Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans

by A.J. Baime

“This is a nickel and dime business all the way through,” Ford vice president Lewis Crusoe said. “A dime on a million units is $100,000. We’d practically cut your throat around here for a quarter.”

During these years “the agitator of men” studied the psychology of winning. Certain principles were self-evident. Competition is the impetus for innovation. The fiercer the competition, the faster cars will go. There is in some men a need to achieve greatness. When matched with talent, this necessity can turn humans into demigods. A man who is willing to die at the wheel is always likely to beat a man in a faster car—if he can survive until the end of the race.

Grand Prix racing has hundreds of men and girls of all ages who follow the cars and drivers everywhere and who worship openly at the shrine. Drivers see a romantic, reflected image of themselves in the eyes of these people. There is awe and the most naked kind of admiration there. As he settles into his cramped machine, revving the engine up and down, tense, eyes glued on the starters’ flag, the crowd gulping with excitement—at such a moment a driver feels himself a god. What is danger next to that? —ROBERT DALEY, The Cruel Sport

“Women are more intelligent and dominating than men,” Ferrari said. “Men are creatures of their passions, and this makes them victims of women. Ettore Bugatti, a great driver and racing car builder, and a fine gentleman, once told me, ‘The perfect machine does not exist, mechanically speaking. The only perfect machine is a woman.’”

A social life? “No, none. Life passes soon enough. If you want to do one thing well, you have to work at it fast. A Ferrari may not be a masterpiece in exactly the same way that a great work of painting or sculpture is. It represents the work of many men bringing to life the ideas of Ferrari.”

Miles had turned a lap at 201.5 mph, hitting 210 on the straights—four times the Michigan speed limit.

Once, in my racing days, I was in third position when I suddenly saw a car ablaze on the edge of the track. I could make out the number: it was the car that had been just in front of me. What thoughts do you think passed through my head in that instant? Well, my first thought was: One less, now I am second. My second thought was: I wonder if he’s hurt. And my third thought was: It could have been me. —ENZO FERRARI

“To do something well is so worthwhile that to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy. It would be a waste of life to do nothing with one’s ability, for I feel that life is measured in achievement, not in years alone.”

As one obit put it, “We don’t have to feel sorry for people who choose to live dangerously, and lose. So the bull wins one. The matador must take the risk. The closer he plays to the horn, the better the show . . . Well, Miles, good show.”

Life, brilliant and vital as it may be, is an uncertain thing for everyone. It is in the memories of a life that we can find the immortal. . .