In the film, Miles has no patience for Ford’s corporate gearheads insisting on weighing his experimental Ford GT40 down with a sophisticated aeronautical computer in the passenger seat, ripping the whole device out in frustration and opting with the rest of Shelby’s team to employ a more tried-and-true, old-fashioned approach: taping bits of string to the vehicle exterior and eye-balling their wriggling movements for evidence of drag.
Here’s one pointed example: After Ford II has given Carroll Shelby and his team a blank check to design, build, and road test a race car to best Ferrari at Le Mans, the Shelby American crew knuckles under at an airplane hangar near LAX to put various prototype dragsters through their paces. Ferrari its character arcs and dramatic tension. To the extent that the cinematic Miles diverges from the historic Miles, it’s in the innumerable minor events and dialogue exchanges that give Ford v. As Gozzi says in Baime’s book, it was “a tirade that I had never seen or heard before in my entire life and have not done so since.” The sale to Fiat also did not happen until 1968, well after Le Mans ’66.Īs for Ferrari’s epithet-laden rejection of Ford’s offer, Franco Gozzi, Enzo Ferrari’s lawyer and chief adviser, did recall something on par with the film’s Ferrari calling the company’s executives “worthless sons of whores” who manage a “big ugly factory” that manufactures “big ugly cars” for a “pig-headed boss” who is “not Henry Ford” but Henry Ford II. In reality, Fiat had been granting Ferrari a cash stipend for years simply as a gratuity for elevating the stature of Italian-made automobiles internationally and, as many speculated before and since, Enzo Ferrari was too much of a nationalist to sell his company to Americans. In the film, the Ford-Ferrari acquisition craters thanks to an insider tip delivered by an enterprising Italian photographer, seemingly employed by Ferrari, to the home camp of Fiat owner Giovanni Agnelli, whose competitive spirit and national pride compels a counteroffer. Ferrari’s Ford II upon hearing this news: “We are gonna bury that greasy wop.”
We’re going to race him,” was somewhat more decorous than what erupts from the mouth of Ford v. Ford II’s reaction to this slight, as reported in real life, “All right, we’ll beat his ass. And Ford’s plan to spare no expense on this project was indeed inspired by Italian car designer Enzo Ferrari’s showy and vulgar rejection of Ford’s acquisition offer and the restricted terms of its Ferrari-Ford racing team proposal.
#MOVIE CALLED SHUT IN MOD#
One factual aspect of the dynamic as portrayed in the film is that Ford II and his subordinate executives-including Ford’s then–vice president and general manager, Lee Iacocca-did see success on the European racing circuit as a shortcut to the kind of youthful mod glamour that might appeal to a new generation of American car buyers.
Grandson of the founding Ford of Ford Motor, Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts), who really was nicknamed “ Hank the Deuce,” is portrayed as both an imposing captain of industry and a neurotic beneficiary of his family’s largesse in Ford v.
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