John Wander and Ford vs Ferrari

homeland group? And, you know, in the context of the movie, I think that movie dealt with the 1966 LeMans race and the GT 40 project. So what was Homans involvement, and what was your involvement with Holman at that time, all under Modi, they were asked by Ford to undertake there have a race. A number of the cars, basically in competition with Shelby American Ford was not that enamored by Shelby and Ford

had done business with Holman and moody for many years. In fact, Holman and Moody was pretty much the national distribution center for all their high performance parts back in the early 1960s. So when Ford decided to do this, I had been involved with a number of different projects within Holman and moody for Ford, Lexus, building their track cars, rally

cars, nothing's in that nature. And home at Ford requested. The John Holman put me in charge of the homeowner moody GT project for the 1966 and 67 LeMans. So what did what did Holman moody do with the GT 40 to meet that demand? Well, we first got the cars, I think we first got our first car or second car, I'm not sure which I can remember. I do remember flying to California, with another person from home in a movie to assemble one or two cars. And as far as a race car

goes, we thought there's a lot lacking here. One is profit. First problem was it was too heavy. And there were other problems with the cars. But Ford was taking care of those brake issues and things of this nature and transmissions. Ford ended up developing drone transmissions they were developing with Kelsey Hayes company their own brakes. But in any event, we were we were we took the cars, we got them back to Charlotte, we're on

Holman and Moody was located. And I was given quite a bit of freedom to do with the cars is as we felt was necessary to a tournament to better race cars. What Where did the cars originally come from? You say you took delivery of a car. So that sounds like the actual chassis of the car was built in England. It was it was a product of Lola company in England. All right. Sure. The design was done by Eric broadleaf. not mistaken. And and the cars were marketed as simply as a GT 40. They had a small

block Ford engineering. They weren't particularly marketed as a race car. They were marketed and sold as a sort of sportscar watch car. Yeah. Yeah. We shall we first got involved with it. They tried to convert the cut the streetcar into an actual race car. And they made certain changes to it. And then at some point in time, in Detroit, there's a gentleman by the name of Roy one that will you in who ran who's an employee of Ford Motor Company, and he

ran a an engineering shop called Car Craft. And he was very much involved with taking this standard GT 40 and making a race car out of it. And he was the one who Ultimately, after they decided the smallblock engine would not produce enough horsepower, that they used the 427 engines that were developed for the NASCAR side cars, right? Yeah, that's quite a different motor than what was originally in that car. Absolutely, absolutely. And had to be changes made to the chassis to

hold that car. That engine, which was the cars, the cars that you're receiving at home and moody, moody, were those 427 motors in those days, those cars were had been adapted for the 427 engine. What we did was go out to Shelby shop, there are some basic chassis, we hung the suspension pieces on it, fitted the body to it, and then took the cars back to Charlotte. So what kind of things are you doing to the car in Charlotte before you started campaigning, or racing that particular vehicle?

Well, from the very start, our objective was to make the car lighter and to make the car safer. The cars didn't have roll bars, the fuel cells that were in them quite heavy or the whole side, left and right side of the car. Between wheels is all fuel. And they had these very heavy fuel cells that apparently Shelby American had developed it acquired. And we felt that they were all too heavy, which wasn't wasn't part of our progress is

to lighten this car up. Right. So we put first with the roll bars and we had lightweight fuel cells made from the Firestone company. Well you change suspension pieces to did you know, we did change suspension piece if we had all our own springs made. The shock absorbers made. We had our own stabilizers made the cars ran at Daytona Beach. And because the engines in the rear of the car and and there's a lot of loading on the chassis and in the high band corners. We developed a an auxilary torsion

bar to go on the right rear to support chassis. If you put a spring in there was heavy enough to run through the high banks it would be too heavy. And the two heaviest spring in the LeMans flat part of the Daytona track. Oh I see. So it was lots of things we did the cars we the oil tanks was up front and meant the oil lines had to come down through the passenger compartment made the inside of the car extremely hot. Best

thing to do was move the oil tank rear. They had the aftermarket Stewart Warner fuel pumps that you can go buy at the auto parts store the auto parts store, very unreliable. We went and sourced a an aircraft fuel pump the pump that was actually inside the tank, which in those days as far as automobiles go unheard of. But we concluded if they're safe enough airplanes, they're safe enough for this race car. So how long after you got your cars? Did you come to race in

