The True Story of Ford v. Ferrari Is Pure Petty Drama, And We're Here For It

Ford v. Ferrari deals with your classic "elite team of misfits does the impossible" story. In real life, though, the backstory behind why they were trying to do something unusual in the first place is a gloriously petty tale of bruised egos and rejected business deals.

In the early 1960s, the American auto dealer Ford, run at the time by Henry Ford II, was interested in acquiring the Italian luxury brand Ferrari. According to Top Gear, a deal was in place by May 1963. However, when the time came to close the deal, Ferrari owner Enzo Ferrari — who, some believe, never intended to close the sale at all — changed his mind and withdrew.

Ford returned to his company, furious at the deal slipping through his fingers. He famously told his right-hand man, Don Frey, to "go to Le Mans [car race] and beat [Ferrari's] a**."

As in any good story, achieving Ford's goal would require assembling a crack team. The Drive reported how Ford brought in Carroll Shelby (played in the film by Matt Damon), a world-class driver and automotive engineer. Shelby also brought along Ken Miles (played by Christian Bale), a British race car driver with whom he frequently worked. Their mission? To design and build a new car, from scratch, that could defeat Ferrari's entrants in the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans race, a Grand Prix race in France.

The team eventually developed the model called the GT40, specifically designed to be able to topple Ferrari's cars off the top spot at the track. Along with Shelby, renowned auto executive Leo Iacocca (played by Jon Bernthal) and a top-notch team of experts worked through multiple iterations of the car.

In the 1966 race, in which two-man teams drove in an endurance race, both Ford and Ferrari had multiple entrants. Ford's strategy involved sticking together so that a Ford car — any Ford car — could win. There were a total of eight Ford entrants in the race, compared to four from Ferrari.

Motor Authority explains, however, that the Ford strategy wound up hurting one of the key figures in the GT40 team. On the final lap, two Ford cars were in the lead: one driven by Miles and Denny Hulme, the other by Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon. Ford wanted to stage a publicity stunt and have the cars tie for the win, and they crossed the finish line simultaneously. However, the officials at the race awarded a victory to McLaren and Amon, declaring that they technically covered more ground because their starting position had been eight meters behind their teammates.

Out of the fifteen cars that did make it to the finish line of the 24-hour race, none were Ferraris, and the only two Fords that made it were the top two. Ferrari never won another Le Mans. The bittersweet finale for Miles turned tragic within months. During a test drive of the next-generation GT40, Miles was killed instantly when his car crashed and ejected him.

Prior to Ford v. Ferrari, the rivalry between Ford and Ferrari at the 1966 race was covered twice before. The 2009 book Go Like Hell, named after McLaren's words to urge on his codriver Amon as they drove to victory, detailed the race itself and the companies' rivalry. In 2016, a documentary called The 24 Hour War also explored the race and the rivalry.