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THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 62 NOVEMBER 6, 2019
FORD: COURTESY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX (3). CAR: TED7.COM PHOTOGRAPHY. AUDOUY: ALBERT L. ORTEGA/GETTY IMAGES.CarsThe Complicated ‘Showdown’
and Cars of Ford v Fer rar i
‘It’s almost like a gunfight’ between race drivers, says director James Mangold, with his
production designer adding, ‘The cars were their own characters’ By Jon Alain GuzikI
wanted to shoot it like an old-style Western,”
says James Mangold, director of Ford v Ferrari,
the Fox feature that chronicles the 1966 battle
between the two auto companies to win the world’s
most prestigious car race, the Le Mans in France.
“It’s a showdown between Ken Miles” — the Ford
driver, played by Christian Bale — “and [Ferrari
driver] Lorenzo Bandini, and I wanted it to have a
touch of Sergio Leone,” adds Mangold of Le Mans,
which is won by covering the greatest distance in
24 hours. In the movie, which cost just
under $100 million and is out Nov. 15,
Matt Damon portrays Carroll Shelby, the
engineering legend who built Miles’
iconic car, the Ford GT40. “They rev the
engines and ... it’s almost like a gun-
fight, with the drivers plunging toward a 90-degree
turn at 200 miles an hour,” says the director.
That pivotal sequence in a nearly hourlong racing
portion is set on the Mulsanne Straight of Le Mans
— a 3.7-mile stretch where the cars can hit over 200
mph. It had changed over the past 50 years, so “we
needed to create analogs to the original track,” says
production designer François Audouy, who studied
archival footage of the historic race. For example,
“we found three and a half miles of country road
outside of Atlanta.” Audouy needed six miles of track
to shoot cars driving 150 feet per second, because
Mangold says he didn’t want “digitally-enhanced-
with-cartoon[s] car antics. We wanted to ... see the
pits and road and to feel the action firsthand.”
As for the vehicles, “each of the cars were their
own characters,” says Audouy, with Mangold adding,
“We didn’t use period race cars — it was a concession
to reality, as one of those Ferraris is worth a bajillion
dollars. We would have used up most of the budgeton cars alone.” Each vehicle had its own chief of set
design to ensure graphics, stickers, seat belts and
tires were period-correct. Rob Johnson, the film’s
vehicle art director, juggled a full roster: “Porsche,
Ferrari, Corvette, Ford — all these cars had to play
in different liveries five or six times across filming.
They’d bubble up in the heat. Each had to be aged and
washed dozens of times.”
Bale spent six hours daily for almost a week on
an Arizona track at Bondurant High Performance
Driving School, designed by owner and former
driver Bob Bondurant. Says Bale: “It was very help-
ful having a genuine experience of what it is to be
in an extremely fast car, centimeters from other
extremely fast cars, and the reflexes that requires.”
The actual driving was handled by “22 drivers, and
the majority were pro — half raced at Le Mans,” says
Robert Nagle, the film’s Oscar-winning stunt coor-
dinator. When Mangold is asked if he’d ever raced
himself, he gives a slight chuck le: “I love cars and
design, but my own version of death-defying racing
is finding the money to do these films.”On location for Ford v Ferrari at Willow Springs Raceway in
Rosamond, California. From left: director James Mangold (in plaid shirt),
Matt Damon and Christian Bale around the Ford GT40.Get Your Own
Race-Ready
Ford GT40REEL TO ROADF
or those who want not just
the look, but also a drive
close to the original Shelby
Cobra and Ford GT40s featured
in Ford v Ferrari, there are
offerings by Irvine, California-
based Superperformance. The
distributor holds the license
from the original designer and
manufacturer, Carroll Shelby,
to re-create the classic models
from the ’60s. (For originals,
collectors should be prepared
to pay out: The Ferrari 330
featured in the film could
fetch “in excess of $30 mil-
lion,” says David Brynan,
senior specialist at the Santa
Monica-based auction house
Gooding & Company.)
Superperformance made
most of the picture cars for
the film, including the Cobra
driven by Shelby (played by
Matt Damon). “These are
not simply cars licensed from
Shelby — they are Shelbys with
continuation CSX chassis num-
bers,” says Superperformance’s
Rich MacDonald, whose father,
Dave MacDonald, raced all
of Shelby’s legendary Cobras
to their first victories and
was tragically killed in 1964’s
Indianapolis 500. “I always rec-
ommend that customers finish
the build with a motor from the
Shelby Engine Company, either
a 289 or 427,” adds MacDonald.
A Shelby CSX8000 series
MkII Continuation Cobra fitted
with a Shelby 289 engine, like
the model Damon drives, will
set collectors back around
$150,000. A GT40 like the one
raced by Christian Bale, who
portrays driver Ken Miles,
costs about $210,000.
Collectors should note that
“period-correct” means no
power steering, power brakes,
air-conditioning or any other
modern comfort or safety
system. Expect a lot of power
under the hood and the roar of
the road beneath the wheels,
especially on the GT40 — all in
all, an exhilarating, yet some-
times harrowing, drive. — J.A.G.AudouyThe Biscuit Jr. was used at Willow Springs “to put the camera on
the road [for] a different visual vernacular,” says Mangold.