Go Like Hell

by A. J. Baime

  Who was Ralph Nader? No one in Detroit had heard of him. A lawyer by trade (Harvard Law School, class of 1958), he was a lean six-foot-four thirty-two-year-old of Lebanese decent, a bachelor who lived in an $80-a-month rented room in Washington, D.C. He didn’t own a car. A couple years earlier he had abandoned a small Connecticut law practice and had hitchhiked to the nation’s capital. He had gotten a job as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Labor and started writing freelance articles about public health issues, one of which eventually turned into Unsafe at Any Speed.

  Prior to Nader, the debate over highway safety focused on whether lap belts should be standard in new cars and on a new technology called “the air bag.” In February 1966, two months after the book was published, President Johnson called the crisis of death on highways America’s gravest problem outside of Vietnam. In an era when millions were suddenly confronted with a mistrust of government, big business, authority of any kind, Nader posed the question: Should Americans mistrust their own cars?

  Henry II hadn’t read the book. He didn’t have to read it to know what it said, and to know that it named names. His, for example. And Lee Iacocca’s, Don Frey’s, Roy Lunn’s. The book focused primarily on the Chevrolet Corvair, made by General Motors. But for Henry II, the automotive executive who’d invested the most in speed and racing as a marketing tool, who had himself shredded the Detroit Safety Resolution four years earlier in the spring of 1962 (exactly the year that, Nader claimed, highway deaths began to skyrocket), the safety controversy proved particularly sticky. Nader’s book caused such outrage, Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut had organized government hearings in the Capitol. In a few days’ time, Henry II’s vice presidents were going to make statements before a panel that would include U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, a group of senators and congressmen, and countless television cameras and reporters.

  In the Glass House, Henry II huddled with his vice presidents, trying to script a statement. What was their policy on improving motorists’ safety? Was speed and style in fact the enemy? Henry II listened to his advisors’ statement and he grew furious. It was all wrong.

  “If you take this to the Senate committee they’re going to laugh you out of the hearing room,” he said.

  Yes, he had a major problem on his hands. And it was about to blow up in his face.

  Three years into Ford Motor Company’s campaign to defeat Enzo Ferrari, no driver had perished or been critically injured at the wheel of a Ford Le Mans car. As the 1966 season rolled on, and the Nader situation gained more publicity, the company’s luck was about to run out. The timing could not have been worse.

  Carroll Shelby stood on the pit wall at Sebring angrily waving a hammer at Ken Miles, who was cranking past at high speed. It was late in the 12 Hours of Sebring, which had started at 10:00 A.M. Darkness had fallen. Dan Gurney (in the #2 Ford) was in the lead, but Miles (in the #1 Ford) was hunting him down. They had team orders: no racing each other. It didn’t matter which Shelby American Ford won, as long as one did. They were ignoring pit signals to slow down. Miles saw Shelby waving that hammer and he backed off. When he passed the pit after his next lap, he gave Shelby the finger.

  The race had been a brutal, violent affair. Canadian racer Bob McLean had been killed in a Ford GT40. He’d lost it in a corner and had bludgeoned a telephone pole, his car exploding in a fireball in midflight. A collision between Andretti’s Ferrari and a Porsche had sent the latter car hurtling off the track, killing four spectators. (Andretti made it back to his pit after this shunt, where his car erupted in flames. He left the track immediately and did not learn of the spectator deaths until the following day.)

  Gurney pulled in for a final pit stop before the finish. He huddled with Shelby while mechanics refueled the tank and checked tires. Behind Shelby, the electronic leader board showed the positions. It was Gurney, then Miles.

  “Well,” Shelby told Gurney, “you’ve got it won. Go out and take it easy.”

  At 9:59 P.M., the crowds pushed toward the pit row to see the checkered flag wave. The reporters had already tapped out their leads: Gurney wins. Five killed at Sebring.

  Suddenly, Ken Miles rocketed over the line in first place, taking the flag. Gurney followed on foot, pushing his car and panting. His engine had given out a couple hundred yards from the finish. Shocked, the crowds screamed for the winner and applauded for Gurney, who was dumbfounded and heartbroken. Someone ran into the showers and found Miles’s teammate Lloyd Ruby soaping himself.

