Go Like Hell

by A. J. Baime

  “No.”

  “Tell him I called to know whether or not we can arrange a meeting.”

  When Ferrari returned to the factory and got the message, he thought quietly for a moment. Something was up. He knew Filmer Paradise—president of Ford Italiana. “Let him come,” Ferrari told Gozzi. “Fix a meeting in the old office in Modena, maximum secrecy, inside the company too.”

  Ferrari and Paradise met two days later. Yes, Ferrari said, he was interested in striking a deal. He chose Ford because he was a great admirer of Henry I, he said. He would sell his factory to the Americans as long as he could retain control of the racing team. He had no interest in the customer cars.

  “I never felt myself to be an industrialist, but a constructor,” Ferrari told the Ford man. “The production development of my firm is only of interest to me if conducted by others.” Then: “But be quite clear that in the construction and management of the racing cars I want absolute autonomy.”

  Paradise reported back to Dearborn. The next day, a group of fact finders prepared to head to Italy. Among them was Roy Lunn, a thirty-eight-year-old Englishman with a taste for fine suits and pocket squares. Lunn was the one Ford engineer in America who had experience building racy European automobiles. When he was in his twenties he had worked at Aston Martin, where he designed the DB2, which won Le Mans in its class in 1950 and 1951. Lunn’s little Aston became the “it car” to own in Europe as a result. Lunn joined Ford in 1953. By some accounts, he had the best job in Detroit. He was paid to draw up plans for vehicles of the future. Among his design concepts was a three-wheel flying car topped by a helicopter propeller and a 170,000-pound supertruck called Big Red. He was Ford’s answer to Q in Ian Fleming’s 007 novels, complete with patrician British accent.

  If the deal with Ferrari came to fruition, Henry II was likely to install Lunn as chief engineer in Italy. Before he left for Europe, Lunn met with Iacocca in his office and Iacocca warned him of a hostile reception.

  “It would be like an Italian Mafia group came to the U.S.,” Iacocca joked, “to buy the New York Yankees.”

  On April 13, Lunn checked into the Hotel Reale on the Via Emilia in Modena.

  Lunn and four other Ford men arrived at the factory gate in two cars. Gozzi was there to meet them, and soon Ferrari made his entrance. He had a way of stripping people of their confidence with a mere handshake. A prominent Italian journalist once described Ferrari: “The Drake was big and robust and with his way of doing things seemed like a monument, before whom everyone, absolutely everyone (heads of state, kings, businessmen, actors, singers and all others) felt great embarrassment.”

  Ferrari led the Ford men into the works. In the racing department, a large open bay with a two-story-high ceiling, sports cars and Grand Prix machines were situated in a diagonal row, tended to by men in gray jumpsuits. Windows allowed natural light to illuminate the workspace. The facility was stark and small. On the other side of the factory was another open bay—the assembly line, where the top-of-the-line 400 Superamerica was in production. (Car and Driver’s take on the $17,800 Superamerica that year: “Owning one is, or should be, the goal of every automotive enthusiast anywhere.”) Machinists worked over presses, lathes, and drills fashioning cylinder blocks and crankshafts. Each man was in charge of a piece of equipment, with directions to work according to a specific drawing on the machine with absolutely no deviance. The little factory was the antithesis of the American plant. Everything was done by hand, with no automation. That year, Ferrari’s four hundred–plus employees constructed some six hundred customer cars. The Rouge produced twice that many cars every day.

  When Ferrari and Gozzi showed the group Maranello’s wind tunnel, the Americans chuckled. It was fashioned from a defective Ferrari engine, a rotor, and a large, white, horn-shaped funnel. Unlike the advanced technology Ford had access to in America, Ferrari’s wind tunnel resembled an oversized tuba, and it was big enough to test the airflow over diminutive models only.

  When Lunn saw the foundry, he noticed that, like the rest of the place, it was immaculate. The whole factory seemed the only place in Italy not dusted with tobacco ash.

  “Boy is it clean,” Lunn remarked. “It’s amazing that you can keep the foundry like this.”

  Ferrari answered through an interpreter: “I have taught these men how to wipe their asses.”