LeMans? Because the Ford and Ferrari show was about I think it focused on the 60s 66 LeMans race actually, as soon as we got the cars. There was a race in Daytona Beach, which was referenced in the movie. We had two cars in that race. One had an automatic transmission that Ford was experimenting with the other car, ran in the race and actually finished second at the tone race. The next place we ran into cars was at Sebring where Ford won the race was a Shelby car. It was a a version of the

GT 40. Mark Two was an open top car that Roy Leung had had built. Right. That car won the race set a new record. And Holman moody car finished second. So tell me about the LeMans 66 race that the show was based on or part of at least you how many cars did you take over to run that race? In 66, we built four cars. Three of them that were run by almond mot, they were all GT 40 Mark twos, the 427 engines, and a fourth car that we built to be run by afforda France.

So what about Shelby how many cars they take for that six, six, right? They took three cars over there. So how did that race go? I mean, it seemed like a pretty exciting race. From your perspective, what was what stood out to you in the six to six months in the 66 bonds race is it was we I thought it was a pretty ordinary race. We had some different issues. We had problems with the brakes. Mons, you have a straightaway a little

over seven miles one. You're dealing with cars that go over 200 mile an hour and the end of that seven miles straightaways are sharp right hand corner and the cars stencil breaking. If you were out there, you would see that these discs and these cars are red hot. What happened is reminds were 24 hour race. You racing to three o'clock in the morning. It's cold out lots

of humidity. And the we found that the the desks were undergoing thermal shock and resulting in them flying apart literally a piece of the iron flying off of the disk. How did you guys remedy that? Or were you able to you just kept kept changing discs? Right. Right. I wanted to ask you before we talked about the finish of that race, which was depicted in the movie. You would have told me in the past that Andretti was driving was he driving for Ferrari?

No. Oh and drive he was driving for okay he did he have a crash during that race. He didn't crash in that race. He crashed in the 67 race I see which caused a chain link events which actually took out his car and two of the other cars at home are moody it built and you built cars for Andretti later on in your career with Holman moody, correct. I did. It was a circuit a sportscar series in the United

States and then called the Ken Ham series. They were basically unlimited sports cars and the the the top cars in those days were the Chaparral was sponsored by General Motors right the plan clarens which also had sponsorship from financial health from General Motors. And Ford really didn't have a car in the in the race at that time with a car was designed in England by shoppers run by Alan man. Alan man is the guy who built the the car and for the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang movie.

Right, right. The car you saw floating in the air with the wings on Yeah, and that was an actual car that Alan man had built for the movie. And Alan ban designed the cam car. Not he personally but I forgot the name of the actual designer. With that car was built with the idea in mind that Mario Andretti would drive it in the canyon series Eisley and so well Paul Newman was also part of that cannamd racing. Well, that's what got Paul Newman interested in. In racing

at all. It was his first. That was his first introduction to sportscar racing. Well, that's really interesting. I want to go back to the six six LeMans. Did did Ford actually tell those cars to slow down and come across together? While we'd already told the cars to slow down because we wanted to make sure that they finished. And the competition by this time they dropped out. So the cars were lapping probably 10 seconds slower than what they would have been if they had been racing.

And yeah, for dead for publicity purposes. They wanted the cars the front to to be in the picture of coming across the finish line in the first three spots and had them line up that way. Did that actually cause Ken Miles to lose that race? It did. Why can miles thought he was ahead. And he actually came across the finish line a couple of feet ahead of Christmas Amon or Bruce McLaren, who was in the other car thinking that he had won the race because he crossed the finish line first. But the

organizers of the race ruled to the contrary. They said because the Chris Amon Bruce McLaren car had had started further back in the pits behind the starting line that they had actually When you took that into consideration, they had actually traveled a greater distance than the Ken Miles car. So they got to win. That's terrible. And Ken Miles was very I understand very upset. I didn't have a lot of input. A lot to do with Ken Miles. I've been talking to him and he seemed like a very nice guy.

