Shelby's race-spec machine also includes a … Carroll Shelby managed to live life like a king, despite popping nitroglycerin … And you'll never see this message again. As the Shelby V8 Alpine was being constructed and patience was in short supply, Ken Miles constructed his own V-8 Alpine to prove concept viability. Upon realizing that he had lost his well-deserved win at Le Mans ’66 to another Ford driver, by conceding against his gut to a publicity stunt, the real Miles said something that probably would have made for a delightful line-reading from Bale: “I think I’ve been fucked.”, Matt Damon got a perm to better resemble the legendary Texas-born racer and quite effortlessly fit Iacocca’s recollection of the man as a “good lookin’ son of a bitch.” But the historic Shelby was a little more proactive than the one in the movie. Shelby produced the AC Cobra (sold as the Shelby Cobra in the United States), which relied on the chassis of the British-made AC Ace and a Ford V8 engine. He did in fact run a tuning shop, Ken Miles Unlimited in North Hollywood, happily but unprofitably until early 1963—when the IRS padlocked the business over unpaid taxes. It's not a surprise for those who know the true saga of driver and engineer Ken Miles (played by Bale) and car designer Carroll Shelby (Damon) during the infamous, controversial ending of … Ken was one and a half laps ahead and he’d have won the race. They have been awfully good to me.” Perhaps a man that congenial and talented, denied recognition in his lifetime due to minor technicalities and a fatal accident in his late 40s, deserves a slightly hagiographic Hollywood dramatization like this, with just a little extra polish. Engineer) and would wistfully doodle logos experimenting with mergers of the Ford and Ferrari names. His zodiac sign is Capricorn. Throughout the film, Ken and Carroll push the limits on the vehicle, leading Ken to have a … Ford’s aeronutronic technicians and Shelby’s team manager, Carroll Smith, worked these two methods in tandem, with the computer gathering internal air pressure and temperature and the string method gathering information about the car’s exterior and exhaust. Ferrari racer No. Join Slate Plus to continue reading, and you’ll get unlimited access to all our work—and support Slate’s independent journalism. Cloudflare Ray ID: 6225f8512ef12175 He did marry a woman named Mollie and father a son named Peter. As with Miles, the screen version of Shelby hews close to the real-life driver and mogul. Beating Ferrari—the man as much as the team—was likely most personal to Carroll Shelby. The ostensible villain of the first half of Ford v Ferrari: the Scuderia Ferrari … Miles, too, was also more accommodating in real life than in the movie, despite a clear awareness that he’d been fucked. By joining Slate Plus you support our work and get exclusive content. And engineer-slash driver Ken Miles came with him, whether Ford wanted that or not. Miles was a busy teenager. While Iacocca had a role in this scheme, it was more minimal than it appears in Ford v. Ferrari. Slate relies on advertising to support our journalism. What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in Steve McQueen’s, former business colleagues of Ford Senior Vice President Leo Beebe, when Shelby American and Ford teamed up again in 2008, object to risks Miles took at the 12 Hours of Sebring race in Florida and later at Le Mans, while testing Ford’s experimental J Car at the Riverside Raceway, never saw them get into any knockdown, drag-out, grocery-spilling fistfights. All rights reserved. But alas, that wasn’t the case. Aside from Miles, Carroll Shelby himself drove the car, as did Bob Bondurant and Peter Brock, to name a couple. Come watch Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles come together to build the Ford GT to compete against the Italian Enzo Ferrari’s race cars at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans. The daring untried nature of this gambit, meanwhile, was not exacerbated by Shelby nicking the Ferrari team’s precision Swiss stopwatches, a flourish that is regrettably absent from the source material. Though the scenes of conflict within the team, pitting sleazy marketing guys against maverick racing savants, have some basis in reality, they are embellished. As he judiciously tried to explain to Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Thomas, “Please be careful in how you report what I have said. 7. Shelby is best known for his involvement with the AC Cobra and Mustang for Ford Motor Company, which he modified during the late 1960s and early 2000s. Ken Miles’ son, Peter Miles, made major contributions to the biopic, helping Bale prepare for the role. Shelby and Miles teamed up to … His birth name is Kenneth Henry Miles. Similarly, Miles’ crew chief recently told CBS News that he never saw them get into any knockdown, drag-out, grocery-spilling fistfights. Much of the travel and haggling was conducted by his subordinate, a metallurgical engineer named Don Frey, whose technical know-how genuinely won the eccentric carmaker’s respect for a time. