Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans

Question: What are you adage in your book that hasn’t been said before?

Answer: No one has ever successfully written a book about cars and racing that can be easily loved by a name who doesn’t know a thing about cars and racing. My book accomplishes this. At the same time, reviewers who have studied this automotive era for decades have read the book and told me they were shocked to learn many things they didn’t know. Specifically, no one has ever written about this tale with such a focus on the business side: why it happened in the first place, how Henry Ford II had a vision to make the first pan-European auto company in the 1960s, selling Ford cars from London to the border of Russia. How could he prove that his American cars were the best in the world and that Europeans should buy them? By winning Le Mans. There’s a whole foundation to this tale that I’ve never seen fully explored elsewhere.

Q: How did you do your research?

A: For starters, I did dozens of interviews: Carroll Shelby, Lee Iacocca, Phil Hill, Mario Andretti, A. J. Foyt, Dan Gurney, John Surtees, Edsel Ford II (son of Henry Ford II), Piero Ferrari (son of Enzo Ferrari), Lloyd Ruby, plus engineers, mechanics, PR men, executives, and on and on. I conducted interviews in Italy, France, England, Los Angeles, and Florida, plus countless others over the phone from my office in New York. On top of the interviews, I read everything ever written on the theme, and I saw every bit of footage, which was a particularly excellent source for dialogue. In some cases, I took quick cars onto racetracks, such as Daytona and Ford’s Romeo test facility north of Detroit, to try to get further into the heads of the drivers during scenes that take place at these locales.

Q: Any highlights during your research?

A: My interview with Carroll Shelby. Afterward, he drove me from his office in Gardena, California, to the Long Beach airport. The guy was getting on in years, and his vision was fading. But we were passing car after car on I-405 in a Mustang GT-H, which has ridiculous amounts of horsepower. We’re talking about a guy who won the 24 Hours of Le Mans wearing chicken farmer overalls in 1959. Nearly fifty years later, he can’t see much, but he can still drive.

Q: Why is this topical now?

A: What’s happening in the American auto industry today is just stunning. My book is in large part about Detroit at the dawn of globalism. It’s kind of like the first chapter in a long narrative that is now reaching its climax. In the 1960s, when the global car sales race started, Detroit was battling against German, British, and Japanese companies for the first time. Ford sold cars by proving on the racetrack they were better than anyone else’s. We won in heroic fashion in the 1960s. We’re not winning anymore

(Photo © Timpthy White)