{"id":54601,"date":"2018-07-20T15:28:38","date_gmt":"2018-07-20T14:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/issue_content\/the-archives-february-2018\/"},"modified":"2019-07-19T14:42:02","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T13:42:02","slug":"archives-february-2018","status":"publish","type":"issue_content","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/archive\/article\/february-2018\/44\/archives-february-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"The archives: February 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Ford has a reputation as a 1960s sports car racing giant, thanks to its four Le Mans victories. But the Blue Oval wasn\u2019t always successful\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\n

Shivering here in my workroom, late November, reminds me of when we would spend this end of the month wondering what results would emerge from the annual Bahamas Speed Week. I personally recall happy days in Nassau during a stop-off on the way home from reporting the Daytona Continental sports car race.<\/p>\n

I wandered among the salty brushwood and crumbling concrete of the Speed Week\u2019s old abandoned Oakes Field aerodrome circuit, even then being encroached upon by developers. In my inquisitive head I knew that the aerodrome had been named after Sir Harry Oakes \u2013 a philanthropic American-born, Canadian-resident gold mine operator who had taken British nationality and moved to the Bahamas in 1935 to avoid tax. There he became a property developer, and invested especially in enlarging the airport that took his name. Into wartime Sir Harry was New Providence Island\u2019s wealthiest and most influential resident. But on July 8, 1943, the 68-year-old zillionaire was found in his mansion, battered to death, partially burned and covered with feathers\u2026<\/p>\n

The contemporary Governor of the Bahamas was the Duke of Windsor \u2013 formerly King Edward VIII \u2013 who since his abdication and effective banishment to the Bahamas (not too onerous?) had become a great friend of Oakes. Now the Duke was not \u2013 perhaps \u2013 the brightest spark. Faced with the difficulty of summoning Scotland Yard detectives at the height of World War 2, he instead called two dodgy detectives from nearby Miami. Within 36 hours these Americans had fingered Oakes\u2019s son-in-law \u2013 the unsavoury Count Alfred de Marigny \u2013 as his murderer.<\/p>\n

His sensational trial lasted several weeks, which the Duke spent in America, perhaps to avoid giving evidence… It would emerge that his chosen American detectives had falsified fingerprint evidence to convict de Marigny, who was found \u2018not guilty\u2019 but immediately deported to Cuba on the grounds of \u2018unsavoury character\u2019 and \u2018frequent advances to young girls\u2019. Despite many theories \u2013 including murder by the American mafia because Sir Harry had loudly opposed plans to open a Nassau gambling casino, murder by a Florida-based African ritual specialist hired by a Bahamian business associate of Oakes, Sir Walter Christie \u2013 or indeed murder part-approved by the Duke of Windsor since Oakes was planning to transfer his vast wealth to Mexico (simultaneously undermining the Bahamian economy which, if investigated, might reveal the Duke\u2019s own illegal money transfers to Mexico despite wartime restrictions) \u2013 plus further alternatives\u2026 The whole riddle remains famously unresolved.<\/p>\n

During World War 2, New Providence provided two handy Atlantic airbases. Oakes Field was joined by another airfield, newly built five miles to the west, which was named Windsor Field.<\/p>\n

But come 1946 the RAF withdrew from the latter, which reverted to minor civilian use, while Oakes Field \u2013 closer to the town centre \u2013 remained Nassau\u2019s primary airport.<\/p>\n

A post-war visitor to the islands was then Sherman F \u2018Red\u2019 Crise, a successful New York stock exchange figure who had developed a garage business, became a motor racing fan and served as a wartime photo reconnaissance pilot. Into the early 1950s he was a keen sailor. On one visit he spotted the aerodrome racing potential of Windsor Field\u2019s empty runways, and with a group of local businessmen set about copying mainland-American SCCA success airbase racing.<\/p>\n

His associates included Sir Sydney Oakes \u2013 Sir Harry\u2019s son \u2013 and the Bahamas Speed Week races were run annually for 13 years, from 1954 to 1966. They combined the best of wealthy American sports car racing with really serious socialising. In this pretty informal \u2013 sometimes chaotic – season-closing jamboree, visiting stars confronted the best the SCCA scene could offer.<\/p>\n

Up to 1956 the Speed Week\u2019s races were held at Windsor Field, whose 3.5-mile circuit was highly abrasive, its crushed coral rock and asphalt surface just eating tyres. But from 1957 racing moved to Oakes Field, while Windsor Field adopted international airport status. Oakes Field racing began on a five-mile circuit, later reduced by half a mile. Although works-supported cars appeared occasionally in these speedfests, their backbone was the full American phalanx of privately run high-grade Ferraris, Maseratis, Lotus 19s, Cobras and King Cobras. Then in 1963 the GM-supported Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sports ran there. And Augie Pabst drove John Mecom\u2019s new Lola GT \u2013 with a Chevrolet V8 in the back.<\/p>\n

The Lola GT programme had just been acquired by Ford as the basis of its similarly rear-engined Ford GT project \u2013 and some within Ford Detroit exploded at the thought of a Lola-Chevrolet. The first \u2018works\u2019 Ford GTs then emerged in Europe in 1964, and failed to topple Ferrari at Le Mans. In the Reims 12 Hours they failed again. In the Ford Motor Company\u2019s world this did not compute. How could huge investment fail to topple the little specialists?<\/p>\n