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. A few months after Ken's death, Peter went to work for Ken's friend Dick Troutman at the Troutman and Barnes custom car shop in Culver City, California. The Ford v Ferrari movie depicts automotive designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and British driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) as mavericks who fight corporate interference, namely from Ford's racing director, Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas). 9 months ago. Peter stayed at the workshop for four years. Enzo Ferrari would call Frey “Dottore Ingegnere” (Dr. His zodiac sign is Scorpio. In the film, the Ford-Ferrari acquisition craters thanks to an insider tip delivered by an enterprising Italian photographer, seemingly employed by Ferrari, to the home camp of Fiat owner Giovanni Agnelli, whose competitive spirit and national pride compels a counteroffer. Baime’s nonfiction book Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Carroll Shelby And Ken Miles. He really did move to Hollywood and ingratiate himself with Southern California’s hot-rodding racing scene. The other was Ken Miles, one of the best-known racing drivers in southern California (played by Christian Bale in Ford v Ferrari). Fact: There really was a company in Italy named Ferrari that made excellent … One of the most surprising things about Ford v Ferrari’s treatment of Le Mans (and other races like Sebring) is how accurate the carnage is. To say that Ford v. Ferrari plays fast and loose with the facts is arguably to miss the point. Ken Miles’ mysteriously death will likely remain a mystery. Carroll Hall Shelby was an American automotive designer, racing driver, and entrepreneur. Then we lost him in August.”. 20 did have an accident that led to a pileup with a Porsche and a French Matra MS620. Miles really did go from driving lumbering tanks for the British Army in World War II to setting records in some of the fastest sports cars produced over the ensuing two decades. All contents © 2021 The Slate Group LLC. And, tragically, Ken Miles did die shortly after Le Mans ’66, while testing Ford’s experimental J Car at the Riverside Raceway on Aug. 16, 1966. The one-of-one package includes a continuation Shelby World Championship Jacket (https://bit.ly/3jCwIpv) from the Original Venice Crew that is exactly like the one worn by Ken Miles and the Shelby American race team in 1965. You can cancel anytime. His autobiography, The Carroll Shelby Story, was published in 1967. Photos by Merrick Morton/20th Century Fox and Bernard Cahier/Getty Images. Fact: There really was a company in Italy named Ferrari that made excellent and fast sports cars in a bespoke fashion that contrasted dramatically with Ford’s assembly-line system. Photo illustration by Slate. Ken Miles Ken Miles should of won the 1966 24 hours of Le Mans, or at the very least be named the co-winner. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. Bale starred as Ken Miles, the motorsports legend who died in a car crash in 1966. Ken Miles was married to Mollie and had a son, Peter Miles. Most people know of Carroll Shelby as the creator of the Cobra and Shelby Mustang. In reality, Fiat had been granting Ferrari a cash stipend for years simply as a gratuity for elevating the stature of Italian-made automobiles internationally and, as many speculated before and since, Enzo Ferrari was too much of a nationalist to sell his company to Americans. And in April 1963, Ford really did attempt to purchase the financially ailing Ferrari over the course of several secret meetings, including a tour for Ford reps through one of the artisanal shops in which machinists carefully worked on Ferrari’s 400 Superamericas. • Your IP: 212.224.89.135 You’ve run out of free articles. Miles, though, wasn’t happy. The sale to Fiat also did not happen until 1968, well after Le Mans ’66. So, when is Ford v. Ferrari remaking history, when is it at least being true to the spirit of the story, and when is it simply printing the legend? One of the legendary car racing duos of the world and the inspiration for generations of racers with enthusiasm and the idea of revolutionizing their racing-cars, it’s Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles. British driver Ken Miles was played by Christian Bale in the film, and he was enlisted to drive the Ford GT40 Mk1 by his best friend, automotive designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon). As for Shelby’s relationship with Miles, Shelby could be a sentimentalist about his friend and colleague, but as difficult as Miles really could be, their friendship does not seem to have included a fight in which Miles threw a wrench at Shelby, leading to Shelby having that