomes.

Shelby had the 11 Western states distributorship for Goodyear racing tyres,

and had also started a school of high-performance driving

at Riverside Raceway, Riverside, California.

So we took - I hate using the word "office", because it was the size of a closet! - for the two of us.

Shelby, the Le Mans winner and international racing hero,

was selling tyres and teaching wannabes.

But the love of competitive racing that had driven him to the top would not leave him.

He knew he had to get back to the racetracks. If not in the driving seat, he'd find another way.

I started trying to build my own car in 1951, with my friend Ed Wilkins, who owned the MG TC.

We tried to build a Chrysler Special in my garage

and we made so much noise my wife made me quit.

But I always wanted to build my own car.

Carroll was a man who had...an idea.

I don't think at the time that I met him you really could qualify it as a dream - it was an idea.

HIGH-PITCHED ENGINE

Shelby's idea was to build a race car that would take him back to the tracks of Europe,

to once again challenge the best in the world - Ferrari.

Ferrari was the undisputed master of car builders.

For three decades, his red cars had reigned supreme.

For Shelby to even CONSIDER taking on this pedigree was somewhat precocious.

Ferrari's latest piece of genius,

the 250 SWB,

was incredibly sophisticated for its time.

Its 3-litre V12 engine was clothed in a lightweight, aerodynamic body,

every component fashioned by Italian craftsmen

with decades of race experience to draw upon.

When launched, it showed Ferrari moving even further ahead of the pack.

The year after Shelby's big win, it took the top three places at Le Mans.

Shelby had little experience and even less money

to go up against this sort of bloodline,

so he took his idea of building a race car

to the major manufacturers in the US.

He had been to Ed Cole, who headed up the Chevrolet division for General Motors in Detroit...

They said, "We don't need another sport car. We have a Corvette."

For five years, the Corvette had been the car to be seen in.

Its Art Deco styling and V8 performance

captured the hearts AND wallets of America's affluent youth,

whilst arch rival Ford could only watch.

In 1960, I was made head of Ford by Henry Ford and Robert MacNamara

and Chevrolet was knocking the hell out of us,

both in the market on cars and on the track.

We weren't selling to anybody, let alone young people.

They didn't go for the stuff we had to offer.

Ford, Chevrolet's arch rival,

were selling family values and the market wasn't buying.

Shelby's timing couldn't have been better.

First time I saw him, he comes in, a good-looking Texan tall guy,

wearing a big 20-gallon hat, or something! And boots.

And always had a great-looking girl!

The basis of Shelby's idea, to put a large engine in a lightweight body,

came at exactly the right time for Ford.

And Shelby had already worked out precisely how Ford could contribute.

He had gone to the Pikes Peak Hill Climb,

on July 4th,

and there he met Dave Evans.

Evans explained that Ford was working on a new, lightweight V8

for a Canadian pick-up, a 221-cubic-inch engine.

Intrigued, Ford agreed to give the Texan an engine, their endorsement and some working capital.

Now all he needed was a lightweight chassis.

Which was when he heard that the small British company, AC Cars, had just lost their engine supply

and had been reduced to manufacturing invalid carriages.

AC Cars was a small, family-owned business,

a very old, established company -

formed, I believe, in 1904 -

and had a very chequered history.

AC's famous car, the Ace, was light and nimble, but no firebrand.

With a Ford V8, it might be a real contender.

I called them, I set an appointment up and went over there to meet them

and had a very cordial meeting.

They seemed interested.

They were building invalid carriages

and they had this chassis that was 20 years old at the time,

but we got along very well.

AC thought this was a good way to produce a sports car which would sell well in the US at a reasonable price.

Shelby hoped that, somehow, using a 20-year-old chassis,

roadster body and the engine from a pick-up truck,

he was about to build a Ferrari-beating race car.

We built the first car - Turner was their engineer -

and we adapted the V8 engine to it.

When we drove it down the road at Thames Ditton

I knew that we had something,

that there wasn't a production Ferrari or a production Corvette or Jaguar that would come close to it.

When I saw the first chassis,

I think it was the first time

that I believed that maybe this was really going to happen.