  “Lloyd! You won!”

  Miles and Ruby were victorious, once again in record speed. But the outcome had left Leo Beebe a little miffed. Miles had ignored team orders. Had Gurney’s engine blown because Miles had forced him to keep his foot down?

  A bleary-eyed Franco Gozzi hung his head and left for his hotel. He faced the task of informing Ferrari of the news. The new Ferrari 330 P3 had not finished the race; its transmission had given out. And the new Dino racer had fared no better. When he reported back to Maranello, his boss sounded more than a little irritated.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Enzo Ferrari said. “I see. What a nice Easter you gave me.”

  A handful of Ford cars were airlifted to France, and just days after the 12 Hours of Sebring, Ken Miles was on the track at the Le Mans test weekend. Ford Motor Company’s aerospace division sent a crew to install state-of-the-art computer equipment in his Mk II. As the car burned fuel, the jumble of wires, plugs, and panels sucked in data.

  On the Mulsanne Straight, Miles cracked 200 mph. He hit 202, 203, 204. It had rained in the morning and there were water hazards on the pavement. When Miles stomped on the brake at the Mulsanne hairpin, engine speed spiking as he downshifted, an oscillograph spit out a stream of graph paper tracking his rpms. The readout looked like an electrocardiogram of a man in the grip of a coronary.

  Miles could feel it: this was his car, his time. At the unlikely age of forty-seven, his glory moment was about to arrive.

  A few yards away, Surtees was preparing himself for a run in the new 330 P3. The red car, with its aggressive, almost belligerent profile, drew plenty of attention, but all talk among the journalists wandering the pits was the speed of the Ford cars. Surtees was still limping; he had yet to enter a race following his hospital stay. This murderous track would be as much a test of the driver as it would be the car. His nemesis Eugenio Dragoni approached him, concerned by all the talk of the fast Americans.

  “John, you’ve got to do something for me,” Dragoni urged. “You’ve got to go out there and set the fastest time. You’re the only one who can do it.”

  Surtees slipped on his helmet. As he eased onto this familiar billiard-table-smooth pavement, he hammered down and the engine shrieked. He headed for that long, storied 3.5-mile straightaway.

  Carroll Smith stood in the pit, logging lap speeds for the official Shelby American report. He saw a Ford Mk II jet past, driven by the veteran Walt Hansgen. Smith looked at his stopwatch and shook his head. It read 3:46.8. All morning long Hansgen had been told to slow down, but the driver kept lapping faster and faster. He seemed intent on proving he could match Ken Miles’s speed. Smith watched him barrel down the pit straight and saw the car’s tail suddenly wiggle. Hansgen had hit some water and was hydroplaning. Tires screeched as the car fishtailed, the driver obviously working frantically, making split-second corrections at well over 100 mph.

  “Christ,” Smith groaned through clenched teeth, “I hope he can sort this one out.”

  The Ford hit a sand bank and cartwheeled end over end, landing in the dirt in a cloud of smoke. The pits emptied. Spectators and reporters rushed to the scene. The wrecked car no longer resembled an automobile except for the wheels sticking out on bent axles. Inside, Hansgen was trapped, and possibly alive. He was unresponsive. The crowd continued to grow; hundreds had gathered. Fingers pointed and camera shutters clicked. Was this what they had come to see?

  At a nearby hospital that afternoon, a British Ford executive, Walter Hayes
, stood near the operating room for what he would later call “the longest hours of my life.” Hayes was Henry II’s closest confidant in Europe, an executive who called Mr. Ford “Henry,” and was the only man Henry II had invited to his wedding the year before. Hayes was a towering figure in the European automobile industry. He volunteered to accompany the injured driver from the track to the hospital, as he spoke French and could communicate with the doctors. A surgeon walked out of the operating room.

  “Did you know him well?” he asked.

  “No,” Hayes said. He explained that he had met Hansgen that morning.

  The doctor shook his head. “Those who come to Le Mans know what they risk,” he said.

  At the Le Mans trials in 1966, John Surtees set the fastest lap time. Walt Hansgen died five days later in a U.S. Army hospital in nearby Orleans.

