Go Like Hell Book Summary - Go Like Hell Book explained in key points

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Go Like Hell summary

Name: Go Like Hell
Rating: 4.4 (25 reviews)
Author: A. J. Baime

A. J. Baime

Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans

4.4 (25 ratings)

25 mins

Brief summary

Go Like Hell by A. J. Baime is a thrilling American history book that follows the race between Ford and Ferrari at the 1966 Le Mans and the men who risked everything to win. It's a gripping story of speed, rivalry, and engineering that left a lasting impact on the world of motor racing.

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Go Like Hell
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What’s in it for me? Learn the amazing story behind one of history’s most competitive sports rivalries.

Around the world, motor racing remains a fascinating and popular sport that draws massive crowds and helps contribute to untold fortunes in car sales. But there was a time when car companies in the US stayed away from racing altogether, due to its reputation as a deadly contest that took far too many lives.

While deaths at professional car races are extremely rare these days, in the early and mid-twentieth century, the odds of a driver dying on the racetrack was around one in four! It was in this era of death-defying racing that a rivalry emerged between Ford and Ferrari. Its main stage was the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance test, which took place rain or shine, with the trophy going to whichever car managed to cover the greatest distance in a 24-hour period.

As competitors would say, Le Mans was comprised of a four-hour sprint, followed by a twenty-hour death watch. In 1955, following a crash that spread into the spectators, somewhere between 77 to 96 people died. But the race didn’t stop. Although it was an incredibly dangerous sporting event, it was also one of the most prestigious.

The show had to go on. And, in the mid-60s, it was the battleground between two automotive legends.

In these blinks you’ll find out

how racing played a role in revitalizing the Ford brand;
why the name Ken Miles should be better known in racing history; and
why the 1966 Le Mans final is still considered controversial to this day.

Henry Ford II led the Ford Motor Company out of a financial free fall during a national car craze.

In 1945, when Henry Ford II took over as president of the Ford Motor Company, he had quite a job ahead of him. In the years prior, his father, Edsel Ford, had been hamstrung by his grandfather, the original Henry Ford. Despite Edsel’s pleas to modernize the brand, Henry stubbornly refused to allow his son to make any changes, while the Chevrolet car company slowly became the American brand of choice.

At the same time, Henry Ford, who had no talent for accounting, placed a former convict by the name of Harry Bennett as an executive manager. The company was hemorrhaging money. And the run of terrible fortune continued as, at the age of 49, Edsel Ford died of stomach cancer, though many believed it was due to a broken heart since he had never managed to gain the trust of his father.

Henry Ford II believed that his father was a saint who’d been killed by his job, and he wasn’t going to let that happen to him. So when he took the job of company president, it was on the condition that he be allowed to make whatever changes he wanted. First on his list was to modernize the company – as his father had once hoped – and in doing so, regain supremacy over Chevrolet.

It was a momentous time to be in Ford’s shoes, as, in post-WWII America, there was an ongoing car craze.

Key to the burgeoning fascination with big and fast cars were the new interstate highways that were built in the 1950s. They wove throughout the US and allowed people to drive from coast to coast. Meanwhile, WWII veterans who’d learned how to be mechanics or become accustomed to fast speeds as fighter pilots were turning their attention to cars and their increasingly big and powerful engines.

And so were a new generation of teenagers, who made up the big crowds around the automobile races taking place on local drag-strips and the big, sponsored events in cities such as Indianapolis. All across America, people were getting most excited about cars with loads of horsepower, like Chevrolet's Corvette, which was capturing lots of checkered flags.

In response, Henry Ford simply had to come up with a Corvette killer.

Enzo Ferrari had an early love of racing and came to dominate the field, while the sport of racing proved deadly.

While the Corvette was the premier American racing car at the end of the 1950s, across the pond in Europe there was another name dominating the field: Ferrari.

From the start, Ferrari was all about racing. It’s founder, Enzo Ferrari, had been obsessed with fast cars since, as an impressionable 11-year-old, he’d witnessed his first race in 1909. While World War I would devastate large swathes of Europe, it also spurred on great mechanical innovations which Ferrari would use to start creating his own brand of cutting edge race cars.

Following a withdrawal from a safety resolution, Ford entered the lucrative racing market in 1962.