wrench framed. As he says in Go Like Hell, “I’ll forever be sorry that I agreed with Leo Beebe and Henry Ford to have the three cars come across at the same time. In order to create a more compelling story around its two main characters, Shelby and Miles, the movie largely omits the vast cast of participants who were responsible for the … Petersen Automotive Museum has released a video of the legendary race car driver Ken Miles and Carroll Shelby testing out the Shelby Cobra 289. To the extent that the cinematic Miles diverges from the historic Miles, it’s in the innumerable minor events and dialogue exchanges that give Ford v. Ferrari its character arcs and dramatic tension. Ferrari. Ken Miles built his first car when he was 15 years old. Among the many rough edges smoothed over in the process is one of the historic Ken Miles’ most iconic and dramatically relevant quotes. The movie showed car designer Carroll Shelby (Damon) visiting Miles’ widow and son after his death. However, because of World War II, he could not comple… Ken Miles was an aging driver, respected by his peers but outside of the limelight. • “With $25,000, I can build two cars that’ll blow off the Corvettes.”. Ken Miles is the car racer attached to … Shelby never locked Beebe in an office to get a private audience with Ford, according to Frank Comstock, a journalist and former student of Beebe’s. He established Shelby American in 1962 to manufacture and market performance vehicles. Nevertheless, gearheads, automotive historians, and former business colleagues of Ford Senior Vice President Leo Beebe will find a lot to quibble about in this dramatization of the Ford Motor Company’s historic first win over its Italian rival at France’s 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966, which takes its inspiration from A.J. In Ford v. Ferrari, Iacocca shows up to Shelby’s automotive workshop with a life-changing offer and a blank check, but in real life, it was Shelby who showed up to Iacocca’s office in Detroit with a well-rehearsed pitch and a calculated asking price. “The idea is staring American car manufacturers in the face,” Shelby said, according to Go Like Hell. Ken Miles is more than just a person portrayed by Christian Bale in Ford vs Ferrari. Shelby, Ken Miles, and Phil Remington designed the GT40, and after years of losing to Ferrari, Ford finally won the Le Mans in 1966 (contrary to what is depicted in the film, Miles actually did compete in the ‘65 race, and he didn’t finish — completing only 45 laps — because the gearbox malfunctioned). Here’s one pointed example: After Ford II has given Carroll Shelby and his team a blank check to design, build, and road test a race car to best Ferrari at Le Mans, the Shelby American crew knuckles under at an airplane hangar near LAX to put various prototype dragsters through their paces. Photos by Merrick Morton/20th Century Fox and Reuters/1978 Sid Avery. Shelby’s relationship with British-born Ken Miles, one of the drivers in the 1966 Ford team, provides the basis of the 2019 film Ford v Ferrari. Peter was almost 15 when he witnessed his father's death during the testing of a prototype car in 1966. Performance & security by Cloudflare, Please complete the security check to access. Photos by Merrick Morton/20th Century Fox and Hugo van Gelderen / Anefo. In the heat of the moment, Shelby was completely fine with Beebe’s suggestion, although he came to regret it after Miles’ unexpected death a few months later. He did his schooling from “Woodrow Wilson High School” in Dallas, Texas. Shelby truly was an expert salesman, and his gift for gab was of continuing assistance throughout his life and Ford’s Le Mans project. Ken Miles was coming downhill at the Riverside course when the J car unexpectedly flipped and caught fire, killing Miles instantly. Ford II’s reaction to this slight, as reported in real life, “All right, we’ll beat his ass. Leaders Should Always Play To Their Strengths – Shelby said, “We’re lighter, we’re faster, and if that … To use another (but sadly not the last) racing metaphor, let’s take a look under the hood. In the spring of 1963, two Englishmen met in a small back room at Shelby American. One was Ian Garrad, a rising star in the Rootes Group organization, recently appointed the manager of West Coast sales. Photo illustration by Slate. If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. As Gozzi says in Baime’s book, it was “a tirade that I had never seen or heard before in my entire life and have not done so since.”