  In early May, Iacocca’s number two, Don Frey, arrived from Dearborn to close the deal. The asking price was $18 million, a pittance considering Henry II’s personal fortune, estimated at nearly half a billion dollars.

  A thirty-nine-year-old with dark hair parted neatly on the side, Frey had the face of a man ten years his junior. Shortly after their meeting, however, Ferrari learned that behind Frey’s fresh face and dainty glasses lay an exacting and brilliant mind. Frey had earned a PhD in metallurgical engineering from the University of Michigan. His love of cars was as renowned at Ford as Iacocca’s ability to sell them.

  Frey and Ferrari spent hours together talking, engaged in long discussions about the difference between American and Italian machinery. Ferrari doodled logos, trying to join the two company names. He called the Ford executive Dottore Ingegnere, a sign of respect for the American’s intellect. They took drives in Ferrari cars up into the Apennines. On these roads, with their loops and switchbacks, Ferrari made use of his old racing skills. “He drove like a mad man,” Frey later remembered. “He loved to get me in the car and try to scare me.”

  As negotiations moved through May, Frey reported back to Henry II. Never did it occur to the Ford men that the whole deal could in fact be an elaborate machination, a ruse. That Enzo Ferrari may have had another agenda completely. By this time, news of the deal was public knowledge, making headlines all over the world. It would be the most unusual merger in automotive history. The Italian press was up in arms. It was as if they were losing a national treasure—the Ferrari automobile—to these arrogant Westerners.

  This pleased Ferrari. It seemed he was not the Monster of Maranello after all, but a monument to Italy. No Italian would ever underestimate his value again.

  On May 21, both parties sat down with a final contract (one version in English, another in Italian) in Ferrari’s office at the factory. On one side of the table sat Don Frey and a sizeable delegation of Ford lawyers. On the other was Ferrari, one lawyer, and an interpreter. From his portrait on the wall, Dino Ferrari looked on. The final asking price was down to $10 million—a sum so small, it didn’t make sense. And yet, no one at Ford questioned it. The agreement called for two entities. Ford-Ferrari: A company, 90 percent of which would be owned by the Americans, which would manufacture customer cars with a “Ford-Ferrari” badge on them. Ferrari Ford: The racing team, 90 percent of which would be owned by Ferrari.

  Dearborn’s brainpower had concluded that the number one priority of this latter organization would be Le Mans. This 24-hour test in France carried more commercial importance than all other European races combined. At Le Mans, Ferrari was invincible. Buying Ferrari meant buying Le Mans.

  As Ferrari read the final document, the Ford men saw him underlining certain passages in violet ink. In the margin, he drew a large exclamation point. It was clear that he was angry.

  “But here,” Ferrari said to Frey, holding the document. “It is written that if I want to spend more for racing I have to request authorization to do so from America! Is it also written that way in the official English text? Where is the freedom that I demanded right from the start to make programs, select men and decide on money?”

  “But Mr. Ferrari,” Frey said, “you’re selling your firm, and you pretend still to dispose of it to your pleasure.”

  Ferrari paused. “Dottore Ingegnere,” he began, “if I wish to enter cars at Indianapolis and you do not wish me to enter cars at Indianapolis, do we go or do we not go?”

  Frey replied without hesitation. “You do not go.”

  Ferrari’s face contorted. Something uncoiled inside him. “My rights, my int
egrity, my very being as a manufacturer, as an entrepreneur, cannot work under the enormous machine, the suffocating bureaucracy of the Ford Motor Company!” he shouted. This was followed by a lengthy invective. Gozzi, who was present, described it as “a tirade that I had never seen or heard before in my entire life and have not done so since.”

  When Ferrari was through, he turned to Gozzi. It was 10:00 P.M. “Let’s go and eat,” he said. The two men rose and left the room. The negotiations were over.

  The next day, Frey departed Italy with a signed copy of Ferrari’s book, The Enzo Ferrari Memoirs: My Terrible Joys, which had just been published, as a parting gift. A long flight later, he found himself sitting in Henry Ford II’s office on the twelfth floor of the Glass House. Henry II’s blank stare asked the question: Well?

