To the casual observer, Ford?s dominance of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the late 1960s can seem almost monolithic. After all, the winning was all done by GT40s, wasn?t it" While the small-block Mark I cars that triumphed in 1968 and 1969 and the big-block Mark IIs?which brought Ford its first overall victory at the Circuit de la Sarthe in 1966?shared real visual and mechanical continuity, the 1967 Mark IV was its own thing entirely.
The GT40 had been an Anglo-American proposition from the start, with roots in Eric Broadley?s lovely little Lola Mark 6, but the Mark IV was to be a star-spangled affair, meant to erase all doubt that American know-how was superior to Italian twelve-cylinder prancy-horsey voodoo; that it wasn?t the luck of the Limeys that had spurred the Yanks on to victory the previous year. Never mind that the winning car had been driven by a pair of Kiwis named Chris Amon and Bruce McLaren.
The Mark IV, if not made of space-age stuff, was at least made of aerospace-age stuff. Its genesis was what Ford referred to as the ?J-car?, referring to Appendix J of the FIA rulebook, which laid out the specification to which the new racer would hew. The chassis was constructed of aluminum honeycomb with its segments bonded together. The windshield wiper was from a Boeing 707. It wasn?t, however, quite the crash program one might imagine. Ford had begun work on the J-car with Michigan’s Kar Kraft in 1965 after the GT40?s first disappointing outings at la Sar...