![]() On February 17, 1963, MacDonald finished fourth in Cobra CSX2026 at the FIA Daytona Continental to give the Cobra its first top-five finish in international competition. Teammate Ken Miles finished second both days in Cobra CSX2002. His first outing for Shelby American was February 2–3, 1963, at Riverside International Raceway and he drove Cobra CSX2026 to back-to-back victories. At the beginning of the 1963 season, Carroll Shelby hired MacDonald away from Chevrolet to drive his Cobra roadster. In his meteoric four-year racing career, MacDonald competed in 118 races, with 52 victories and 75 top-three finishes. All in all, the movie included an overwhelming bevy of fast Ford and Shelby eye candy.īesides a slow walk around SLC’s sprawling warehouse and shop (where we must have drooled over every car on the property), our first ride was in a SuperFormance Shelby small-block Cobra that very authentically replicated the red Cobra raced by the late, great Dave MacDonald, a stellar driver that played big in Cobra history: David George MacDonald (July 23, 1936 – May 30, 1964) was an American road racing champion noted for his successes driving Corvettes and Shelby Cobras in the early 1960s. You also saw a Cobra Daytona Coupe or two flash by in various shop scenes. Of course most of these properties were MkII GT40s to replicate the cars that you saw racing in the movie at “Le Mans,” not to mention the countless Cobra roadsters that Bale raced and Damon drove. One was a Shelby Engine Company big-block 427 that you only saw on screen sitting on an engine stand. Some were partially built body/chassis, other simply non-running bucks. We say properties, because not all of the items were complete and running cars. SLC provided nearly 30 different properties to FOX in the production of Ford v Ferrari. The company was named after one of the family’s previous dealerships in South Africa – because it sat on the “hill” near the “bank” of a certain river. And in case you may wonder, there is no Mr. And Hillbank is one of those dealers, owned and operated by Stander. Shelby Legendary Cars is the North American company, based in Irvine, California, that imports them, and handles distribution to Shelby licensed dealers. ![]() SuperFormance, based in South Africa, is the company that produces all of the current continuation Cobras under license for Shelby American. “Sure, no problem,” said the ever-jovial Lance Stander, majordomo of SuperFormance, Shelby Legendary Cars (SLC), and Hillbank Motor Corporation. Shelby Legendary Cars provided all of the Cobras and GT40s you saw on that big screen, and still had a few on hand when we visited to ask, “Can we drive them?” Matt Damon and Christian Bale did more than credible acting work portraying Carroll Shelby and the mega-talented but oft-times mercurial Ken Miles.Īmong the many things Ford v Ferrari accomplished was to (re)introduce Ford and Shelby American’s epic chase for total domination of Ferrari, and everyone else, at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the mid-60s, as well as the rest of the world’s sports car and endurance racing landscape. Making one look like Le Mans in 1966 was an even bigger one that had to also include every car seen, period-correct apparel, signage, the grandstands and such. Making any race track look like Le Mans is a major undertaking. But in the end, the producers got the big stuff correctly – and what about those cars!?īesides the marvelous cars we got to see and hear in surround-sound, the set recreation in the movie was marvelous. Sure, you can quibble with some of the factual accuracy of this big-screen, big-drama racing epic, as true fans know not everything happened as portrayed. – Most of us saw and presumably enjoyed the film Ford v Ferrari, which in some world markets was named Le Mans 1966.
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