Well, between 66 and 67 LeMans races. It was at when Ken Miles died. Yes, not what you were actually present on the racetrack. One was, what what happened? What what car was he driving what happened to Ken Miles as he was driving a car that was called the J car. The J car was a creation of Roy Lund, who we spoke about earlier, right. And it was a car that was built out of aluminum honeycomb structure. And it was the the tub we call it or the chassis was actually built by

for Ford, by Brunswick aerospace, right. And into this aluminum honeycomb structure. They had various brackets, which all the suspension was bolted to, et cetera. And that was the J card and the J car had a funny looking body on it didn't have the greatest stability. It was light. It was fast. It basically had the same engine as the as the mark twos did, that'd be the 427 427. Right? And so they were testing the car at Riverside, California on the road course, they had lost control of the car

at the end of the straightaway and went off the track. And the honeycomb structure basically all fell apart. And in Canada was killed. You were you were we were talking about this at one time. And you said you disagreed with the Ford analysis of what occurred in that crash? Well, it was no real Ford analysis. It was a test report from the Shelby American people. I have a their version was that there was

a mechanical part of the car broke, causing the crash. I saw happens that over the back stretch of Riverside Raceway, there was a pedestrian overpass which you could go on stand on and look at the cars as they went by. And myself and a fella by the name of Homer Perry, who was worked for Ford special vehicles, and was the person who was in charge of all of the LeMans programming. He and I were looking at the car as it went by. And it appeared to us that due to instability the back

of the car came up, caused the car to spin out. And that's what caused the accident. That was not in the show people report. And in fact, after Ken Miles's accident the frame was the honeycombed was constructed differently, or it was assembled differently. Is that correct? Yeah, the first thing that happened was is is Ford put the car away. Ford Ford was very adverse to bad publicity. So the car disappeared. And and that reappeared a number of months

later, as a Ford GT mark four. And that's the car that you see winning, who actually won the 67 race. And if you saw the movie of Ford versus right, a Ford versus Ferrari, and at the end, there were Ken Miles got in the car red car and drove off. And then you see the cloud industry crash. The car he got into was in fact, a marked mark for the mark four it was really the jaycar Oh, the difference thing is is had a new tail and no longer had the the short, boxy

tail that the jaycar head. And of course they did have made a lot of structural changes to the to the honeycomb chassis. So the problem never really occurred ever. When the car was recreated as the mark for it was no longer any chassis issues with what you told me they even riveted the chassis differently. They did start with the honeycombs chassis, which the honeycomb itself was about an inch, probably an inch, maybe an extra quarter inch a thick and originally, all of it was glued

together. It was all flat panels and they were just glued together. And then the the bracketry was riveted but not all the way through the honeycomb What's spacers between it stopped collapsing. Right? It was just riveted to the skin. And it was glued. Everything was glued. Right. So when the car was recreated as Mark for all of the glue joints on the honeycomb tub itself were reinforced with angle irons that were glued and

riveted through all the way through the honeycomb. And all of the bracketry holding the holding the the engine, the suspension pieces, all of that was properly installed. blued and riveted always. How did your cars do and the C seven was raised? Well, we had the two Mark fours and the mark three and the Shelby had the same. The mark the with the mark for the Mario Andretti was driving one of the mark fours for us. And he ended

up crashing. And when he did crash, just by coincidence, another one of our mark fours got swept up in the same accident, as did the mark two for Florida France. Oh, man, and that left us with only one mark to left. And it has some form of mechanical trouble and was out of the race. Shelby's cars. Their mark two fell out of the race. Their Mark, one of their

mark fours fell out of the race. And the only car left was one mark four, which was really driven by Dan Gurney and AJ Foyt, they make it through and they won the race. There you go. And those are really another set of drivers that were very well known and famous for their driving skills. Wow. Well, you your work with Holman moody really sounds well, it's very interesting. Lots of projects started out with the Falcon rally cars in 1962. And then, I was in then we built 1964 We built the Mustang

rally cars. I was in charge of building those, went to Europe with them and actually drove one of the service vehicles and stopped along the way and, and fixed the Porsche was being driven by Ferdinand Porsche. All right, I fixed it as a shock absorber amount had broken I stopped and fixed it for well, you from rally cars, you went to funny cars. Well, I call him funny cars. I think you had a different designation for him.