  On April 13, 1966, Leo Beebe called a Le Mans Committee meeting to order at 12:30 P.M. in Conference Room B at the Dearborn Inn. The group arrived promptly and took their seats. On the agenda: the Le Mans test weekend. A Ford executive who’d attended the trials took the floor and recapped in detail the crash that had killed Walt Hansgen—weather conditions, the wet-weather tires Hansgen was on, the fact that practice continued soon after the accident. Twice before he crashed, Hansgen had been signaled into the pit and ordered to slow down. Carroll Smith told him to lap no faster than 3:50, but Hansgen wouldn’t listen. “Walt’s subsequent laps were 3:59, 3:48.5, and 3:46.8,” the executive reported. Lap twenty-one had ended Hansgen’s life.

  The conversation turned to the next item on the agenda: the final preparation for Le Mans. The race was two months away.

  20

  The Blowout Nears: May–June 1966

  “You are the most completely egotistical bastard I’ve ever met.”

  “You don’t understand. When I go in there, if I don’t really and truly believe I am the best in the world, I had better not go in at all.”

  —Conversation between writer Ken Purdy and a famous bullfighter

  ENZO FERRARI STOOD in the paddock at Monza with one of his aides. It was practice day for Monza’s 1,000-kilometer sports car race. The event would be a significant test for Ferrari’s new Le Mans car. It would also mark the return of John Surtees to competition. Dark clouds rumbled and the place buzzed with intrigue. In practice, no one could catch Surtees.

  Ferrari spotted John Wyer on the grounds. He knew Wyer; everyone knew “Mr. Aston Martin.” Wyer had led the Ford Le Mans effort early on but had since faded into the background. He was at Monza with some backup Fords that weren’t expected to pose any threat, and he was standing with another man who was clearly from Ford Motor Company. Wyer approached Ferrari, whom he called “The Great Man,” and they shook hands.

  “I’d like you to meet Mr. Ray Geddes,” Wyer said, nodding to the Ford executive next to him.

  Ferrari turned to the Ford man. It was the first time since the failed business deal of 1963 that he had met a Ford executive from America face to face. The American launched into a formal greeting.

  “I would like you to know, Mr. Ferrari, that we at Ford have a great respect for you.”

  Ferrari’s aide translated and the great man responded in Italian. “Yes, I know,” Ferrari said. “Like America respects Russia.”

  He walked away.

  Surtees and the Ferrari engineers had clashed over the car in the days leading up to the race, a vicious row that had left tempers seething. The 330 P3 had been built and developed while Surtees was laid up in the hospital and he wasn’t happy with it. The car oversteered, he complained. The aerodynamics were off. The engineers who’d done the development work were furious. Surtees had an insatiable desire to think technically, improve, make faster, and he seemed incapable of compromise. “John’s idea of the perfect team is one in which Surtees is the owner, Surtees is the designer, Surtees is the engineer, Surtees is the team manager, and Surtees is the driver,” one critic said of him. “That way he could be certain of one hundred percent team effort from his staff!”

  The pilot had to believe his instincts were absolutely correct. He couldn’t afford to doubt himself. Ferrari’s engineers did what they were told and by the drop of the flag, Surtees and the car were one. He drove a masterful race in foul weather at Monza, losing his windshield wipers along the way. In the rain, in his first race back, Surtees took the checkered flag. He and his teammate Mike Parkes pushed into the lead on the first lap and never let it go.

  As June approached, Ferrari and his team conducted a final shakedown at Monza. As drivers looped around and around in the 330 P3, slicing into the Curva Grande and the Curva Lesmos, down the blistering back-straight toward the Parabolica, Ferrari strolled the grounds. Aside from his home track in Modena, where few actual races were held, this was the only racetrack he’d seen with his own eyes in years. The sight of the empty grandstands summoned memories of his early days when he was a young competitor. Nuvolari’s spirit could be felt here. God only knew what kind of heroism the Flying Mantuan would have demonstrated to make sure no American car defeated the Italians.