For a while, the American government tried to keep the big business of car manufacturing away from the life-threatening business of racing. In 1957, the federal government passed what was known as the Safety Resolution, which involved all the major car companies, including Ford and Chevrolet, agreeing that they wouldn’t participate in racing competitions.

But given the soaring popularity of racing, and the fact that twice as many Americans were attending car races than baseball games, the possibility of using these races to sell more cars was too much to resist. There was even a saying in the car business that went, “Wins on Sunday equal sales on Monday.”

After a deal fell through, Ford became committed to beating Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Ferrari continued to dominate the racing game, while accidents kept claiming lives.

By 1961, Ferrari had won three out of the last four Le Mans races. But on September 10, 1961, at the Italian Grand Prix, famed driver Count Wolfgang Von Trips was racing a Ferrari Dino when his car brushed against another on its way to the finish line and spun out, flipping into the crowd of spectators, taking Von Trip’s life along with 14 others.

Ford’s initial entry into endurance racing was the GT40, and it didn’t fare well at first.

The Ford-Ferrari rivalry can be seen as something of a David and Goliath scenario, but who’s who changes depending on how you look at it.

Ferrari was a dominant force in European racing and the last time a US car won a major European race had been in 1921. Therefore, Ford could be seen as the underdog, taking the role of David. But Ford had something that Ferrari didn’t: a seemingly bottomless budget to draw from.

Adjustments were made to unveil the new GT40 in 1965, and things got off to a good start.

Ford’s silver lining in the 1964 Le Mans was that one of Carroll Shelby’s Cobras managed to cross the finish line in fourth place. So it was perhaps not too surprising when The Deuce gave John Wyer his walking papers and Shelby was brought on board to get the GT40 in shape for the ‘65 Le Mans.

One of Shelby’s chief mechanics and test drivers was Ken Miles, who helped put the car through rigorous testing, some of it at an aerospace facility owned by Ford. The car was made more aerodynamic, poor air ducting was sealed off, and new magnesium wheels with bigger front brakes were added. All said, these adjustments led to the shedding of 30 pounds and an increase of 76 horsepower.

The 1965 Le Mans ended in misery for Ford, and a new round of upgrades and repairs.

The smoke emerging from one of the Ford GT40 MK II’s was the result of faulty head gaskets that caused the engine to overheat from temperatures of around 266 degrees Fahrenheit. The bad news was, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the Fords suffered the same fate.

As darkness fell on Le Mans, and drivers turned their headlights on, driver Phil Hill was the last man on the race track and determined to make a statement before it was all over for team Ford. On one of his last laps before breaking down, he posted an average lap speed of 138.44 mph, setting a new track record.

Le Mans ended in controversy in 1966, and then tragedy struck.

Ever since the Ford versus Ferrari rivalry first revved its engines in 1964, the public’s racing frenzy had only increased. Crowds were getting bigger, movies were being made, and hundreds of pop songs were written about fast cars. And it all culminated in France, in 1966, with the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

That year, Henry Ford II was the official Grand Marshall of the race, with the honor of waving the flag that started the contest. But before he did that, he handed a card to each of his team leaders that read, “You better win, HF II.”

Following a tragic end to one of Ford’s best drivers, Ferrari rebounded at Daytona but never won another Le Mans.

While many, including Carroll Shelby, believed Ken Miles should’ve been awarded the trophy and allowed to go down in history as the man who won Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans in a single year, it didn’t turn out that way.

In 2007, Shelby told the author how he had continued to be haunted by going along with the photo finish idea. And this was only compounded by the tragedy that followed Le Mans.

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What is Go Like Hell about?

Go Like Hell (2009) tells the remarkable story of a high point in automotive racing: the mid-60s rivalry between Ford and Ferrari, two very different car manufacturers that wanted to win at all costs. The pinnacle of this rivalry was the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans, the most gruelling endurance race in the world as well as the most prestigious.

Best quote from Go Like Hell

The Mille Miglia, which had been a cherished event for thirty years, was never held again.

—A. J. Baime

Who should read Go Like Hell?

Fans of the Ford vs. Ferrari movie
NASCAR and racing enthusiasts
Anyone who loves a good sports story

About the Author

A. J. Baime is a former automotive and sports feature editor for Playboy and is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal and Road & Track magazine. His other books include Big Shots: The Men Behind the Booze (2003).

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