17 replies to this topic

[mp4]

Does anyone remember the Ford J car? I think that's what it was called. It may have been a development of the GT 40.
I have been trying to find information about it but have been drawing blanks.

Anyone?

Thanks

[Ray Bell]

It was indeed a development of the GT40...

The 'J-car' was the one in which Ken Miles was killed at Riverside, IIRC, and with its 7-litre engine it won Le Mans... but I think there were modifications between the two events.

It also had a different name by then, like Mk 7 or something.

[mp4]

Ray,
Thanks for the info. Would this be the same car that Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt drove at LeMans?
I saw that car once at an historic event. It was a big block, 4 speed, red with the number one on it. It didn't look like a regular GT 40 and if this the same type, you've solved my mystery.

[DOHC]

The J car was a development of the GT40, and "the" Le Mans challenger for 1967. But there were also other parallel developments, and the GT40 mk IV was the car that won Le Mans 1967. Compared to the GT40 and the previous year's winner GT40 mk II, both the J car (mk VII) and the mk IV had heavily revised bodywork and looked bigger. The J car had two protrusions on the front on either side of the air intake, which made it look like a sting ray (the fish, not the car).

[DOHC]

Originally posted by mp4
Ray,
Thanks for the info. Would this be the same car that Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt drove at LeMans?
I saw that car once at an historic event. It was a big block, 4 speed, red with the number one on it. It didn't look like a regular GT 40 and if this the same type, you've solved my mystery.

No, that's the mk IV.

http://www.me.mtu.ed...GT40/gt40_1.jpg

[Ray Bell]

I'm having trouble with this...

I knew Miles was killed before that Le Mans win... over a year, it transpires as I check it out on the Speed's Ultimate Price thread. August, 1966...

So the J-car should not have been a Mk VII if the winning '67 car was a Mk IV, I recall that the word at the time was that the Mk Iv was a development of the J-car.

[DOHC]

Actually, IIRC, the Gurney/Foyt car that won Le Mans was called GT40 mk IV J-6, where I think the "J-6" was the chassis number, or something.

[Catalina Park]

If I remember this correctly.
The Mark 1 was the original small engined car, a 289ci I think.
The Mark 2 was the mark 1 with a big block 427ci and some extra holes in the bodywork etc.
The Mark 3 was the road car with a 289 and wire wheels different front guards and headlights etc.
The Mark 4 was the race version of the J car prototype.

[Vitesse2]

Picking the bones out of the entry in Georgano, these were the racing GT40s:

Ford Advanced Vehicles was set up in Britain in 1963, effectively temporarily taking over Lola to develop the Lola GT.

The 1964 269ci car was the GT40 Mk1, built by FAV.

In 1965 FAV was made responsible for production versions of the GT40, which were different to both the Mk1 and subsequent works developments. A 289ci version of the Mk1 was developed at Kar Kraft in Dearborn, followed by the 427ci Mk2.

Other variants from Kar Kraft were the X-1 Group 7 car, an automatic Mk2 and the GTX (later known as the J car). Alan Mann Racing built 5 lightweights [were these the Mk3, rather than a production model as Catalina Park said??], while FAV continued production for private entrants.

There were 13 cars at Le Mans in 1966 - eight Mk2s and five GT40s (ie production cars). The Mk2s were run by Shelby, Holman & Moody and Alan Mann and the three finishers were all Mk2s. The Mk2 ran in the Prototype class, the production GT40 in the Sports Car class, so Ford won two championships that year.

The Mk4 was developed from the J in 1967.

[Roger Clark]

I believe the original J-Car only made one public appearance, at the 1966 Le Mans test day. THe Mark IVs, which were the spearhead of the works effort in 1967 were developed from it and had chassis numbers of the form J-n. From memory, the J-car had an automatic transmission, but I don't think this was carried over to the Mark IV.

[Henri Greuter]

The '67 Le mans winning Mark IV was derived from the J car they say.
But put pix of the two cars nest to another and you wonder why. They are rather different in my eyes.

Henri Greuter

[Don Capps]

Originally posted by Vitesse2
Ford Advanced Vehicles was set up in Britain in 1963, effectively temporarily taking over Lola to develop the Lola GT.

The 1964 269ci car was the GT40 Mk1, built by FAV.

In 1965 FAV was made responsible for production versions of the GT40, which were different to both the Mk1 and subsequent works developments. A 289ci version of the Mk1 was developed at Kar Kraft in Dearborn, followed by the 427ci Mk2.

Other variants from Kar Kraft were the X-1 Group 7 car, an automatic Mk2 and the GTX (later known as the J car). Alan Mann Racing built 5 lightweights [were these the Mk3, rather than a production model as Catalina Park said??], while FAV continued production for private entrants.