Not that I really ever doubted - I didn't have time to doubt -

but this was really the first tangible thing

that meant we would build at least one Cobra.

For the man that was once king of Le Mans,

this was the first step on the road to recovery.

Back in the States, Shelby's hot-rodders spared no time in souping up the engine even further.

I remember when we started it up,

and it was a real race car for the street.

There was no Ferrari for the street that had anything like that at the time.

Ferrari always exaggerated the horsepower, anyway.

And...I knew we had something.

What he had was a car that represented a remarkable marriage of continents -

a lightweight British chassis, from the narrow country lanes of Europe,

powered by an enormous V8 engine,

built for the five-lane highways of America.

Luck and circumstance had collided.

Shelby was on to one hell of a motor car.

I liked it. It just looked hot, you know.

The suits at Ford were ecstatic.

They couldn't wait to get the car on the track and hammer the Corvette.

First, Shelby had to fulfil a basic rule of production car racing -

before you enter a race, you have to manufacture at least 100 cars,

which meant Shelby had to find 100 customers.

We took it around to the magazines

and repainted it every two weeks so it would seem we had more than one.

We entered the New York Automobile Show

and we were the focus of the Ford exhibit

with this very bright yellow, frosted Cobra.

Joan Cole and I took turns, 12 hours a day, passing out the literature.

Nobody knew what it was.

The excitement generated by the car,

Shel and I pretty well knew

that we really did have something.

So we were off and running then.

We ordered our first 100 cars.

With 100 cars being built,

Shelby needed larger premises.

He found them in Santa Monica,

where a race team had just gone out of business.

Race mechanic Phil Remington came with the building

and immediately signed up to the Cobra project.

But when he got under the skin of Shelby's car, he began to question the Cobra's race-winning potential.

I didn't take his dream seriously at first because I knew the competition

and I didn't feel our group of hot-rodders and the American production engine

had much of a chance.

It looked impressive, but when we got looking at the mechanical part,

we had second thoughts about its existence at all.

Remington had a point.

Building 100 cars for the road was one thing, producing a race winner was a different matter altogether.

But Ford wanted to see it in action,

so a hastily prepared Cobra entered its first race in October 1962,

at Riverside, California.

Everybody came to the fence for that race

to see the new Corvette and the new Ford product, which was the Cobra,

compete against the best California club racers at that time.

Well, there was very little testing.

We didn't have any time to really develop the car

so, initially, when we were racing, it was almost like the first test.

Bob Bondurant was the number one driver for Corvette.

Nobody believed the Cobra would be that quick.

It looked pieced-together.

We looked it over and thought, "It's pretty light, it might go good,

"but it won't blow off the Corvette," because Corvette was king then.

Billy Krause was our driver at Riverside.

As the team prepared to do battle,

the drivers from the Corvette camp were unconcerned, and rightly so.

This year's new Corvette Stingray promised to be faster than ever.

As the starter's flag was raised, the crowd held its breath.

He just drove away from us.

Shelby's little Cobra was showing the Corvettes the way home.

When we actually saw it happening,

I can remember that...

It was like...a shot in the arm for all the guys who worked on the racing crew.

It was a sparkling debut, but racing is about endurance as well as speed,

and the 20-year-old chassis started to show its age.

The upshot was that the rear stub axle

sheared off,

we lost the wheel

and the new Corvette ended up winning the race.

This car was not really ready for an American V8 power and torque.

The Cobra had shown huge potential but failed to deliver a win.

There was a mountain of work to be done.

Anybody can build a car that'll drive down a road -

but it has to be developed. That's where the work comes in.

Racing pushes a car to its limit.

Running an engine at maximum revs, thousands of gear changes,

braking from 150mph lap after lap after lap,

constantly stressing components to breaking point.

The way to find the breaking points is by testing until something snaps.

Then you have to redesign it, build it stronger, and test some more.

The key is a test driver with enormous talent and stamina. Luckily, Shelby knew just the guy.

Coming up is Ken Miles - one of the best sports car drivers in America.

Ken Miles was an ex-British tank commander

who'd got into racing after the war and had stumbled across Shelby.

A fantastic British race driver.

Built his own MG special which blew off all the factory Porsches.

