Ford v. Ferrari trailer 2 | Time For Tea?
We've only two months to go before the story of Ford's rise to Le Mans dominance hits the silver screen - time for another sneak peek
The story surrounding Ford’s path to victory at Le Mans is the stuff of legend, so it’s a wonder that Hollywood hadn’t already made a film about it. While 1971’s ‘Le Mans’ captured the passion and danger of the 24-hour race it focussed on Porsche, meaning the story of how the Blue Oval halted Ferrari’s winning run in 1966 never made it to the silver screen.
That’s set to change from the November 15th, when a new film called Ford v Ferrari (best to keep things simple, eh) hits theatres with Matt Damon and Christian Bale in the roles of Carroll Shelby and racing legend Ken Miles respectively. In the run up to its launch a second trailer has been released to whet the appetite, with more footage of the GT40’s development story both on and off the track, lots of V8 goodness and – new for this trailer – even the back and forth jibes from Enzo Ferrari and Henry Ford.
Nevertheless, we’ll admit to being a little concerned by Bale’s character’s claim that they’ve “90 days” to produce a Ferrari-beating car. Hopefully Disney hasn’t omitted the extensive work carried out in Slough to develop Ford’s racing car from a Lola Mk6 base before Shelby’s involvement, because that would be quite a substantial misinterpretation of the actual story…
This is just a trailer, though, so we’ll cut it some slack for now; let’s just be happy to see a story as iconic as this finally reaching the big screen. Hopefully we’ll all still be happy when we walk out of theatres in two months’ time.
At least Goliath will eventually give David a good hiding in this Hollywood epic!
Coughcough Marian Rejewski at the Polish Cipher Bureau before the war started cough
However, a great shame they chose to so blatently rewrite the history book, rather than relate an equally enthralling true story.
The quoted 90 days was the time it took designer Peter Brock, with the support and help of Phil Remmington and some of Shelby´s workshop crew, to build the (in this film, completely ignored) front engined 289 powered Cobra Daytona Coupe at the end of 1963.
From laying out the lines on the floor of the workshop to testing the new car at Riverside. It was built to create the most aerodynamic form around the Cobra Roadster chassis with the tall Ken Miles sitting in it.
The "Ferrari´s ass is mine" story initially surrounded the Daytona Coupe, and its development from running its first race at Daytona in 1964, up until taking the FIA GT Sportscar Championship from Ferrari in 1965.
After that, the Daytonas (six original race cars were bult) were retired, when Shelby´s full attention was needed to help sort out the GT40.
The GT40 development took longer (a complete new mid-engined chassis) starting its evolution from the Lola MkVI, that ran in Le Mans in 1963. It´s body was designed by Ford designers in Detroit, with much technical input from Eric Broadley, Shelby and John Wyer.
It won the championship outright, for the first time in 1966.
In the film, the story of both cars have been mixed into one. A great film script, I´m sure it is.
However, the Daytona story on its own, would make an incredible film, with much intrigue and many colourful personalities involved.
I hope it happens, some day!
At least Goliath will eventually give David a good hiding in this Hollywood epic!
Unlike Ford who had to start, effectively from scratch, basing their car on a Lola mk6 (?)
I think that gave them a considerable head start over a behemoth like Ford, who, let’s remember, only got the DFV into F1 a year after the 1966 victory.
And it took a huge $ sledgehammer to crack the Le Mans / Ferrari nut, costing more iirc than it would have cost to buy Ferrari in that infamously abandoned deal
As for the film I just hope we don’t have any of that stupid ‘Fast & Furious’ rubbish where they are going flat out and then slam the loud pedal to the bulkhead to emphasise an overtake at breakneck speed...
Coughcough Marian Rejewski at the Polish Cipher Bureau before the war started cough
Also, you can’t compare the two movies. One clearly never happened, ie it wasn’t the Americans. The other clearly did happen, ie Turing and co cracking codes at BP. The fact the latter didn’t acknowledge or show the huge contribution by the Poles doesn’t mean what was shown was not true, just that it wasn’t necessarily the whole truth.
But you are right to raise the point that the Poles contributed enormously towards the breaking of German codes.
I'll forgive most of that if it's a decent movie though. Rush suffered many of the same issues, but Daniel Bruhl's performance as Lauda gave it a bit of a free pass. FvF has Christian Bale, so there's cause for at least a little optimism.
Why not enjoy the film for what it is - a great story based on true events.
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