All dressed up for a Saturday night.

In between sorting out the aftermath of my mother's recent death I've agreed to go to the Peninsula Drive In this coming Saturday with the GT40 Replica Owners Club (along with the Fake Snake lot) to see the Ford v Ferrari movie.
More as a social event actually.
The general agreement in our crew has been to dress up the Fords as closely as possible in colours representative of cars that competed at Le Mans up to 1970, so I've (reluctantly) gone along with the theme and come up with a close approximation of #1079, car 8, the Claude Dubois entry driven by Willy Mairesse and Jean Blaton.
The additional decals are all removable as I have no intention of driving on public roads looking like some 'Boy Racer'!
Aside from the GT40 sill stripe and the lack of canard fins she does look pretty authentic!
Ignore the trophies, my brother insisted on using them for 'atmosphere'....... Muppet!

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/QRooSs.jpg

:encouragement:

Car show a few weeks ago here in the states, Arizona. Not 1, but 2 GT40s on display. Oh and 2 Panteras!

What a crap film it turned out to be, the racing sequences were rubbish (drivers eyeballing one another at 200 MPH!) and even 'Ken Miles' started to get on my nerves after a while.

Typical 'Hollywood' cock up of what should have been decent movie. It almost made 'Rush' look good..............almost.

:barf:

Wombat666,

I'm going to preface this by saying I don't know racing of this type from a hole in the ground. But I actually thought the movie was excellent, and at times very funny. I thought the racing scenes, except for the looking at each other part, to be very realistic and brought home the elements of speed, timing, and precision that drivers of this caliber have to have. I also thought they did a good job with discussing some of the technical issues of brake fade, changing out the entire braking assembly, and it was a nice touch that they also focused on the pedal work rather than relying solely on CGI, similar to Nicolas Cage driving the Shelby Mustang in Gone in 60 Seconds, although overall the McQueen version still blows the former out of the water.

I also thought the movie was very well cast. I'm not a fan of Christian Bale, but he worked for me, along with Matt Damon as Shelby. The fight scene with the wife in the lawn chair had me rolling.

I'd put this in the same category as the current reincarnation of Midway. Those with technical expertise can probably shred the s*it out of it ten ways from Sunday, but for the average non-racing person, it works as a good historical picture of that time and place, even if all of the details are imprecise. It is entertainment after all, not a documentary.

Hi Rami,

I guess owning a 'Replica GT40' and being a life long car freak makes me overly picky at times.

What really irks me in this case is the complete ignoring of the origination of the 'Ford' GT40 which was designed by an Englishman by the name of Eric Broadly and run for the first few (unsuccessful) years by JWA, again an English operation that had to suffer with constant interference out of Detroit.

(I do have a lot of time for Christian Bale as an actor BTW)

When Shelby received the cars he was fortunate to have a really good team of engineers and a crack development driver.

Phil Remington and Ken Miles were the heart and soul of the project which came together faster than expected.

And of course you're right on the mark, it is 'entertainment' not a doco.
I simply hate it when fiction gets thrown into a really good story............................................. ...:banghead:

Sadly for Shelby's people, Ford took over the operation and installed their own corporate collection following the 1966 Le Mans victory.

Interestingly, the JWA operation took on the European side of the business and won Le Mans and the World Sports Car championship using their own version of the small block engine, deemed unsuitable by Ford who kept on pushing the 427 lump.

And there were 20+ members of the GT40R Owners Club who agreed with me on Saturday night. :encouragement:

I think this video is worth watching after seeing the movie: https://youtu.be/fhiWRTDZ7-E

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wombat666

And of course you're right on the mark, it is 'entertainment' not a doco.

I simply hate it when fiction gets thrown into a really good story............................................. ...:banghead:

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Wombat666,

Agreed, but remember, we're dealing with Hollywood, so to a degree it has to be Ameri-centric to work with U.S. audiences. Look on the bright side, at least they didn't completely bastardize history like they did with U-571 or Pearl "Brotherly Love" Harbor.

Just a footnote.
The recently released doco titled 'Shelby American' tells the true story, and does it in an excellent fashion.
Covers Shelby's lifetime from start to finish and shows Ford to be the corporate a-s-h-l-s they truly were (and still are).
Great interviews with the surviving members of the Shelby crew along with contemporary pieces with those long departed.
Highly recommended as an antidote to the BS movie.
:biggrin-new:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wombat666

Just a footnote.
The recently released doco titled 'Shelby American' tells the true story, and does it in an excellent fashion.
Covers Shelby's lifetime from start to finish and shows Ford to be the corporate a........s they truly were (and still are).
Great interviews with the surviving members of the Shelby crew along with contemporary pieces with those long departed.
Highly recommended as an antidote to the BS movie.
:biggrin-new:

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An excellent documentary!! Although I was a huge Jim Hall and Chaparral fan at the time, I was cheering hard for the GT40 to beat the Ferrari's during those years. The Chaparral was awesome, but didn't have the resources it needed. (Even with GM's back door perpetually open to them :biggrin-new:)