. One factual aspect of the dynamic as portrayed in the film is that Ford II and his subordinate executives—including Ford’s then–vice president and general manager, Lee Iacocca—did see success on the European racing circuit as a shortcut to the kind of youthful mod glamour that might appeal to a new generation of American car buyers. Carroll Smith – Shelby American Race Team Manager: “I could tell that something was up regarding the finish but I … When he was 15, … In 1929, when he was 11 years old, he started riding a “350cc Trials Special Triumph bike.” Once, while riding the bike, he met with an accident and broke his nose and three teeth. He finally emigrated to LA in 1951 with wife Mollie; his success at car racing drew attention of Carroll Shelby. “It broke my heart when we lost Ken,” Carroll Shelby. In 1986, Peter joined Precision Performance Inc.(PPI), starting as a fabricator and then a mechanic before beco… The story, covering Ford’s effort to win the 1966 race at Le Mans, pits buck-the-system car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and volatile driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) against corporate micromanagers — organization men and busybodies who look for obedient team players and hammer down protruding nails like Shelby and Miles. In the film, Miles has no patience for Ford’s corporate gearheads insisting on weighing his experimental Ford GT40 down with a sophisticated aeronautical computer in the passenger seat, ripping the whole device out in frustration and opting with the rest of Shelby’s team to employ a more tried-and-true, old-fashioned approach: taping bits of string to the vehicle exterior and eye-balling their wriggling movements for evidence of drag. Shelby Loved His Chili. Ken Miles, the human being, does not differ much from Ken Miles, the effervescent and Brummie-accented character played by Christian Bale in Ford v. Ferrari. With a few hours left in the race, Ford came to Carroll Shelby with an idea- Miles was a couple of laps ahead of Bruce McLaren, and Ford wanted to attempt to stage a tie. In one of the many rousing sales pitches that Matt Damon’s race car driver–turned–race car maker Carroll Shelby delivers in the film, he solemnly promises, “We’re going to make history.” And although there’s not much evidence that Shelby actually delivered this pep talk in the 1960s, he certainly said it later when Shelby American and Ford teamed up again in 2008. Among those nerve-wracking technical glitches, Miles did actually have trouble closing the door of his Ford GT40 Mk II, reportedly because he had bent the door by slamming it on his own (helmeted) head, but this did not stop him from setting multiple new lap records. But, in keeping with the many acts of dramatic license already reviewed, there was less internal bickering within the Ford team about Beebe’s directive that Miles slow down long enough for the second- and third-place Fords to catch up for a three-way photo finish. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Please enable Cookies and reload the page. Assisting Shelby in the testing of the vehicle was Ken Miles. Shelby, as he does in the film, did have a serious heart ailment, angina pectoris, which led to both his retirement from race car driving in 1960 and the steady diet of nitroglycerin tablets that Damon’s Shelby is seen popping in the film. Many more vehicles, including the Ford and Ferrari entrants seen blowing gaskets and burning out their engines in the film, did not finish due to less harrowing equipment failures. He was also a close friend of Carroll Shelby. And Ford’s plan to spare no expense on this project was indeed inspired by Italian car designer Enzo Ferrari’s showy and vulgar rejection of Ford’s acquisition offer and the restricted terms of its Ferrari-Ford racing team proposal. Photo illustration by Slate. Carroll Hall Shelby was born on Thursday, January 11, 1923 (age 89 years; at the time of death)in Leesburg, Texas, United States. The movie will be at no cost to us at the Water Gardens Cinema 6 in Pleasant Grove at 9:30pm and we will be doing a show before in the parking lot at 6pm. Ferrari didn't insult Ford. The final stop for the Miles / Hulme Ford finds Carroll Shelby (far right) telling Ken Miles and Denis Hulme of the decision to have a blanket finish. If there was a definite cause of death, it died with Ken, Carroll Shelby, and anyone else at the track that day. Both looked over the little British sports car sitting before them, a … Ken Miles was born on Friday, November 1, 1918 (age 47 years; at the time of death)in Sutton Coldfield, England. As for Ferrari’s epithet-laden rejection of Ford’s offer, Franco Gozzi, Enzo Ferrari’s lawyer and chief adviser, did recall something on par with the film’s Ferrari calling the company’s executives “worthless sons of whores” who manage a “big ugly factory” that manufactures “big ugly cars” for a “pig-headed boss” who is “not Henry Ford” but Henry Ford II. In reality, there was no conflict. The Carroll Shelby Foundation is auctioning a special diorama handcrafted by Managing Director Rafella Golden honoring this milestone. After completing high school, he enrolled in the Aeronautical Engineering Program at the “Georgia Institute of Technology” in Atlanta, Georgia.
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