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1967 Le Mans Trophy Returned To Ford Racing--45 Years Later

1967 Le Mans Trophy Returned To Ford Racing--45 Years Later

Anne Proffit

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Anne Proffit has worked in the automotive field since - well, not telling you that. She's been a car salesperson (before it was popular to hire... More

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1 1,523 views Feb 10, 2012

Courtesy Ford Racing

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This piece of metal went missing for 45 years, and no it's not just some little trinket but the trophy earned by Ford for its victory in the 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans--the second of its four consecutive Le Mans wins.

That 1967 win remains the only time an American race car (Ford Mark IV), prepared by an American team (Carroll Shelby's Shelby-American) with all American drivers--Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt--has ever won the world's most renown endurance sports car race.

The Ford Mark IV took the lead 90 minutes into the event and won by four laps over the second-place Ferrari.

The trophy was preserved by an unnamed individual following Ford's pull-out from racing in 1970. It was recently shipped to Dearborn with the wish that it be returned to Ford Racing and was received by Edsel B. Ford II, a Ford Motor Company board member and great-grandson of founder Henry Ford.

"It is a very important milestone for Ford to have this great and historic trophy returned to the company," Ford said. "The win in the No. 1 Ford Mark IV with Gurney and Foyt was memorable in so many ways and proved beyond doubt that our dominant victory at Le Mans in 1966 was not a one-time occurrence."

The trophy is currently in the hands of expert curators at the Henry Ford Museum, who are conserving this beauty for later display. No doubt it'll find a place in the Henry Ford Museum somewhere near the famous red No. 1 that Gurney and Foyt drove those 24 hours in France.

That winning car is one of the most prized pieces of the museum's Racing in America collection.

"It's great to have this trophy back 45 years after the historic win," Ford concluded. "It gives us hope one of these days the greatest missing artifact in our company's racing history--my great-grandfather's punch bowl trophy from 1901--may someday be found as well."