46 Years Ago At Sebring (Ford GT 40 Mark II)

Ken Miles in Chassis 110, in the Webster Chicane at Sebring, 1966.

When I posted that Ford built only one GT 40 roadster, I forgot about this one.  Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby won Sebring 46 years ago next weekend in this Mark II.  They had already won Daytona.  It has passed into legend that Miles was denied a Triple Crown when Ford staged a photo-finish at LeMans. He was a lap ahead of the Bruce McLaren/Chris Amon Mark II when Ford ordered him to back off near the end of the race.  His car had been gridded one spot the behind the McLaren/Amon car at the start, and thus covered a few feet less total distance.  Miles was partnered with Denny Hulme at LeMans because Lloyd Ruby was racing Indy cars in the States.  Nobody has ever won Daytona, Sebring, and LeMans in the same year.

But I learned in preparing this post that, at Sebring, Miles had lost a lap to the Mark II coupe of  Dan Gurney and Jerry Grant when he pitted to change a cracked brake disc.  He got the lap back, but was still well behind when Gurney's engine blew on the back straight on the last lap.  An astonished Miles cruised by to win.  So, if he was robbed at LeMans, Miles was Sebring's Cinderella.  He was killed at Riverside Raceway early the next year, testing the successor to the Mark II, the Mark IV used by Gurney and A.J. Foyt to win LeMans in 1967.

Chassis 110 had an unusual and star-crossed history too.  Ford Advanced Vehicles (England) asked Abbey Panels, builder of the steel GT 40's, to do an aluminum roadster tub early in 1965.  It was sent to Kar Kraft in Detroit, who built "X-1" using a 7-liter NASCAR engine and an experimental automatic transmission.  It had Ford's 1965 LeMans Prototype front bodywork, including lights.  They ran it in four Can-Am races that fall with little success: it was bigger and heavier than purpose-built Can-Am cars.  At the end of the season, Ford shipped it to Carroll Shelby in Los Angeles.

That winter, Shelby American rebuilt the car into a new "standard" GT 40 Mark II for the 1966 championship season--the one pictured above.  Chassis 110 was slated to race at LeMans too, but took such a pounding from Sebring's bumps that it was parted-out for other Mark II's after its return to Los Angeles.  The aluminum tub was scrapped.  So, while two GT 40 roadsters were built by Ford, a steel Mark I and an aluminum Mark II, only the Mark I survives.