Steve McQueen's $11 Million GULF Ford GT40 Is The Most Expensive American Car Ever Sold

Steve McQueen's $11 Million GULF Ford GT40 Is The Most Expensive American Car Ever Sold

Ford GT 40 é o carro mais caro dos Estados Unidos

Ford GT 40 Is America's Most Expensive

1968 Ford GT40 Sells For $11 Million .

[GTB]

All 112 Ford GT40s were built at Ford Advanced Vehicles in Slough, England.

The 1968 and 1969 Lemans wining John Weyr cars got 302 CID Windsor engines with Gurney Weslake heads.

Two and three valve.

The dohc Indy engine never went in, as the intakes between the cam covers would not fit the chassis.

The early dohc alloy Indy engine with normal intakes in the V was not developed, after 1964....

John Weslake would put copper/brass O-rings around each cylinder eliminating the blown head gasket issues of the 289s

A new nose section with changed internal aerodynamics, made possible by FIA sports 25 rule changes,

eliminating the spare wheel found up front in the 1964-1967 GT40 cars..This change provided some down force

from the nose of the car... via the hidden internal foil....

there were a multitude of internal and external changes to the car as developed by Weslake from his GT40 based

Mirage M1....

Rules changes for 1968 eliminated the M1 from contention, so he converted them back into GT40s....

Ford GT Mk.II and Mk. IV were NOT part of the 112 GT40 production run...

Mk.IIs were developed on both side f the ocean

Mk.IVs were developed here.

HISTORY

Not opinion....

I attended The Daytona Continental and Sebring 12 Hours races, 1964-1972

The sound of the Ferrari V-12s ....

Subscribed to R&T, SCG and C&D all those years.

Had neighbors who build dragsters and roundy round cars, worked on sport racing

and Formula cars in the Tampa Bay area, for top national teams.

A welder from TVA days, and a Volvo owner.... learned S.U. carbs from him...

A mile west of The Tampa DragWay on US-92.

[daSlipurySinky]

That's one of the sexiest exhaust notes I've ever heard

[johnropeleski]

A TRUE AMERICAN CLASSIC.NEVER LOOKS BORING, A REAL BEAUTY

[GTB]

Phil Remington (1921—February 9, 2013) was an American motorsports engineer.

Remington was born in Santa Monica, California and was a pre-engineering student at Santa Monica Junior College. He initially was a component inspector at Northrop Aircraft. He joined the Army Air Corps during World War II by lying about his age because he was too young and by memorizing the vision charts because he was color blind. He served as a B-24 flight engineer.

Motorsports
After serving in the Army, he began working with friends who raced by building race cars, developing hydroplane parts and engine swap kits.

In the late 1950s he became chief engineer to Lance Reventlow, building the Scarab sports racing car on Princeton Street in what is now Marina del Rey, California.

When Reventlow was closing his shop, Carroll Shelby hired Remington as his chief engineer in Shelby's new shop on the same street.
Shelby said his competition success was due to Remington.
When Shelby American was split up, Remington remained with the Shelby Racing Components company in Torrance.

Remington moved to North Carolina in 1968 to run the Talladega Grand National stock car program at Holman and Moody.

The team won the Daytona 500 that year.

He moved back to California and worked at Dan Gurney's All American Racers (AAR). There Remington worked on Can-Am, Formula 1, Formula 5000, Indy 500, Trans-Am, GTP and IMSA cars.
He also worked on AAR Alligator Motorcycles and did contract work for aerospace firms, while there.

In 2012 he built the oil and water coolers and engineered the suspension on the DeltaWing race car.

Health concerns caused him to discontinue working full-time at AAR in 2012.

[danwill]

Got to see this car up close at Monterey Car Week in California. Everyone I talked with working the auction estimated it would go for 6-8 million. They were shocked it sold this high. It was a good year to be a seller, many cars sold over the reserve bid.

[broncobill]

FYI at one point this car was all hacked up (roof cut off and doors cut up) in order to mount a camera and an extra seat for the camera man. Then it was used to film Le Mans.