  “Mr. Ford, I failed,” Frey said.

  The two men went upstairs to the penthouse dining room, where Frey gave a blow-by-blow description of his Italian sojourn. He’d never been in the penthouse dining room. He would later describe that meeting as “the longest lunch I ever had in my life.”

  Henry II listened. He did not like what he was hearing. No Italian hothead was going to get in the way of his plans.

  “All right,” Henry II said. “We’ll beat his ass. We’re going to race him.”

  The statement lingered in the air. Slowly it came to Frey, a vision of what was about to happen and what his role in it would be.

  “How much money do you want to spend?” Frey asked his boss.

  “I didn’t say anything about money,” Henry II answered.

  Frey got the point: Whatever it cost, Henry II was going to foot the bill. There’d be no excuse for second place.

  When Iacocca got word, he immediately had a memo sent to his staff: “Prepare a presentation of plans we propose to implement in view of the suspension of Ferrari negotiations.” A week later he had a proposal in hand to set up a new special-vehicles department unlike any other in Detroit. Its purpose: to design and build the fastest, most reliable and technologically advanced racing car in history.

  America was going to go to Europe and beat Enzo Ferrari at Le Mans. In a Ford.

  PART II

  A CAR IS BORN

  7

  Means and Motive

  To take control of this materialized energy, to draw the reins over this monster with its steel muscles and fiery heart—there is something in the idea which appeals to an almost universal sense, the love of power.

  —Motor World, 1901

  THE LAST AND ONLY time an American car won a major European race was in 1921, forty-two years earlier. With half his body wrapped in bandages following a crash in practice, San Francisco–born Jimmy Murphy won the French Grand Prix in a Duesenberg. Drivers had attempted to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans in American cars before, in Chryslers, Overlands, even a Ford in 1937. In the early 1950s, Briggs Swift Cunningham (“Mr. C.” to his friends) built a series of eponymous cars that represented America’s most heralded challenge at Le Mans, finishing third in 1953 and 1954. The best finish of any American car was a Stutz in 1928—second place.

  Henry II had resolved to do what had never been done. At stake was the reputation of his family legacy, Ford cars. Not since Henry Ford unleashed his flathead V8 engine—his last great invention—in 1932 had the family empire enjoyed a reputation for innovative engineering. Henry I’s grandson was going to change the reputation of the company forever—if in fact he could win.

  The Deuce soon learned that he had added incentive to beat Ferrari. Vengeance became part of the mix. Not long after the Ford-Ferrari deal went south, reports of Ferrari-Fiat negotiations became public. For years, Fiat had provided Ferrari with a stipend, a cash bonus for his work bringing prestige to the Italian automobile. Now, in 1963, Ferrari was beginning to lay a foundation for a deal with Fiat that would supply him with a windfall of badly needed lire. Was Ferrari working a backdoor deal the whole time? It became obvious to many that Enzo Ferrari—a nationalist to the core—never had any intention of selling to a foreign entity. Certainly not to Americans, who had in fact bombed the hell out of his factory during the Big One.

  Ferrari had toyed with Henry II while the world looked on. The stage was set for a war of speed.

  They say automobile racing is as old as the second car. Since Karl Benz first patented the “motorwagen” in 1886, cars evolved into two diverse species on either side of the Atlantic. In America, with its vast roads, mapped out by urban planners who literally moved mountains to make way for them, cars were all about the big engine. Racing stock American cars on an oval track was a tradition that reached back to 1896. With grandstand seating, a promoter could funnel spectators through turnstiles and charge them to see the show. Spectators could witness the entire race rather than a small slice of it. Oval track racing was staged theater, a performance before a paying audience. Whether it was comedy or tragedy depended on the day.

  Europe, in contrast, was the cradle of racing. Town-to-town road races spread the gospel of the automobile across the continent. In contrast to America, roads in Europe molded to the contours of the earth, with twists, bends, hills, dales. Cars evolved with smaller engines capable of quick bursts of power. Constant acceleration/deceleration and cornering required durable gearboxes, supple suspension, quick steering mechanisms, and long-lasting brakes. European automobiles evolved into lighter, more sophisticated devices. Twisty racing circuits were the laboratories where new technologies were tried and proven.