  Not since the days of Nuvolari and Hitler’s “silver arrows” had Ferrari experienced the kind of international rivalry that faced him in 1966. Both he and Henry II lived and breathed their companies. As Vittorio Jano once said, “[Ferrari] has no other satisfaction. His family, his very life, is that creature of his, La Ferrari.” As for Henry II, there was no separating Mr. Ford from Ford. “He never, in sickness and health, in public or in private, discerned any separation,” wrote Henry II’s friend and biographer Walter Hayes. “The company always came first, ahead even of family.” Now this rivalry between two industrialists had become one between two nations, two continents.

  Everyone wanted a piece of the action—tire companies, spark plug manufacturers, gasoline companies. Rumors hit the papers that the French Ministry of Interior was considering canceling the race due to safety concerns. Meanwhile, big-budget movies featuring both the Ford and Ferrari teams were about to hit the silver screen. Ferrari was the focus of John Frankenheimer’s fictionalized Grand Prix, while the Ford Le Mans car and the Mustang enjoyed a starring role in the Golden Globe–winning French film Un Homme et Une Femme.

  The two industrialists made gestures of respect. Ferrari had received a note from Henry Ford II. It was a greeting card paying respect, a sporting gesture from America before the ultimate showdown. Ferrari returned with his own note, a few simple lines.

  Ferrari had an acute talent for using public opinion to his advantage. He was a master of manipulation and subterfuge, and in this new era of mass media, he would put his skills to work. He published an article in the Italian magazine Autosprint accepting defeat before the race began, knowing the bit of gossip would get picked up by the international dailies.

  “We know that nothing is being done to resist the steamroller of the Americans, who will find the road open to success in sports car racing,” Ferrari wrote. “We fought on the track with autos and at the table against the abuses of power in the regulations. Even while continually winning races I understood that we were gradually losing them. We intensified our activity to the utmost, but we managed simply to slow down the approach of the steamroller. The battle was lost in advance.”

  Ferrari willingly cast himself as an underdog. Ford was Goliath, and he David. If he lost, well, he had predicted defeat. Henry II had done nothing but buy Le Mans with his countless millions. And if Ferrari won, as he absolutely intended to? In a lifetime defined by tragedy and victory, perhaps he would achieve his greatest moment.

  “Incompetent dictator!” Surtees shouted.

  “Ill mannered!” Dragoni fired back. “Untrustworthy!”

  The pair faced each other in the pit at Monaco. The date: May 21, a few days after the Monza sports car race and less than a month before Le Mans. There in the shade of some pine trees, the day before the Monaco Grand Prix, Surtees and Dragoni finally clashed, firing threats at one another in plain view of re
porters and mingling racing fans. Dragoni sat on the pit wall staring at Surtees through his thick-framed glasses, his back hunched. Surtees was in his racing coveralls, hands on his hips, teeth clenched. Gozzi stood by, stunned and helpless. He’d never seen anything like this occur before. Bitter words “hit me like whiplashes,” Gozzi later recalled. “I couldn’t believe it. It seemed impossible to me that such a scene could take place in the team—especially during practice for a Grand Prix when maximum concentration is needed.”

  Dragoni had planned to place Surtees in a new 12-cylinder F1 car, but the Briton didn’t want to drive it. He argued that number-two driver Lorenzo Bandini’s car, a 6-cylinder, was faster. Surtees was number one so he should get the best car. He called the new 12-cylinder “gutless.”

  “We make 12-cylinder road cars,” Dragoni spit, “so you’ve got to race the V12.”

  “I told you, I cannot win with it. I thought we came to Monaco to win the race!”

  Dragoni shrugged. “Oh, you’ll win the race, all right.”

  Gozzi understood this was more than an argument. It was two seasons’ worth of ire boiling over. And there seemed no way to cool off either man. The security of the team was at risk.

  The following morning, Surtees relented and drove the 12-cylinder, firing off the line in the new car. He hurtled through the ancient city streets, past Monte Carlo’s famous casino and the Hotel de Paris, down to the harbor and the tunneled straight that coursed along the sea. He led for thirteen laps. Then his differential failed. Helmet in hand, he headed back to his hotel without talking to reporters. Gozzi believed that, in Surtees’s paranoid state, the driver suspected the mechanics of sabotage, that they’d caused the problem on purpose to knock him out of the race.