Reflecting on Ford v Ferrari and the Time I Blew Carroll Shelby’s Engine

Being seated way up in row F, I had to twist my head way around to inspect the audience behind me. But the theater looked packed, which is saying something. Regal Edwards Big Newport is something of a cinema cavern, claiming to have the biggest screen on the West Coast (40 feet tall and 80 […]

The post Reflecting on Ford v Ferrari and the Time I Blew Carroll Shelby’s Engine appeared first on MotorTrend.

Being seated way up in row F, I had to twist my head way around to inspect the audience behind me. But the theater looked packed, which is saying something. Regal Edwards Big Newport is something of a cinema cavern, claiming to have the biggest screen on the West Coast (40 feet tall and 80 feet wide) with 1,108 recliner seats. I studied the faces: most everybody were salt-and-pepper middle-agers–the ideal audience for seeing Ford v Ferrari. A graphical bubble-chart of the planet’s Cobra and Ferrari populations would center its largest blue and red circles straight on top of Newport Beach, California.

It’s a great, jumbo-popcorn movie. By the end I figured that Shelby Cobras must have appreciated by about 25 percent (the guy in front of me said “I’m seeing this again” as we left). From beginning to end, though, this guy in row F was flinching with automotive triggers.

Like Phil Remington actually being portrayed in a major motion picture. Who’d ever imagined that? Or Lance Reventlow (a playboy Revlon heir who later died in a plane crash) appearing in the pits at Willow. Reventlow’s primary driver in his Scarab cars was his buddy, Chuck Daigh; decades later, I lived near Chuck’s workshop and was sometimes kept awake while he revved the engines he was still building as an old man. No, I didn’t mind.

But I may have actually whispered “Oh, wow” at the critical scene where Shelby storms over to the pit wall during the Daytona 24 hours and holds up a pitboard telling driver Ken Miles to increase his revs to 7,000 rpm to win the race, defying the conniving Ford brass. It’s written in big chalk strokes; Miles looks over and reads it and puts his foot down as the quivering tach needle nervously climbs.

Shelby telling a driver to go for it and use 7,000 rpm. The movie got that right.

I was once the driver for a complex story that included trying to replicate the legendary 0-100-0 mph time achieved by Miles in a 427 Cobra at the Los Angeles International Airport. Shelby later said that Ken became deeply passionate about this test, but his actual time has always been disputed. Carroll remembered 12.4, others have it as 13.2 sec. And who knows how the heck it was timed or how Miles knew he was actually doing 100 mph before braking. Which is probably just how Shelby liked it.

We were not imprecise. My pal, Paul Van Valkenburgh, fabricated a special fifth wheel for accurately measuring the runs that included a signal so I knew when to brake. All the latest supercars were assembled at the historic drag strip at Pomona and as the cherry on top, Shelby was invited to bring a 427 Cobra to reenact that 12.4 or 13.2, or whatever it was. He showed up.

The car was a “real” 427, but not an original. The FIA’s rules had required him to build 100 examples, but when he got to 57, they said, that’s good enough. But Shelby had chassis and a lot of parts for the 100, so he presciently registered them with the State of California with the idea to finish them later. This car was one of those 43, a real 427 just a few decades tardy in getting completed. With polished aluminum body and white circles on the hood and doors typed with the black number 98, it could have fooled Phil Remington.

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With the gear strapped on, and with the car idling with a palsy shake, I climbed in and looked at Shelby. Briefly, I was Ken Miles.

“What do I shift at?” Shelby’s mechanic said 5,500, so I muscled the shifter into first, brought up the engine’s roar and let out the clutch. The rear snaked and the wind and shaking quickly rose, blurring my aim between the narrowing guardrails. When the system signaled 100, my foot darted to the brake pedal and commenced the incipient-lock-up pulsing that ABS automatically does today.

I circled back to the starting line.

“Whadyaget?” Shelby asked? Whatever the time was (I honestly can’t remember it now)–it was many seconds too slow.

“Try 6,000,” Shelby countered. The mechanic, standing behind him slightly shook his head. I did it again, watched the tach, shifted at the higher mark and clocked a better time. But still, nowhere close to the 12.4/13.2 or whatever.

“Shift at sixty-five-hunurd,” he said. The mechanic strongly shook his head. “Don’t mind him,” Carroll drawled. “You just go ahead now and try 6,500.” The time was quicker again, but obviously, Ken Miles’ times didn’t seem remotely possible.

Finally, Shelby paused and then said “Shift at 7,000.” The mechanic was now animated, mouthing an exaggerated “no, no,” but Carroll caught sight of him and waved him off. “Ignore this guy. I got plenty more engines like that. Seven-thousand.”

OK, Carroll Shelby is telling me to do this. And at the 2-3 gearshift, the movie script of Ken Miles at the 7,000-rpm crescendo suddenly got an instant rewrite. Bam!

I shut it off to nothing but wind and tire noise and gradually rolled to a stop. The mechanic later found two broken rocker arms and a bent pushrod.

I’d blown up Carroll Shelby’s 427 right in front of him, but he couldn’t have been nicer about it. In fact, he almost seemed amused. “Don’t you worry about it. We’ll just put in another one.” In retrospect, his suddenness in viewing the car as just a dispensable tool for producing a number was startling. Like that, Shelby the racer reappeared.

These days, road test editor Chris Walton, records 100-0 braking times whenever we have a particularly fast car, so we can add it to the car’s 0-100 mph time to estimate its 0-100-0 potential. It’s an impossibly perfect composite as it leaves out the driver’s foot transition and brake application which is a lot quicker now because you can just hammer the ABS brakes (rather than delicately stepping into it). The switchover from accelerating to braking might be 0.3 second? If you include that, Chris has now recorded 36 cars quicker than the Ken Miles 427 Cobra’s 12.4 (the 2017 Tesla Model S Ludicrous+ being quickest at 10.5 seconds). Did Miles actually record that 0-100-0 time? It’s a stretch. Sure, I’m no Ken Miles (everybody here would eagerly agree with that). But even so, ABS wasn’t around and tire grip was miserable in 1965.

What I’m certain of is that Ford v Ferrari got it dead-right. Carroll Shelby did like to tell drivers to shift at 7,000 rpm.

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