And he was a great engineer, but a self-taught engineer.

He could tell you exactly what was wrong with a car.

NEWSREEL: At the pitstop he's happy...

We called him Teddy Teabag, Sidebite -

because he talked out of the side of his mouth.

Teddy Teabag!

How appropriate! Except he's not really a Teddy, is he?

He had a very dry, British wit

and people didn't understand him

and they thought he was a bit of an asshole.

But it was really his personality.

Once people got to know him, they realised that he was very funny.

He would go out and test for 500 miles, come in.

All he'd do is sit down - he'd have his teapot right there -

he'd light his fire and have a cup of tea with his little finger up.

The key to developing a great race car

is having a test driver who understands exactly how the vehicle is behaving

and can explain it to the engineer. This partnership got the Cobra into shape quickly.

NEWSREEL: Then he'll spin it.

Ken did that on purpose. Let's watch the way he does it.

Ken was a hell of a race driver and an innovator.

A little caustic ,but usually he was right

and everyone respected him for his knowledge and capability.

Between he and Phil Remington, they got the Cobras handling really well.

Carroll put the responsibility of the car's development in Phil's hands.

And it was his ability to do things very quickly

that made us handle the problem. In 90 days the car was completely re-engineered.

The car that emerged was a far cry from the little British roadster that left Surrey.

350bhp from a 4.7l V8 engine in a vehicle weighing just over a ton -

it was just what Shelby had set out to do.

It could accelerate to 100mph and back to a standstill

in under 14 seconds.

When demonstrating the car to potential customers,

Shelby would put a 100 bill on the dashboard.

If you could reach forward and grab it while he accelerated away, you could keep it.

Nobody took home the hundred.

Shelby and his motley crew of southern Californian hot-rodders

had productionised a street-legal race car and were going to take it to the tracks of America.

The 1963 US Road Racing Championship

was the first time this fully fledged Cobra

would be tested against the best machinery in America.

Now Shelby would find out if he really was a contender.

Our programme was to go out and win the US Road Racing Championship.

It was also Ford's chance to take the battle back to the Chevrolet Corvettes.

And the news - good news!

NEWSREEL: The Cobra was an underdog.

The Cobra completed the first lap leading the field.

The 12-hour run began at 10am.

12 hours later, the Cobra, driven by Ken Miles, got the chequered flag.

The new Cobra - product of Phil Remington's workshop

and Ken Miles' endless testing - proved a spectacular success.

The Cobras campaigned all over the United States,

essentially unopposed.

There were a lot of other hot cars out there

but really, when the Cobras rolled in, it was all over.

At Sebring in Florida it set records for an American car,

beating competition from around the world. It heralded an era.

NEWSREEL: At Laguna Seca - 1st, 2nd and 4th, Watkins Glen - 1st, 3rd and 5th.

Kent Washington - 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

The drivers used to flip coins to see who would win the race.

NEWSREEL: Ken Miles, trying to go for overall,

is pushing his 98 Cobra past third-place Heskey,

and gets by, going through turn five.

He'd be so far ahead sometimes he'd make silly pitstops

so he could go out and race a bit.

He'd say, "Can you check the fan belts?"

You'd say, "What are you talking about?! The engine's running!"

"Check them!" Or he'd come in for a glass of water.

"A spot of water, old chap."

Sometimes a coke. It was incredible! So funny!

NEWSREEL: Even before the Mid-Ohio Classic, the Cobras had won

the US Manufacturers' Road Racing Club Trophy.

We were just winning everything. It was pretty amazing

for a company that hadn't been in business for a year to be top of the heap.

Miles is in front to stay...

The Cobra's success in America was a shot in the arm

for Ford's domestic sales.

The "win on Sunday, sell on Monday" effect turned the tables.

The suits at Ford started to look at how they might repeat this success in Europe,

which was when they heard an amazing piece of news -

Ferrari was up for sale.

I probed my memory. Enzo Ferrari was a great guy

and Henry Ford used to meet him in Europe and see these red racing cars

and said, "What are they?" I said, "That's Ferrari's company."

By acquiring Ferrari,

Ford could short-cut the development process Shelby had been through

and gain instant credibility in Europe.

