The Shelby American (Winter 2021)

The SHELBY AMERICAN Winter 2021 12 I ’ m Ready For My Close-up, Mr. DeMille Hollywood magic, in the form of the blue screen, enables the wizards of special effects to combine on film the real (three GT40s crossing the finish line at Agus Dulce Airstrip in California) with the artificial (film of the LeMans crowd was projected on the blue screen behind the cars). The result was that it was impossible to tell it was not real. One of the things that went through our mind as we were watching the movie “Ford v. Ferrari” was, where did they get those cars? Using the original cars was unthinkable – and unneces- sary. Superformance replicas can be made to be undetectable from the orig- inals. But rather than buy cars for the film, it was more economical to rent them. One of the owners contacted was William Deary, managing director of The Carroll Collection, a Shelby mu- seum in Jackson, Michigan. His car, a Superformance GT40 was finished as P/1042, the #2 Bruce McLaren/Chris Amon 1966 LeMans winner For close-up filming the camera was positioned just outside the car. Christian Bale, play- ing Ken Miles, went through the motions of driving the stationary car. Scenery outside the car was projectioned on the windows, providing a sense of movement. Other filming was done with Bale actually driving – although at reduced speed. On film the car was speeded up. Skillful editing made it look like Bale was driving the car at speed. Deary was on hand to shepherd the car during the filming as well as a publicity tour (shown is an appearance in the “Today” show). The movie producers approached Deary about the use of his car, GT40 P/2382, in the movie and an accept- able fee was negotiated. Several of each of the cars were used, for both static and action photography. In the event that something happened to one of the cars, they substituted a replace- ment rather that shutting down pro- duction until the car is repaired. Included in The Carroll Collection is a replica of Shelby American’s ‘64 Ford Econoline van used by the Car- roll Shelby School of Hi-Performance Driving. It was also rented for use in the movie and appeared in a couple of scenes.