GT40 VIDEO

[DON S.]

Greetings to my fellow GT40 fanatics! I have been lurking on GT40s.com unregistered for a couple of weeks and formally signed up a few days ago. As a "Glad to Be Aboard" offering I thought I would let you all know about a web site I stumbled across last year with some neat in-car videos from a GT40. Although I did a phrase search of this "GT40s.com" site and did not find any mention of it, I apologise if this is old news and already known to most of you. As the almost-senior-citizen-age owner of an original 40 (for a quarter century next month!), maybe all you young turks can cut me some slack, OK? For the videos, go to www.racecar.co.uk; click on the "GT40 in-car videos" button with the small yellow GT40 near the bottom of the page; then click on the large photo of a yellow GT40 in the middle with "Charringtons" below it. Accessing each of the six short videos is straightforward from this point. BTW, can anyone ID the GT40 from the front license plate? I have some vague notion that it might be #P1077 but haven't looked at the videos enough to get much of a handle on whether the car is an original or not. And be sure to turn up the volume on your audio/speaker control; WONDERFUL NOISE!

[Mark Worthington]

Welcome to the forum, Don. It's nice to have another owner of an original GT40 here. Wow, you bought your Mk I in 1978...I'd love to hear about how you came to own your car. I'm sure there's a good story there, and I bet the price was good too, at least by today's standards.

I've seen those videos before, but can't remember if the link came from this site. Nice viseo, but pretty small images and short enough to whet the appetite but not satisfy. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[DON S.]

Hello, Mark. Yeah, no question that the price that I paid for #P1040 in 1978 is nothing like what an original costs today. In fact, today I could probably sell just my stock of GT40 spare parts for what the entire car cost me in '78. But, 40s have always been pricey, so what I paid in 1978 was a king's fortune to me at that time. Had to sell a wonderful little 246GTS Ferrari that I had then to come up with just part of the funds. No regrets, though; I've always been a nut for Ford iron. Now if only I can figure out where to get the $$ to put old 1040 back together. I pulled the motor in 1983, disassembled the rest of the car down to the last Dzus clip in '89, and there it still sits. My problem is that today the guys who restore the cars make more per hour than I do.

[Chris Melia]

Hi Don

My offer to restore your car still stands from two years ago. I have access to everything that is needed.
I am very happy to see you here on the forum.

Best regards
Chris Melia UK

[Rick Muck- Mark IV]

Hey,

I can restore that car in two notes....

I have run a restration business and well know that that if I charged 100 grand I would be lucky to keep 5 grand of it!
I have worked on P1116, built a throttle linkage that actually worked unlike the one that the engine builder installed! And I have bent metal and other parts on original and replica Cobras and still had no cash to show for it when I was done!

But I would do it for the glory alone......

Rick [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Rick Muck- Mark IV]

And I remember when Bill Wonder was at the 6 hours at the Glen and after practice he hung a plate on the 40 and went into town to fetch a case of beer.....
Who says these are not street cars?

When I get a better scanner I will post pictures of his car on the trailer behind the Ford pickup....nowadays it would be a Peterbuilt tractor and a 40 foot trailer, back the it was a single axle trailer that also was used to haul trash to the dump!

Rick [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Rick Muck- Mark IV]

Hey, 1040 a Filipinetti car! KOOL!!!!

Is it still red?

Were you at the 1989 Glen reunion?

Rick [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Hershal Byrd]

Don,
It's good to know guys like you are hanging around this board. I welcome you and hope you feel right at home hear.
I'm sure all of us envy the caretakers of history as you and and Mark IV J6 are. I know there are several other original owners that lurk here as well. Perhaps they too will be more willing to contribute seeing that others are jumping in. Whether we own real or replica we still love the one and only true classic, the GT40.
I hope to see P1040 on the road someday. A neat car with good history.

Hersh

[Simon]

I'll second that.

[DON S.]

Hi, Rick. Sorry to say that my GT40 stopped being red after being pretty much burned out at the 1967 Monza race, although by then it was no longer owned by Filipinetti, having been sold to two drivers according to Ronnie Spain's records. The car did, however, remain in the Scuderia Filipinetti livery of Signal Red with a nose-to-tail white stripe for the '67 Monza race. The "restoration" (HA! What a kluge job!) that was done on the car in the early 1970s to rebuild it from the Monza fire used new body clips that were painted a medium-gold metallic color. As most of the work was done by the ex-Filipinetti mechanic Franco Sbarro, and the car ultimately completed by its subsequent owner, a farmer in Switzerland, why it wasn't repainted in its original Swiss/Filipinetti color scheme is beyond me. For a good photo of the car as it was in the early 1980s, see page 53 in John Allen's 1983 "Ford GT40 Super Profile." Except for switching to BRM rims from the Boarranis that I got it with, and mounting Goodyear slicks for the photo (taken in the back yard of my former home in Rockville, Maryland), this is the car that I purchased from Harley Cluxton in 1978. The car will certainly go back to its original color scheme in the next restoration.

I did make it to Watkins Glen in 1989, and in fact had the 40 disassembled some months prior to that event in order to "make it right" for the extravaganza. Well, making old 1040 "right" turned out to be a far larger project than I had anticipated, so it did not accompany me to the Glen. I did, however, drive my beater 427 S/C Cobra to The Glen from Maryland. I have a neat photo of a friend, who rode shotgun in the S/C for the trip, and me in the car, both in dress shirts and ties, as we left the motel to go to the dinner and ceremony at The Corning Center that was put on for GT40 owners and others. I also made it to the 30th Anniversary GT40 Reunion at Elkhart Lake in 1994, but I think the '89 Watkins Glen event will remain the absolute high point. I doubt that there will ever be that many 40s at one event again, never mind drivers like Moss, Bondo, and Ickx in them and running at speed on the track. Wonderful memories.

[vamach1]

I was at the Glen in 89 and it was overwhelming. I have lots of photos and I bought the video recently from
Miniature Cars in New Jersey. The video is ok - I would have preferred less talking and more racing.