They might win the biggest prize in the world at their first attempt - Le Mans.

If you took one single race at the time, Le Mans was it.

Ford wanted to win Le Mans. The best and easiest way to do that would be to buy Ferrari.

I think Ferrari was going through pretty hard times

and I don't know if at that stage he wanted to sell to Fiat.

He probably thought it was a pretty good deal to sell to Ford.

If Ferrari was having a tough time of it financially,

it wasn't showing on the track.

Their latest creation - the staggeringly beautiful GTO -

was cleaning up.

It took the first three places at the 1962 Le Mans.

Three decades of legendary racing achievement

and the image that went with it.

The prancing horse and the famous blood red cars was all up for grabs.

That's how far we'd come. We'd decided we'd race and win

and if you couldn't beat 'em, maybe you should try to buy 'em!

Ford were deadly serious, and sent over a team of accountants to tie it all up.

But they hadn't counted on having to deal with a man like Enzo Ferrari.

Rumour has it - which I believe - that Ferrari never intended to sell

and was negotiating in order to get money out of the Italian government or Fiat.

Ferrari then turned Ford down.

Ford said, "I'll have revenge! We'll beat you in the GT and prototypes!"

Ford wanted to hit Ferrari where it hurt -

the racetrack.

Shelby decided now was the time to return to Europe

and test the Cobra against the Ferrari at Le Mans.

It was a challenge that Shelby would relish

for more than just sporting reasons.

There was not good feelings between Ferrari and Shelby at all!

He made no secret about that.

But it was in that...uh...

I don't want to call it vengeance, but perhaps it was -

not being a man, I don't quite know how you all function!

But I think that there...

Yes, that was at the bottom of the battle between the two of them -

was a personal thing between Shelby and Enzo Ferrari.

It went way back into Shelby's early racing career

and it was very personal.

When racing with Aston Martin in the '50s,

Shelby needed a base for easy travel to the tracks of Europe.

The town he had chosen was Modena,

the heart of European race car engineering

and the home of its master - Enzo Ferrari.

I met Enzo Ferrari for the first time in 1955.

And that summer I spent the whole summer with his son, Dino.

I met Ferrari nearly on a daily basis.

He seemed to develop a... I won't say it was a hate,

but he was aiming at Ferrari, which was a jolly good thing.

I never did like the way he treated his drivers.

Although I respected Ferrari, he, er, tweaked them up.

Musso and Castellotti were very good friends,

and after they'd both driven Ferrari, within a year, they weren't speaking to each other.

Ferrari would say to Musso, "Why is Castellotti saying bad things about you? I thought you were friends."

Then he'd go to Castellotti and do the same thing.

But he did that...all his life. That was his way of getting the maximum out of the drivers.

He didn't have much regard, in my opinion, for drivers.

He thought that a car that he made was the best car in the world,

and...his drivers should be thankful for the drive.

And I think you'll find that that's what happened with a lot of the star drivers, including Fangio.

Ferrari and Fangio didn't get along that well.

It was his attitude.

In June 1963, a month after the negotiations with Ford had fallen through,

Shelby sent two Cobras to Le Mans.

The thug would get its chance to bloody the nose of the thoroughbred.

But deep down, Shelby knew that despite their success in the US,

the Cobras were not designed for winning in Europe.

Historically, European racing had always been on public roads with long, open sections.

A successful car needed reliability and a very high top speed.

Le Mans and the Ferraris epitomised this style of racing.

By contrast, the America that was the Cobra's patch was all oval tracks, short straights,

often in disused airfields.

Top speeds were much lower, and winning was more about brute force and big tyres.

All Shelby's team could do to try and make the Cobras competitive

was bolt a couple of hardtops onto the roadsters to make the cars more aerodynamic and therefore faster.

It was a long shot, but they had to try.

The race began. Ford and Shelby held their breath,

but not for long.

In '63, when we took the roadsters over there,

we were absolutely killed in terms of aerodynamics, because the cars just did not have the top speed.

It was like trying to shove a brick through the air. Consequently, they weren't very fast or reliable.

I recall both cars failed with engine problems.

