As Henry Ford said "History is Bunk"
The records at LeMans listed J6 as the Foyt/Gurney car and J5 as the Donohue/McLaren
car. The records were wrong. After the race Ford had J6, which they assumed was the winner, painted to look like the Foyt/Gurney car. They even added a Gurney bubble. They
screwed up the stripes though painting them white. They sent J6 around the US as a display. The winner remained behind where its radiator, race winning engine,chassis plate,
and steering wheel disapeared.
Ford gave J6 to Foyt. Foyt sold J6 to Les Lindley. Les sold J6 to Peter Lavonos. I bought J6 from Peter. When I bought J6 it was still painted as if it was the winner. The stripes were the proper black but a very important identifier was missing. In the upper left of the windshield should have been an orange identifier light. This light enabled the pits to ID cars at night as they roared by. The Gurney car's light was orange. The Donohue car had a blue Pit ID light. The upper side number lite was also color coded.
The chassis plate in J6 was unmolested and the original engine was in J6 when I bought it. The engine number is listed on shipping documents from LA. (SHELBY) to LeMans via Paris, as is the chassis number J6, as is the color YELLOW. The Ford museam and I have confirmed all of this. John Allen has seen my car as have David Hodges and the recent books have been corrected including Trevor Legate's. If you look at the photo in my profile you'll see a pic of J6 as it looks today painted in it's corect colors.
Recently Lee Holman came accross some LeMans documents which may throw some more light on all of this. There are some historians who still believe that J6 was the winner. Even though I own J6 at the present time I believe that J6 is the Donohue/McLaren car.
Best
Jim
[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: MK -IV J6 ]