[kijjii]

He used this gt40 p1074 as a camera car for the movie. Only car that was fast enough to keep up with the 917

[surreallife]

People who say that the GT40 was not powered by Ford engines don't know anything about Ford or the GT40's. The GT40 was all American. The GT40 weighed in at 2000 to 2400 pounds.  The 427 FE powered cars were slightly heavier because it was a big block engine. The engine used in all the GT40s were American Ford power. The the MK1 was powered by a 289 except that it had Gurney Westlake heads and intake Webers or direct port fuel injection, but the heads were still 2 valve heads like the 289. The MK2 and MKIV were powered by the Ford 427 FE engine which Ford was using in NSACAR. The same engine also came in production street Fords. The same basic small block Ford engines are stilled being used today in Australian touring cars and NASCAR racing and are beating the Europeans like AMG which quite the series after repeatedly being beating by Fords that were using the two valve single cam engine design from the 1960s. The MKIV was the heaviest of the three cars. The 427 FE big block is still used today in street and race cars. Very few engines can match the power, reliability and low cost of the Ford V8.The engines also sound great.

[suzyjohnson]

I have read almost all the books,
spoken with some that were there during that time, including Edsel himself. This is 100% a Ford product period. In the very beginning there was the
Mustang #1 mid engine concept completely designed and built in Dearborn. Along comes the deal that feel apart with Ferrari and the rest is history. The Lola was only a engine test bed and the basis of how monoqocue is constructed.
There was no assembly line anywhere that could produce such a car especially during the 1960's and it is not practical to involve UAW in a project like this, hence Shelby American, Kar Kraft and FAV.

[felipechavarria]

McQueen bought the 1969 lemans winning car to become a camera car for his movie Le Mans 1971

[jeffmiller]

Had a farm tractor that sounded like that but turned out the distributor shaft was bent. If I had only known that sound like that would be worth that much money I would`t have fixed it. Really chaps my hide!

[steveoh]

Hand built shelby prepared and raced 427 side oiler pushord v8 with a touch of cam...

[GTB]

Brake pads by Ferodo!

No small thing at Mulsanne Corner

Trust me!.

[GTB]

Only pin heads argue about The Head Of The Pin Trust.

Work was done on both sides of the big water.

The Limeys get a twist in their knickers about  who was on first, '

what was on second....

Ford HIRED Broadley for his Lola Mk. 6 GT experience.

Decided the "production" of the 100 cars would devolve on to Ford of England

What ever the works were were called over there.

A LOT of Lance Reventlow's people came to Shelby American WITH

the buildings and plant. Phil Remington was one of the names.

Shel put a 221 CID Ford truck V-8 in a cast off AC Bristol or Acea..

I forget which. Test drove it  around an oil well farm...

It seemed to work pretty well so he got on the horn to FoMoCo

about the possibilities. AC was fresh out of Bristol engines

The English Ford Six in the AC had not been a big seller...

So THEY were QUITE interested in proceedings.

The rest is history!

Except to chauvinists of every stripe.

THEY can go pound sand.

J.C.

[joedeegan]

It has always looked good to me. Part of it is the full windshield so it looks more like a street sportscar than an insect. The Lamborghini p400 Miura owes a lot to it. The GT 40 MK II looks good too, not as gracefull rather more brutal, its 427 engine requiring modified scoops to get more air to the engine and extra scoops for the rear brakes. I read that the brakes glowed not red hot at the Mulsanne corner, but white hot. Since the car weigh
ed over 3000 pounds there was a lot to stop.

[guyfrawley]

i thought the GT40 was really built in the UK using Ford parts!!

[Loulovesspeed]

Now it's 2019 and the new record for most expensive American car sold belongs to the 1935 Duesenberg SSJ once owned by the great actor Gary Cooper.  It's one of only two built and with a 420 cu in DOHC supercharged engine put out 400hp  - far more than anything in the world at the time,  let alone the U.S. Top of the line 1935 Mercedes 500K with a straight eight supercharged could only manage 160hp.

[afenijmeijer]

The Le Mans winning car chassis #1075 would go for 10 X what this car fetched.

[paulseiler]

Yes, yes yes, you are right, in "Le Mans" it was a Porsche 917 and Ferrari 512.

[JamesDoylesGarage]

Okay I am now very confused. It seems as though some of the car is made in Brittan and some in America. Yes financed by America we can agree. So here is 4 simple questions. From that I will decide for myself alone what nation built the GT40. #1 Where, who designed the shape of the body? #2 Where was the body made? #3 Where was the engine block made? #4 Of the parts made in Brittan who supervised the build? Please keep it simple. I don't have time for a book but would greatly appreciate the abbreviated story.