Those first-year Ford GTs were quick, but their Colotti transaxles and the programme\u2019s top-heavy management proved to be Ford\u2019s Achilles heel. In addition Ford Advanced Vehicles\u2019 chief engineer Roy Lunn concluded that the small-engined 4.2- to 5-litre Ford GT as originally conceived was never going to do the job, so he set about developing a big-engined 7-litre prototype to do better for 1965-66.<\/p>\n

John Wyer \u2013 the ex-Aston Martin racing manager \u2013 headed the FAV operation developing and racing those cars from Slough, England. He would recall that when he criticised the FoMoCo engineers\u2019 7-litre preference, by saying archly \u201cWe race with cars, not engines\u201d, it \u201cwas not well received\u201d. Ford management then decided that two of the existing \u2018small\u2019 Ford GTs would be sent to the Bahamas Speed Week at the end of November, 1964.<\/p>\n

Wyer would describe this as \u201cThe final imbecility. It was no place for a major manufacturer\u2026 We had nothing to gain from success and everything to lose from failure.\u201d He admitted in his autobiography: \u201cBecause I lost the argument\u2026 I was thoroughly bloody-minded and took no interest in the preparation. It was a stupid attitude and I was wholly to blame when the cars performed badly\u201d.<\/p>\n

His former Aston Martin race engineer John Horsman \u2013 at the time a fresh recruit to FAV \u2013 also regarded these Nassau entries as just \u201can excuse for the Ford executives, of whom there were many, to have an expenses-paid trip with their wives to a warm climate for a few days\u201d.<\/p>\n

Horsman and team mechanic John Etheridge accompanied the cars on the BOAC air freighter. Arriving late at Heathrow, Horsman was just in time to see the loading crew smash one car\u2019s oil cooler and ducting against its intended wooden pallet \u2013 the loading ramps were far too short. When John remonstrated with the loaders a BOAC functionary warned him to back off or \u201cthey would go on strike\u201d.<\/p>\n

Etheridge fell ill during the long flight on the thunderous propeller freighter, which landed in Montr\u00e9al before flying on to New York. There the cars were unloaded, and left in the open in heavy rain. Another airline would be flying them to Miami. There was a long delay. John Horsman finally learned that the expected truck drivers were on strike. The two Johns finally pushed the two 2000lb Ford GTs the half-mile to the departure depot. Once airborne on the Miami-bound aircraft a warning came that there was a bomb on board \u2013 doubtless payback for the Brits\u2019 strike-breaking. The aircraft promptly landed at Savannah for a fruitless search. Finally reaching Miami, Horsman found that no Ford arrangements had been made to transport the cars to the docks for the landing-ship ferry to Nassau. That became another saga until a Ford fellow finally arrived, and at last the exhausted Horsman and Etheridge could catch some sleep. John Horsman\u2019s book Racing in the Rain<\/i> is highly recommended.<\/p>\n

In Nassau, drivers Phil Hill and Bruce McLaren found it simply impossible with their 4.7-litre engines to match the pace of the 7-litre Corvette Grand Sports. As Wyer and Horsman had predicted, Oakes Field\u2019s short straights and tightish corners offered nowhere for the Fords\u2019 superior top speed and handling to excel. Bruce\u2019s car suffered the standard 289 cubic inch V8 engine failure \u2013 blown head gasket \u2013 while Phil\u2019s had a front suspension lower ball joint fall apart \u2013retaining washer undersized, enabling the nut to work loose. Three FAV men lost their jobs as a consequence…<\/p>\n

So Ford\u2019s GT effort had crumbled embarrassingly in the face of more Chevrolet Grand Sport success for GM. In part consequence Carroll Shelby was welcomed aboard \u201cto share\u201d direction with Wyer \u2013 as JW put it \u201cCarroll \u2013 as an American \u2013 was in a better position to deal with Ford politics than I was and I wanted no part of them\u201d. In truth that first season of Ford GT racing had proved to be a $2.2-million shambles. Honda\u2019s return with McLaren in Formula 1 attracted less derision \u2013 it had looked that bad.<\/p>\n

At the end of 1965, GM\u2019s non-attributable clandestine racing also won over Phil Hill from Ford. He like Wyer couldn\u2019t stomach FoMoCo practices. The last straw was when their legal department tried to bully him into signing a new contract for \u201966. In Phil\u2019s final letter to a company lawyer he wrote: \u201cJim Hall phoned shortly after I got [Ford executive] Homer Perry\u2019s message via Al Dowd, suggesting that in so many words \u2018s— or get off the pot\u2019 as far as signing the contact was concerned. In our ensuing conversation we came to an agreement that was satisfactory to both of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that was \u2018job done\u2019. Phil would drive for Chaparral Cars in 1966, and Ford bombast had failed \u2013 yet again. GM racing interests 2 \u2013 FoMoCo nil. Na\u00efvet\u00e9 had ruled \u2013 innocents literally abroad.<\/p>\n

Doug Nye is the UK\u2019s most eminent motor racing historian and has been writing authoritatively about the sport since the 1960s<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"author":748,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"tags":[167],"issue_decade":[121600],"issue_year":[121673],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/54601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/748"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/54601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223220,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/54601\/revisions\/223220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54601"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=54601"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=54601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}