GT40 (United Kingdom, 1964)

Ford presented the GT40 model for the first time in April 1963 in England and again, months later, in New York. This model, however, didn’t enter production until the end of 1965, when the road version was finally finalized. The Ford GT40 results from Henry Ford’s project of entering a Ford car into the Le Mans race, which he had been wanting for some time.

Henry Ford wanted his cars to compete with and beat the Ferraris so much that he let his company spend the biggest amount of money and resources that a carmaker had ever spent on one single car’s development. Ford’s racing division was then ordered to find a car builder that would conceive a car that could competitively race on endurance-racing events and beat the biggest adversaries.

The ‘GT’ in its name stands for ‘Grand Tourisme”, while the ‘40’ part of the name represents the height of the car – 40 inches (102 cm). In 1966 a new an...