The secrets of ‘Ford v Ferrari’s’ stunning cars (and crashes)
“Ford v Ferrari” — the $97 million film that chronicles the fight between Carroll Shelby’s Ford GT40 team and Enzo Ferrari’s Scuderia Ferrari for dominance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans car race in 1966 — is best enjoyed loud. Way loud. That’s how to fully appreciate the brilliant camerawork, technical prowess, and logistical feats that went into making the many racing scenes shot on historic tracks across multiple continents feel so realistic.
You might as well be in the car with Matt Damon — er, Carroll Shelby — driving through the black night as he fights fatigue to hold on to his win at the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans, or with wiry British driver Ken Miles (a 70-pounds-lighter Christian Bale) as he busts through a pack of smug meatheads in muscle cars at a local race at Willow Springs International Motorsports Park. The tension is palpable through the roar of the car engines; you can practically smell the oil and dirt and burning rubber.
“Ford v Ferrari” makes it feel as if you’re the one behind the wheel.
Credit for all the glorious car scenes goes to 46-year-old Rob Johnson, the vehicle director of the film. Johnson led the team that obtained the 460-odd vehicles used and abused during two months of shooting last summer. It took him half a year just to prep for it.
Johnson tackled the challenges of shooting active racing scenes at some of the world’s most iconic tracks. You’ll recognize them on screen: California Speedway; Willow Springs, where such Old Hollywood types as James Dean and Steve McQueen drove; and the eponymous track in Le Mans, France, but especially its infamous, 3.7-mile Mulsanne straight section along its backside. That one, Johnson says, was filmed on a five-mile-long country road near Statesboro, Georgia. (Other sections of the Le Mans race were filmed at the nearby Road Atlanta track.)
You’ll recognize the cars, too: the Ford GT40, of course, but also lots of Ferraris, a Volvo, a Triumph, a few racing Porsches, and even a 1960 Ford Country Squire station wagon, with wood-paneled sides.
Johnson was more than happy to share the secrets to his trade. Here are some of the big ones behind the making of “Ford v Ferrari.” 1. The Cobras were replicas. As fans of race car driver and automotive designer Carroll Shelby fans will recall, he developed his own take on the British cars called AC Aces, a line he had raced extensively in the late 1950s. Shelby purchased the bodies from AC in England, exported them to the United States, dropped in a Ford V8 engine for more power, and then sold them from his shop in Venice, California, under the name AC Cobra. “Ford v Ferrari” shows Shelby’s shop, with dozens of Cobras at various points of construction. Shelby is also often seen driving his own Cobra through the streets of Los Angeles.
All the vehicles shown, according to Johnson, were continuation replicas leased from Superformance, an outfitter based in Irvine, California. Superformance buys the body shells from South Africa and then installs modern components inside. The six-figure cars are fun to drive — and, more important, reliable.
“When you need a warehouse full of Cobras like we did, you’re just not going to find a gathering of them looking uniformly accurate,” Johnson says. “No one is going to tell you the ones we used are exactly the same (as the originals), but shy of forking out hundreds of thousands for something else, you’ll have plenty of them that are reliable over months of shooting. You’ll be a happy customer.” 2. The crashes were real. It’s tempting to imagine that, like much of what we see in the Fast and Furious series entries and other crazy car movies, the bulk of the crashes in Ford v Ferrari are computer generated. After all, several major crashes take place during the race sequences, especially at the start of the Le Mans race, when multiple cars spin out and hit side walls. A Ferrari 250 GTB goes airborne. Bale’s Miles sustains two devastating impacts behind the wheel of the Ford GT40. In this feature, though, the crashes are real. “The Ferrari in the Le Mans scene was mounted on a cannon on a truck and taken at speed going down the stretch of track in Georgia and then fired the air,” Johnson says, describing how the “Halloween mask of a car” hit the ground and shed its fiber-glass body as it rolled. “We did it multiple times. They were sacrificial shells. But what happened to them actually happened. They were flown through the air, crashed, and set on fire.”
Once launched, the Ferrari stayed put as the filming continued. It acted as a real obstacle on the track for the other cars to avoid. That’s the beauty (and danger) of doing the stunts in real life, rather than on a computer: The crashed cars were so authentic that they actually pushed another race car entirely off the track during filming.
“There might have been an ambulance involved on that one,” Johnson confides.
3. The Porsche was in there because, well, it was reliable.
In early scenes of the movie, Damon drives a Porsche 356, the Volkswagen Beetle-like precursor to the faster, sportier Porsche 911. That Shelby drove a Porsche at all may not be strictly accurate, historically-some might argue that the former chicken farmer from Texas wouldn’t have been seen dead in a German car, but it could have happened. After all, Shelby raced an Aston Martin for years, and it’s safe to say his legendary will to win would have him driving the best car, no matter who built it.
The real reason why Shelby was in a Porsche at all, though, is a testament to the mechanical soundness of Porsche products. In a sea of vintage vehicles constantly breaking down on and off the set, Johnson needed to put Damon in something that would hold up to multiple takes from all different angles, day in and day out, until they got the shot.
“We were originally considering an Aston Martin DB4 for Matt for the opening scenes, and we could procure one, but the owner was like, ‘Uh, you can take it up to 30 or 45 miles an hour,’” Johnson says. “And you can’t promise to be precious with cars in filming, unless it’s not going to move at all.”
So he ditched the Aston Martin idea. Then he remembered that he had multiple 356 Porsches, replicas built with Mazda Miata chassis-back at the Willow Springs track. He had been using them as fillers for some of the scenes filmed there. He put a fresh paint of coat on the one he selected, covering its racing silver with a reddish hue, and put Damon in the driver’s seat. Done.
4. What you can’t lease or buy, you can make. Even if it means doing it yourself. At the track.
Most of the cars in the movie, including the Porsche 904 and 906 race cars, were fabricated by local builders in Southern California. But one thing Johnson and his team couldn’t get in a way that would fit the shoot’s budget were original racing tires from Goodyear and Michelin. (It would have required an expensive custom order and lots of lead time.) So he bought replicas.
“The replicas looked very generic, so we would put the original-looking stickers in vinyl on every tire, spray paint them, and then peel off the sticker,” he says.
5. For a shot of one car, you need about three of them ...
The common denominator that levels all manner of models in race car filming is reliability. Often, what determines which cars make the final cut comes down to those that run: “They need to show up, and they need to stay on set. For months,” Johnson says.
In the shots from the race at Daytona, Johnson wanted to show such realistic models as a 1958 Barracuda, a Triumph TR4, and a Volvo P1800 with the fins in the back. But those rarer models are often less reliable than ubiquitous vintage cars from Ford and Porsche.
“You could get Barracudas and Corvairs and Triumphs, but they can’t survive the filming,” Johnson says. “It’s a little bit survival of the fittest. For instance, the Volvo was a beautiful car, but we only had one of those, with an original engine, and it could only go up to 80 miles an hour for five minutes. It lasted for a day and a half of filming.”
The Triumph, he said, “crapped out over three laps.”