Lunn says he learned one big thing from the 1965 experience: that the big engine, loafing around at 6000 rpm, was the way to go.

However, from the amount of development work that has been done since then, it seems unlikely that the cars would have finished anyway in 1965. Hasty preparation resulted in a gear that was intended for scrap being put into one gearbox and dirt on a bearing surface of the other gearbox, putting both the new KK transmissions out of commission. They missed the April practice altogether with the 427 cars and actually finished building the second one at Le Mans just before the race, but nevertheless started both cars. If Ford people had been experienced at Le Mans, they wouldn't have tried it. Whereupon somebody up high said this is the car we are going to race! But tire developments made decent handling possible and with the first running car Ken Miles lapped Ford's 5-mi oval track at Romeo, Michigan, at 201 mph.

Work on these two cars was started in March 1965 with no real thought of running them at Le Mans that year. Kar Kraft's next project was to chop up two GT40 chassis to accommodate the hulking 7-liter Ford Galaxie engine. The original Colotti had been modified in 20 ways to cope with the relatively large 4.7 engine but its reliability was still marginal Lunn felt it had to be replaced as transmission failures were still the most common difficulty. With Kar Kraft set up and Lunn its head, the first project of the small company was to design a new transmission. About that time Ford set up Kar Kraft-a wholly owned subsidiary intended to be small enough to get things done with dispatch appropriate to racing ways but close enough to the parent company to draw on its resources. Toward the end of 1964, Roy Lunn, Ford ’s chief design engineer on the GT project, began to have doubts about the development possibilities of the basic 4.7-liter GT40. Why was the Ford performance so much better this year than in the two years past? Why did Ford campaign the big Mark II, rather than the lighter GT40 with the 289 engine or the more advanced 'J' car? Why a slow-turning 7-liter engine instead of a lighter, high-output unit such as the Indianapolis DOHC engine? Or even the 7-liter single overhead cam? And win they did, in grand style with a 1-2-3, even if the finishing order of the three wasn't quite what Mr. After three years of trying, Ford became the first outfit to win the Le Mans 24-hr race with an American car. There's a lot of cheer in the Ford racing organization, from Ford general manager Don Frey right on out to the errand boys in the three racing teams. From the October 1966 issue of R&T, please enjoy this thorough technical analysis of the car that finally beat Ferrari-the GT40 Mk II. Ferrari, which tells the story of Carroll Shelby, Ken Miles and Ford's quest for Le Mans glory has us going through the archives.

Last ford ids version before change