  In 1922, two Frenchmen came up with an ambitious idea: to hold the ultimate motor race. Charles Faroux was a brilliant engineer and France’s doyen of motoring journalists. Georges Durand ran France’s Automobile Club de l’Ouest. Their idea was to arrange a 24-hour contest that would test every facet of an automobile. The endurance race would reveal a car’s weaknesses. Racing at night by headlamp would force competitors to improve upon primitive electrical systems. The winning car would be not only the fastest, but the most fuel efficient and durable, overall the most intelligently engineered.

  Faroux and Durand chose to host their race outside Le Mans. It was here that men came to risk their necks while testing the boundaries of the physical universe. France held the first Grand Prix (“great prize”) here in 1906. Two years later, Wilbur Wright took to the skies above Le Mans in the first significant European flight. Faroux and Durand charted a course on public roads outside of town, which came to be known as le Circuit de la Sarthe, for the nearby Sarthe River. A Chenard et Walcker won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1923, averaging 57.2 mph.

  W. O. Bentley was the first to understand the commercial importance of this race, the prestige that came with victory, not just for the make of car but the country it came from. His English touring cars achieved a dynasty at Le Mans, winning from 1927 to 1930. Alfa Romeo followed—1931 to 1934. The French cars of Ettore Bugatti dominated the prewar years. Following World War II, Enzo Ferrari emerged as the greatest of all Le Mans constructors. In each case—Bentley, Alfa Romeo, Bugatti, Ferrari—Le Mans victories were responsible for the status of these budding companies and created demand for these cars across Europe. If it were not for these checkered flags, would these companies exist today?

  Ferrari called Le Mans The Race of Truth. Over 24 hours, two men (one in the car at a time, the other filling up on nutrients in a catering tent, or catching a bit of sleep in a trailer) traveled the 8.36-mile circuit attempting to go faster than all others. The car that completed the most laps at the end won. By the early 1960s, competition had been divided into two basic classes: Grand Touring cars or GTs (production cars that customers could purchase) and Prototypes. While both were required to have headlights, a two-seat cockpit, and trunk space, the Prototypes were in fact purpose-built racers. Prototypes topped GTs by some 70 mph in flat-out speed in some cases. They were meant to exemplify the sports cars of the future, the science of speed pushed to its limit in street-legal cars.

  In Dearborn, on July 12, 1963, Lee Iacocca held a meeting
of his executive committee. Don Frey opened with a presentation. The plan was to launch a highly specialized division that could focus on building a prototype Le Mans car. Roy Lunn would oversee engineering. The new division, called Ford Advanced Vehicles, would take advantage of the company’s financial resources while operating with the agility and freedom of a small, independent manufacturer.

  “The objective,” Frey said, “is to have a car running in one year.”

  In other words, in time for the 1964 Le Mans.

  Lunn took the floor. He reported on a trip to Europe days earlier. At the 1963 Le Mans, he watched Ferrari cars place first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. He shared his analysis with his colleagues: To beat Ferrari, their racing car would have to travel at top speeds over 200 mph, with the durability to race for 24 hours. (At that speed, a car covered the length of a football field in a single second.)

  “With the exception of land-speed record cars,” Lunn said, “no vehicle has ever been developed to travel at speeds in excess of 200 mph on normal highways. These speeds are greater than the takeoff speed of most aircraft, but, conversely, the main problem will be to keep the vehicle on the ground.”

  To build such a car, all the most advanced design technology and aggressive innovation would come into play. The engine would be located amidships, behind the cockpit and ahead of the rear axle, just like the Ferrari 250 P, the winning car in 1963. Every weld would have to hold. At Le Mans, no weakness could hide.

  “Attempting to meet these objectives represents a scintillating technical challenge,” Lunn continued. “The competition has reached its sophisticated product level after nearly 40 years of evolutionary development.”

  Lunn proposed a seven-figure budget and was amused at how quickly Iacocca approved not just this figure, but the entire plan. All agreed this new racer would have to be built in Europe initially, as few of the specialized components needed were available in the United States.