After two years of trials, failures and not earning the Le Mans championship for 1964 and ’65, every senior employee that worked on the project received a 3x5 card before the 1966 race that was handwritten from Mr. Ford that read, “You better win – HF.”



One of the employees who saw that card was Mose Nowland, retired Ford Racing engine engineer, who spent 57 years with the company, including assisting on the LeMans GT program in 1966 and 1967. Nowland was also present at the Ford Archives for this program and shared some of his stories from being on the Le Mans GT40 engine building team. He recalled a time when he had flown to find a fix for two race-prepped engines in two different locations (one at Holman & Moody and the other at Shelby American), just as the cars were being loaded up for the Le Mans race. Mose employed some floating trout fishing line to help prevent oil leakage from the cylinder heads onto the exhaust manifolds.



Listening to little-known stories from Ryan and Nowland and being able to see original documents and artifacts from the Le Mans program brought an air of authenticity to the release of “Ford vs Ferrari” on November 15th, 2019. No matter how exciting any movie race footage or the Hollywood spin of this story might be, the ability to see, touch and hear some of the history behind that great race at the Ford Archives was highly insightful and entertaining in and of itself.