They have Ford abilities, saying a little head game cam engine for 20 sevens for use in NASCAR and NASCAR wouldn't allow him to run them. So Ford decided to use them as drag cars. And they sent 10 Mustangs down to Homer moody and I was in charge of modifying the cars to put these engines in them and altering the wheelbase on rear wheels and move forward three or four axes completely different front suspension in order to get the cars at the

entrance into cars. So we built those 10 Those went out to factory for drivers around the country and and then and then the some of the those cars were called FX cars factory experimental. And those are the ones you'd see on the just a drag race right straight quarter mile straight quarter mile drag race now pretty much pretty much standard looking Mustangs. Yeah, I had fiberglass fenders on fabric as decklid and these big very large engines.

Yeah, but they were cranking it on a quarter mile. Yes, they were. But they they evolved into a tirely different car. After we built those 10 I was in charge of building for more of the cars, which had extended front wheelbase the front wheels were moved I think 18 inches forward. So had very long goods, the engines will move back. The bodies were now totally fiberglass. There wasn't nothing on the cars that came off of a Mustang. Though they did look like a Mustang because there

were funny cars. Nowadays, the funny cars don't look like the car anymore, right? And those days and the night 19 6060 Force 1965 the NIHR rules were pretty strict, the car still look like a car and where the term funny car come from. I'm not sure where it's picked up. I guess it was just because the deviation from the standard car was funny. It was funny looking. Yeah. And from your funny car project, then you went to the GT 40 project. Is that correct?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yah, yah, yah, I was put in charge of the GT cars after the track cars. And then after GT, you went to the cannamd. Then we built the cannamd car for Mario Andretti. And after that, what did you do after that? That was the end of that was beginning around 1968. And that's when Ford decided it was going to stop racing on anyway, when for when Ford when Ford quit racing and 68. They actually did some

racing and 68. They built another can Amkor. But they, they stopped all of the they stopped all of the GT race stuff. And stuff you were doing. The stuff that I was doing is that when you went to law school, as soon after, I stayed all through 68. And John Holman, decided that he could make a lot of money, taking wrecked diesel trucks, and wedding different frames together and making one out of two pieces. And the end. So we did that for a while. But I didn't have a lot to do with

that. Right It was going on. So I decided that it was time for me to move on. And so on January 119 60, and I'm packed up and left and left on good terms at home. And when it came time to go to law school when I use the money. John Holman just sent me money that was very generous, and ultimately sent it back and gave it back to them. But there's no strings attached only strings attached was he says, If I gave you the money, you will maybe you'll come back. Sounds like a nice guy.

You're a nice guy. You in fact, are featured in the history of John of Holman moody. There's a book out there is there is in that book pretty extensively, right? Was Dottie involved in writing that book, by the way, no. Daddy's Daddy, Daddy, Daddy Parker at the time, and then was Daddy wonder. She was John Homans executive secretary. That's how you met. That's how I met Dottie. And we were married in 1860 67. I believe I have nothing but fond memories of Dottie. She's a wonderful

person. wonderful person. She almost didn't marry me because I wouldn't take her. Did you take her to Mons? Oh, oh, no, I wouldn't. I had decided that nobody would go from Holman and moody, who didn't have a specific job need to be there. There were a lot of different employees thought that they should give me a comment. I said no, no, no. There you go. John, I've really enjoyed talking to you. I'd like to invite you back. Would you be willing to come back? Sure.

Well, that'd be wonderful. Again, it's so nice seeing you. It's always a pleasure. Thank you very much, John. You're welcome. Good to be here. Thank you.