Le Mans '66

Dramatizes a specific item from automotive history. It's the early 1960s, and the iconic American company, Ford Motors, is facing some difficult times. Vice president Lee Iacocca believes they have to make the company sexier to the American consumer by setting up a race car division, akin to Ferrari, which has reigned supreme at the ultimate automobile race, the 24-hour race at Le Mans. President Henry Ford II makes an offer to buy for sale Ferrari, the offer which Enzo Ferrari only uses to make a more lucrative deal with Fiat, in the process Ferrari also denigrating what he considers over-bloated Ford. As such, Ford spares no expense for his own race car division, hiring Le Mans winner turned sports car designer and manufacturer Carroll Shelby as the engineering head of that race car division. Ford's ultimate goal is to beat Ferrari at Le Mans. Shelby knows that money alone cannot produce success and, equally important, is that racing is inherent in the company's culture. As such, he hires as part of his design team Ken Miles, whose life is racing, and which he has built into his supportive family of wife Mollie and their adolescent son Peter. Shelby finds that his ultimate opponent is not Ferrari but rather the corporate mentality at Ford, especially of Ford himself and who Ford appoints as head of the race car division, Leo Beebe, who in particular doesn't see the bohemian Miles as "Ford material". Making the situation more difficult is that Shelby believes, in he knowing the machine, that Miles is the best person as driver.