Hi guys,
A friend of mine from Spain who is an amateur student of post-war auto design sent me a 26-page magazine article from a Japanese car magazine, published in 1965. It is a detailed, in-depth analysis of the Ford GT40. The author of the article spent time both in the Shelby shops and at FAV, and shot a bunch of photos of GT40s, and GT40 pieces, in various stages of construction etc. As far as I can tell, these photos have never been published elsewhere (most of them anyway; some of them are stock Shelby
PR pics) and give some fascinating insight into the cars during their early days.
One photo shows the pedal bracket of P/1020 as it's being built, and others show the front hubs of P/1021, which gives an indication of the era. There are also photos of the GT40 roadster that kicked around Shelby's shop for a long time (GT/108 I think, the one that Dean Jeffries ultimately got, right?), plus a bunch of other stuff.
I'm hosting the PDF file on the Pantera club website here:
Technical Analysis: Ford GT
It's a little bit user-hostile; there's no thumbnail to be seen. Instead there are the tiny words "Download document". Right-click on that, and an 8.9 mb PDF file will download to your hard drive (it's big so be patient!). You can just left-click on it instead, and the PDF file will open in a new browser window, but it will take awhile and might not work, depending on how spiffy your computer is.
I'm interested to hear your comments on what we can see in this article.
Cheers!