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Aya-Wavedancer — Ford GT40MKII XGT-1
Published: 2014-04-01 08:57:35 +0000 UTC; Views: 1534; Favourites: 29; Downloads: 19
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Description
I know many of you like pics of this car. I liked the way the light and shadow played across the lines of this pic in particular. Also note the Gurney bump over the driver door. I didn't get good pics of the interior, I tried, but there literally is a carefully cut out and padded hole in the top of the door and the "Gurney Bump" was fastened on to give the driver some head room in this notoriously short vehicle.And all I can think of is the certain Gent in Asia who likes to come up with colorful titles for his pics in contrast to my rather dry documentation. What would he pick for this one? "Juicy Sex-filled American Lemony Goodness", I would bet.
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Comments: 31
Very nice. It's quite a car. Oddly, it looks good in yellow!!
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Well, the car was part of that insane all-out 1966 Ford LeMans effort, with 3 cars out of the Shelby stable (1,2,3) 3 out of Holman-Moody (4,5,6), and two from Alan Mann in England (7 and this one), as well as a few other MK.1s that were also ran by Ford allies.
I believe every car is painted an actual Ford color, and the way Greg Kolasa was talking at his presentation, they may have been running out of colors.
They wanted every car different enough so that they could be easily recognized in the pits.
Will try and get a couple more detail shots of the car up, mainly for modeling references in part and just because certain things aren't easily seen unless you actually aim at them.
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Yes, and they did win!
Interesting, I can't say I remember this particular yellow, but maybe it was there. It makes sense about the pits.
Good on the other shots!
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Well, this car didn't run for long. Both of the Alan Mann cars really had bad luck. The Shelby cars did pretty well, only the Gurney car (3) broke, and it was I think leading fairly late when it broke, and the H-M cars, 4 broke even before this car and 6 wrecked IIRC. Andretti really had bad luck with Ford in this era.
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Andretti, yeah I remember him race. Never at Le Mans though.
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Mario raced there several times, did well in the Group C era with his son Michael with him. For the most part, bad luck. 1967, his MK IV got caught up in a nasty crash, and if not for the NASCAR style roll cage, he'd likely have been killed.
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Glad he wasn't! A great name in racing, Andretti!
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Mario, Dan Gurney, and AJ Foyt as well as Graham Hill are maybe the 4 greatest drivers of all time in terms of their well-rounded talents. They could get into anything and go fast, and did. With more specialized demands on drivers nowadays, one sees this less and less.
Maybe Tony Stewart could be that person now, but after his sprint car accident, I doubt we'll see him driving anything other than in NASCAR.
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You're probably right. Gone are the days when you took your fast saloon, registered, jumped in and drove off. I suppose the up side is there are fewer fatalities, which has got to count for something!
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They call the last say 30 years the "safe era" for a good reason!
Fuel cells, roll cages, better helmets, better fire protection, better trained course and rescue people, all have helped.
At least there's autocross and hillclimbs for the little guy, and there's some lower cost club racing available in the US- you still need some money for the SCCA stuff, though....
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Hillclimbing, too, but that's become a very rare event in this region. We used to have several major events around here but the only ones now are Giant's Despair in Wilkes-Barre, which is flat-out, some guy is winning overall with an ex-Indy car-- and The Hershey Hillclimb which is now restricted to vintage cars only. We used to have one up the hill at the Reading Pagoda, which is a great road, also very hard on brakes!
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Yes, I guess these things move around. We had a lot of rallies here in SA, but very few and far between now. More circuit-racing, some very nice vintage races with people like David Piper bringing his crew around, but that's twice a year.,, (sniff).
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I'd like to meet Pipes. And he's still bringing his BP green P4 and 917 to the events? Even more of a reason to go!
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Yep, he is indeed. Mind you, it's been a few years since I've gone.
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Awwwww yeah!! I sure love the GT40! It's my favourite car in the world! Especially the GTX1 from 2006!
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Well, the GTX-1 is a different car altogether from this one- this is a 1966 Ford GT40, not a Ford GT from the mid-2000's.
Now that you mention that--- the GTX-1 is based on this actual GT40 variant from the sizties, and surprisingly, it still exists. Read here- Even Greg Kolasa, Shelby expert believed this car to have been scrapped as of January 2014.
www.topspeed.com/cars/ford/196…
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I think i've seen the original X1 before. Pretty beautiful machine I must say!
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I know I've seen it in white and blue, IIRC with Chris Amon at the wheel- I think it ran in Can-Am and really wasn't successful.
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I figured you would, especially since Sydney's own Frank Gardner drove this one at LeMans.
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I've only ever seen one in the flesh so to speak, GT40P 1030 which was brought here by Colin Hymes as a road car. I have read it went back to the states and was used in some advertising promotions.
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Not sure on the States with 1030, but many of the GT40s were painted up to look like race cars and faked in Ford promotions here. Seems the car's kind of went semi-underground since it left Australia. Some of these cars are "known" by the registry people but there's an agreement at times between the registry and the owner to keep mum.
There are some pics of 1030 around online from '05, seems to be one of those semi-hidden cars.
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Thanks for the info. I'm sure given their value it will be looked after wherever it is.
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For certain- Greg Kolasa, who does the Shelby registry discussed this at the presentation- they do their detective work, usually based on a "A guy saw a Shelby" or a "guy knows a guy who says he's seen one", go from there, and sometimes they then find the car and the owner, usually gobstopped he's been discovered, asks for anonymity. The good news is for the registry, a car previously thought non-existent is found, it's just that the car is listed under "Owned privately somewhere in the US", something like that.
Real GT40s, and there's evidently a real mess with Sbarro and others, are really gaining value. Guys like Ronnie Spain in the UK are evidently worth their weight in gold for ascertaining whether the car is real, or a well crafted replica/fake. Nothing wrong with an exact replica GT40 at all, as long as you're forthright about telling people exactly what it is.
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Thanks for the reply, I haven't even seen a replica here, ah well.
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I've only seen one GT40 at The Glen in 2003 and then this one. Real ones are very scarce to say the least. My guess the best bet one has to see them are in European vintage races like Goodwood.
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Yep I reckon you're right, thanks again.
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