When Henry Ford II and Enzo Ferrari battled for supremacy at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the mid- 1960s, it shook up the auto-racing world and kept morgues busy.
Ford’s monumental effort to topple Ferrari from the summit of sports-car racing is vibrantly told in “Go Like Hell,” A.J. Baime’s fast-paced account of the clash between the two fearsome, hyper-competitive automotive titans.
Baime, an executive editor at Playboy magazine, brings the high-stakes drama to life with vivid portraits of both men, who had more in common than their passion for cars. Both had longtime Italian mistresses (Ford’s became his second wife, Ferrari’s bore him a son), little patience and no tolerance for failure.
In the early 1960s Ferrari was the undisputed king of Le Mans, the world’s oldest, most prestigious endurance race. Cars manufactured by the small Italian company finished first for six straight years before Ford ended the streak in 1966, becoming the first American car to win the race that began in 1923.
The botched plan ended Miles’s bid for an unprecedented sweep of the Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans endurance races that year. He never got another chance. Two months later, during a test drive in Riverside, California, his experimental car crashed down an embankment and exploded, killing him instantly.
Many thought Henry Ford II was foolhardy for challenging Ferrari at Le Mans. But the grandson of Ford Motor Co.‘s founder was determined to make his mark in European racing, primarily because it would help sell more Fords overseas. He also had a personal grudge against Enzo Ferrari after the Italian backed out of a deal to sell his company to Ford at the last minute.
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