Three Bozos and a Car

Our Heroes: Jeremy, Richard and James modeling their be-logoed jumpers.

Ford GT-40 #5, the third car to cross the finish line, behind Ford GT-40's #1 & #2, at Le Mans in 1966.

The Grand Tour is basically a comedy with cars and fart jokes, but occasionally they do something interesting like, for instance, the story of how Ford came to build a race car that won at LeMans for four years running. In this story we have a shot of James May driving Ford GT-40 #5, pictured above, sort of. Actually, there are no pictures of #5, except some grainy, black & white, telephoto shots from race day. Lot's of pictures of #1 & #2, but no pics of #5. The picture above is of a diecast model, not the real car. But here on The Grand Tour, we have James May actually driving the car, reputedly worth $20 million or some equally extravagant number. That was kind of cool.

Wikipedia has a version of the GT-40 story.
Post/pic of the new Ford GT.

Ford GT-40 1966

Ford GT-40 1966
198 piece jigsaw puzzle

I did this puzzle on my Chromebox over at the new house. The jigsaw puzzle website won't let you save the image, but if you save the whole page you can find the image in the files that come with it. Unless you are using a Chromebox, in which case you can't. Chromebox downloads the page as one entire file with an mhtml suffix, it doesn't save the images as individual files. However, if you take that mhtml file to another computer, like a Linux box, and load the file with a browser, like Chrome, then you can right click on the image and save it separately. Just in case you were wondering.

The Ford GT-40 has appeared here before.

FORD v FERRARI

FORD v FERRARI | Official Trailer [HD] | 20th Century FOX
When I was a kid back in high school, I was enamored with Group 7 Can-Am race cars. To my mechanical brain they were the perfect American way to go fast: Big engine, chassis made of flat panels of aluminum riveted together and a handful of mechanical bits to hold the wheels. We didn't need fancy, we did big and simple and went like greased lightning.

The Ford GT-40 was the epitome of this genre. James May of Top Gear fame did a show about it. While it was a great show, it was done in James May style, meaning it was almost totally devoid of drama. This movie promises to be entertaining.

I have learned a bit about myself and people in general in the intervening 50 years. Getting people to work together toward a common goal is, to my mind at least, a much more difficult task than building a race car. I could build a race car. Getting a crew together to campaign it would be dang near impossible task for me.

Previous Ford GT posts.

Via Ross

Pic of the Day

Ford GT via Road & Track

The original Ford GT, the GT-40, won the 24 hours or Le Mans four years in a row from 1966 to 1969, the same four years I was in high school. No wonder I think it's the coolest car in the world, and I think aluminum 427 cubic inch V-8 engines are gods gift to everyman.

Ford GT

Ford GT (2017)

Quote of the Day

1966 Carroll Shelby presented the keys to a Ford GT 40 Mark I Factory Road Coupe to David Heerensperger of Spokane, WA. It was one of only 31 cars built to road specifications.

The picture has nothing to do with the following quote, I just needed a picture and this one was handy. And cool.

Harper Lee's Pulitzer prize-winning book was first published in 1960. Now, the historical novel is banned in many high schools because it has been deemed Racist, because it "creates a white savior narrative" - an arbitrary verdict I don't agree with. I read it when the paperback edition came out in '61 or '62 and enjoyed the book very much. The first film version of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' was very good, too, but I thought 'TKAM III: Revenge of the Sith' really sucked. - Car Blog - The View Through The Windshield

Toys

Spad S. VII

We stopped in Centralia, Washington, on the way home so Anne could indulge in some shopping at the outlet mall there. So John and I walk around for a bit looking for something to amuse ourselves for the duration, and, lo & behold, a KB Toys outlet store! We are saved!

It's been a while since I have been in a Toy store and right away a Ford GT-40 / Transformer catches my eye. Absolutely useless, but it might be interesting to see how they implemented all the folding mechanisms. I wander around for a while and I find a bunch of cool stuff. Normally I am pretty immune to impulse buying, but I am feeling a little low, so I go ahead and indulge and buy a couple of things.

One of them was model of a Spad S.VII. It came in an easy to build kit form. Already painted, no glue required, just some screws and a little dexterity. I finally sat down and put it together this morning. Took about 30 minutes.

Looking at the model I notice there is a four-into-one exhaust pipe manifold on each side of the engine housing. That looks suspiciously like what you would find with a V-8 engine. Could it be? Well, yes it could. A Hispano-Suiza V-8 to be exact.

Update June 2019 replaced missing picture.

Camaro at Le Mans

How NASCAR was FASTER than Ferrari at Le Mans
Driver61

This video is a year old. This year's race will be next month. I used to think Le Mans was the coolest race in the world and then Ford won it in a spectacular manner with the GT-40. No way you could top that, so I stopped paying attention. Now NASCAR is giving it a shot. I hope they have some success.

So the Camaro was run by Garage56. Huh, that sounds a whole lot like Garage 54, the YouTube channel from the crazed mechanics in Siberia.