Monterey Car Week is a glorious, octane-filled time for car geeks to gawk at their dream cars. The finale is the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, renowned for pristine examples of excellence from yesteryear. This year, Concours organizers outdid themselves by inviting every single Ford GT40 to win a major international race. Yes, seriously.
It’s the latest insane display of GT40 awesomeness during the 50th anniversary of Ford’s Ferrari-eating victory at the 24 hours of Le Mans. Earlier this year, Ford returned with new GTs to again claim victory at Le Mans, 28 GT40s screamed around the track at Goodwood Member’s Meeting, and a new Ford GT debuted. But only the best will suffice for Pebble Beach, so all the winning GT40 cars were invited to line up the misty coast of Carmel Bay. Also invited were many of the GT40’s infamous drivers, including David Hobbs, Chris Amon, Jacky Ickx, Dan Gurney, Brian Redman, and Jackie Stewart.
To behold a real GT40 is a religious experience in itself. To be able to see all of the winning GT40s together was otherworldly. We couldn’t resist walking down the line of historic glory and calling out a few facts about each race car, resulting in the below video. Being that close to these storybook steeds was a heavenly experience, topped only when the trio of GT40s that went 1-2-3 in 1966 at Le Mans fired to life and drove onto the podium. See – and hear – that for yourself in our Facebook Live video. (Jump to 39:50.)