Over short courses, the Cobras would blow anything off in '63,

but when you got to Le Mans, the aerodynamics would be in your way.

The GTOs and so forth were aerodynamic. We didn't have that.

The killer stretch that destroyed the Cobras was the infamous Mulsanne Straight.

At over three miles long, it allowed the Ferraris to reach 180mph,

their sleek bodywork slipping through the air.

By contrast, the Cobra could only reach 160.

Their bodywork was simply not shaped for high speed.

Carroll knew that he wanted to go back to Europe...and win, especially against Ferrari.

Shelby realised that if he was going to win, he would need a more aerodynamic car.

The concept of going to Europe and having cars that went almost 200mph

was beyond what anybody in the United States thought about.

The opinion in the shop of the rest of the people was, "How are we going to go to Europe?"

That's when Pete Brock and I sat down,

and decided to see if we could build us a coupe.

The Coupe was to be a roadster chassis with a new aerodynamic body.

This time, the hot-rodders wouldn't be able to buy it off the shelf. They'd have to design it themselves.

And who would be chief designer? Shelby turned to his 23-year-old employee, Pete Brock.

So we started by taking the chassis that had been crashed at Daytona earlier that year by Skip Hudson,

and pulling the body off the chassis.

They had never built a car like that.

He drew out on the floor... the shape, and we all looked at it and went, "Yeah, right, Pete(!)"

And he said, "No, it'll work."

When I showed it to other people, they were aghast,

because it was the strangest, ugliest car anybody had ever seen,

the Ferrari GTO being the most beautiful car ever produced.

I didn't think it had much hope because the chassis was still very unsophisticated,

compared to some of the European cars in particular.

There was no suitable windscreen,

so Ken sat down, we looked at his height in the car,

held the steering wheel in his hand about where it was going to be,

and literally with duck tape and wood outlined where the windscreen was going to be.

The first thing that we designed was the windscreen. We designed the car around what that would look like.

It was amazing to see it come together. They started moulding the fenders and body to it.

And I saw it grow pretty much daily.

And all of a sudden, there it was. The body was all together.

In three months, Pete Brock and the racing crew had designed and built a new Le Mans car from scratch.

I thought that the Coupe looked funny,

but since no-one asked me...!

I did not offer any of my own opinion on it.

The Coupe project was fraught with controversy from the very beginning,

as the whole concept was so foreign.

It didn't look like anything that had been successful before.

So Pete had confidence in the new shape. Shelby wasn't so sure.

We didn't understand the aerodynamics of it too well.

We called Benny Howard in - a great aerodynamicist.

Ex-executive vice president at Convair Aviation.

And Carroll brought him down to the shop to show him what we were doing.

Benny looked at the car...

and just right off the wall said the thing is never going to work.

He told us...if we extend the tail out, about three feet, to a point,

that we'd be much better off aerodynamically.

But that would have really ruined the looks of the car.

Carroll and Benny went to lunch. He came back and asked what I thought. I said, "I still think I'm right."

He said, "You'd better be."

With Pete Brock's reputation on the line, the team took the finished car to the local track for a trial run.

First time we tested it, the car lifted off the ground at 160mph.

We had to fool with air dams.

I wondered if we would ever get it right after about the first two weeks of testing.

But then Ken and John Collins, riding with him for 1,000 miles, with no seat in the right side,

are the ones that made it work.

I had to sit on the floor. There was no seat, no seat belts. I was hanging on with my foot up

under the dashboard, trying to hang on. As we were going into turn six,

he told us to look out the window to see the back wheel off the ground!

Lap by lap, they ironed out the problems and produced a car that was not only aerodynamically sound,

it was fast. Damn fast.

We went down the long back straight,

and I was wondering when he was going to brake. I could see the wall. I thought, "He's never going to stop!"

Of course, he put the brakes on, and we pulled into the pits,

and we'd been clocked at 183mph, I think it was.

Ken said, "It can't run that fast."

So he asked us what rear-axle ratio we had in. We told him what it was.

He said, "Take it back and check it out."

So we told him. He said, "You guys don't know what you're talking about. Pull the diff out and check it out."

So we pulled the diff out and counted the teeth. It was that axle-ratio and that was what the car was doing...

..183mph!

So when Ken Miles came back from that test, and called Carroll and told him how fast that we had gone,

that pretty much changed the opinion in the shop.

183mph was proper Ferrari-beating pace.

Despite the doubts, Brock and the boys had done it.

Everyone was so excited.

They figured they could finally go out and beat the Ferraris.

Unbelievable. It was everything... and more that Shelby had expected the car to perform.

Everything and more.

And we knew then that we were not afraid.

Shelby American's Daytona Coupe was the beast to the GTO's beauty.

It had all the brute force of the Cobra roadster, sheathed in a streamlined aluminium body,

bristling with vents to allow the monstrous V8 to keep cool.

The Daytona was another animal altogether.

It was a different motor car. It felt different. It handled very well.

It was able to hold its own

against GTOs.

And in my view, it was a little bit faster in a straight line as well.

The deadline was looming.

With three months till Le Mans, Shelby would have to prove himself and his car on the racetrack.

First up, February 1964, Daytona Speedway and the Ferraris were out in force.

'And the race is on.'

The car was so quick. Ferrari were rocking in their boots. There was no way they could come close to us.

When the race started, we just ran away from them. At one point, we were 38 minutes ahead of them.

They were counting in minutes, not seconds, which was incredible.

After a disastrous pit stop, the race was over for the Coupe.

Though the car was quick, it was not reliable, and as they say in racing,

"In order to finish first, first you have to finish."

The second race of the season at Sebring, Florida would be the Coupe's last chance to prove itself

if Ford were to back the car for Le Mans.

Sterling specimens of engineering have been exhibiting speed and stamina on this course at Sebring!

We rebuilt the car after Daytona and got it ready for Sebring,

fixed the overheating problem, put a different pump on the rear axle.

We thought, "We can win Sebring with the car. There's no doubt."

Five, four, three, two, one...GO!

The Coupe ran the 12-hour race in spectacular style.

Not only was it incredibly quick, this time it also proved reliable.

They came into their own, I think, at Sebring,

and they'd improved the car a lot. They had rack-and-pinion steering.

They had really developed it nicely.

The Cobras keep the Ferraris driving hard!

The sun is hot, the track is hot, the pace is hot...

Once again up against the Ferraris,

this time the Coupe demonstrated its spectacular speed without breakdown.

Shelby's new car went on to take the chequered flag.

Although Sebring was a much lesser race than Le Mans,

winning it was a real boost for Shelby and the team.

Ferrari knew at Daytona that they were done with the GTOs,

because they were so slow compared to the Daytona Coupe.

At Sebring, we waxed them so easily. There was just no competition.

We dominated. That's when we decided to go to Europe,

when we beat the GTO in a 12-hour race.

Carroll knew we were going to Europe because he had the intention,

but until the car ran at Sebring and we won the GT class down there,

that was when we finally got approval from Ford.

The cars were very impressive at Daytona and Sebring.

Now we're getting ready for Monza, Targa Florio and Le Mans.

The following month, Shelby and his crew headed for Europe,

with the new Daytona Coupe and a brace of roadsters.

Is this the kind of team that can win at Le Mans?

-It's GOING to win at Le Mans.

-Congratulations and good luck.

This time, he was prepared.

Shelby knew that the road circuits would be punishing on the cars.

There was so much repair work that had to be done,

without a complete workshop and a capable crew, it was impossible to maintain the car.

By using the roadsters as mobile test beds,

he'd be able to find the weaknesses of the components they shared with the Daytona.

The Coupes would be saved for the big one - Le Mans.

It was a constant series of modifications to them -

improving the brakes, improving the suspension,

getting the right sway bars,

er...just 10,000 things that you have to do

when you're trying to take a mule and outrun a racehorse.

By the summer of '64, the Coupe was ready to take on the best in the world.

A car conceived and built in a few months

was about to represent the name not just of Carroll Shelby, but of Ford America.

At last, the big event arrived - Le Mans, 1964.

Carroll Shelby and his "mule" versus the rest of the world.

And, in particular, Ferrari with his thoroughbreds.

With 30 minutes to go, the countdown starts...

The team was to be made of Cobra veterans Dan Gurney and Bob Bondurant.

Shelby's last five years of blood, sweat and tears

were all for the next 24 hours.

At four o'clock tomorrow afternoon, all would be decided.

Five minutes to go, and 55 drivers move to their marks...

Whether Shelby and his team of Californian hot-rodders

had definitively mastered the art of building a race car was about to be put to the ultimate test.

Dan started the race, did a great Le Mans start.

Into the S's for the first time,

it's the Ferraris of Rodriguez, Graham Hill, David Piper...

The Ferraris took off into the lead,

making it to the crucial first corner in front,

but by two hours into the race, the Daytona Coupe, with its incredible top speed, had overtaken them.

We took off, and we're leading our class

and we're ahead of the Ferraris.

Then it was my turn. I get in and took off.

Now there's several hundred thousand spectators here to watch the race.

You see spectators almost the entire route around the track

and it just gave you such a neat warm feeling.

This time, the straight that had killed the Cobra in '63

posed no problems for the Coupe.

I'd never driven that fast before.

Going down the Mulsanne straight in a number five Cobra Daytona Coupe,

we ran 196mph lap after lap after lap.

With the high speeds taking their toll on their pursuing arch rivals,

by the early evening, the Coupes were stretching their lead.

Once again, an early pacemaker had no more to show for it than a temporary lap record at 131mph.

You never get overconfident at Le Mans cos it's 24 hours.

You're dealing with metal fatigue.

You go into the race with a plan and you hope it works.

Strategy is everything at Le Mans.

Every car has two drivers, so teamwork is an essential part of the process.

Bondurant and Gurney took on board their team manager's words.

John Wyer gave us a lap time to run by which felt totally slow.

He said, "That's the way you win.

"If you run hard at the beginning, you'll wear the car out and you won't finish."

The big cars are due in on schedule.

Bob and I made a strong combination

and I think we both realised it and we both focused on the job at hand.

As the sky darkened, the Coupe number five was still ahead of the remaining two Ferraris.

But as the sun came up, disaster struck.

With five hours to go, I think it was,

the oil cooler broke and we couldn't replace it, we didn't have the pieces.

We came in for a pit stop and bypassed the oil cooler,

which enabled us to keep running, but at a reduced pace.

We ran with the oil temperature over 300 degrees.

At 300 degrees, engine oil is close to vaporising,

that is if it doesn't burn through the high-pressure hoses first.

When the Cobra rejoined the race, the Ferraris were right behind it

and Bondurant knew if he didn't take it easy, he'd blow the engine.

Amongst the Grand Touring cars,

battle royal with number 24, the Ferrari, trying desperately to catch Gurney's Cobra leading the category.

The last few laps of the Coupe's final stint seemed to take an age,

but when Bondurant rounded the last corner, he met a sight he'd never seen before.

No-one told me about the finish.

What happens at the finish is you go across the finish line very slowly.

You just cruise over in third gear.

I came out in fourth gear, flat out, and the crowd came over the wall!

"My God! What are these people doing on the track?!"

So we slowed down and we got the chequered flag and we won. It was such a neat feeling.

The car that Carroll built had made it to the end of the hardest 24 hours in motor racing

and finished in front.

Our job was relatively easy at Le Mans

and we were very proud of it.

Enzo was livid. He never dreamed that he'd be defeated at Le Mans,

his stomping ground.

The unbelievable had happened.

A chicken farmer from Texas had masterminded the development and build of a world-class racing car.

Prepared and raced by a bunch of Californian hot-rodders,

it had taken on the might and power of world champions Ferrari and won.

It was a battle that marked the end of an era.

From the mid-'60s onwards, racing cars became a whole different deal.

Never again would determination be enough to get you to the track, let alone win.

Le Mans was to become the domain of highly organised factory teams with global sponsors.

The art form Shelby had mastered was to change for good,

which made the era of the Cobra-Ferrari wars, for Shelby and his crew,

a period in time that they would relish forever.

I think that there was not a guy

that was affiliated with the Cobra project

that today does not look back and say,

"It was the best of times."

Subtitles by BBC Broadcast - 2002

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