There were 13 cars at Le Mans in 1966 - eight Mk2s and five GT40s (ie production cars). The Mk2s were run by Shelby, Holman & Moody and Alan Mann and the three finishers were all Mk2s. The Mk2 ran in the Prototype class, the production GT40 in the Sports Car class, so Ford won two championships that year.

The Mk4 was developed from the J in 1967.

The Mk 3 (or Mk III) designation has always been one of those confusing items in the GT40 story. It was apparently the result of the press looking at the sequence of certain models and filling in the gap. The GT40 'Mk 1' was a retroactive designation for the original batch of GT40's that FAV constructed at Slough. At Le Mans in 1965, the original version of the Mk 2 appeared and then the production batch of GT40's hit the scene, those following such things in the press making the leap that it was the Mk 3. They were simply the Mk 1's with the modifications required to facilitate their production -- sorta 'Mk 1P's' if you will. The Alan Mann-built 'lightweights' were the Mk 3's and incorporated some other modifications as well.

The X-1 and the GTX were the same car, the GT40 project that McLaren on for FAV. The 1966 version of the Mk 2 was a Kar Kraft product based upon the requirements generated by Shelby American after the 1965 campaign. A spin-off was the 'J Car' program. The original 'J Car' was essentially an engineering study to work out the Mk 2 follow-on. It was shown at the Le Mans Test Days in April, but was literally right out of the box. The Hansgen crash that weekend and the obvious lack of development of the 'J' meant that Ford would focus on the Kar Kraft Mk 2 for Le Mans and then begin to devotes its attention to the 'J' series.

Ford/Kar Kraft played around with automatic transmissions during 1966 at various times in large part due to the success of the GM/Chaparral transmission and the thought that such a transmission would make sense when mated with the 427 engines that were being developed for the campaign. Although they were close, the need to ensure reliability above all else meant that this project got moved to the side.

After Le Mans, Shelby American and Kar Kraft began to work on the 'J' car program. It was at this point that Ken Miles crashed at Riverside. The accident set the program back significantly. By the time the program was back on track, there was not sufficient time to have the 'J' series developed and ready for the 1967 Daytona race. As things ended up, they would have been just as well off taking the 'J's' since it was a fiasco. However, Kar Kraft readied one of the 'J' cars for Sebring and it appeared as the Mk 4, usually given as the Mk IV. Mario Andretti and Bruce McLaren won the race and at Le Mans there were Mk IV's ready for the main effort and backed up by Mk 2's with Mk 1's and Mk 3's added to the fray as well.

The appearance of the 'J' car when it emerged as the Mk IV was different, but the chassis, engine, and transmission (the KK 4-speed manual) were the same. So, despite the outward appearances, the two were very similar, the Mk IV benefiting from both the Mk 2 program and work by Kar Kraft to improve the mechanical package.

The GT40 Mk IV was an excellent Le Mans machine and allowed Dan Gurney and AJ Foyt to win the 1967 race. However, the CSI changed the regs for 1968 on relatively short notice, although it was scarcely unexpected.

All this is off the top of my head, so....

[Jonathan]

For those long-timers, here is the old thread where Joe Fan suggested that the early Ford prototype Mustang I show car with the German Ford / Cardnal V-4 Engine somehow served as a basis in some way for the J Car :

http://www.atlasf1.c...=&threadid=1098

A good three or four pages of replies, many of which not aggreeing with Joe, but lots and lots of material on the J-Car project, before the thread was locked.

[Roger Clark]

The Alan Mann-built 'lightweights' were the Mk 3's and incorporated some other modifications as well.

I'd not heard this before. i thought the Mark III was the road car (not the production racer).

The appearance of the 'J' car when it emerged as the Mk IV was different, but the chassis, engine, and transmission (the KK 4-speed manual) were the same.

The J car, when it appeared at the 1966 LE Mans test day, had a two speed automatic.

However, the CSI changed the regs for 1968 on relatively short notice, although it was scarcely unexpected.

The change was announced in June 1967, very shortly after Le Mans.

[2F-001]

I have here a booklet:

''The American Challenge: Ford's Le Mans Program''
no authors quoted
published by Quicksilver Communications Inc. 1980
Photography by Ford Photographic, Ford Motor Company.

It is in part 'typeset' on a typewriter, but is tidily produced in black and white, with forty or fifty photo's and some technical summaries along with a general account from Mustang I experimental car to the various '67 sports racing decendants, MkIV, Mirage etc. It labels MkIII as a ''limited production street vehicle''.

Does anyone know from where this book comes? It's the only copy I've ever seen.

There is a chart which purports to show the evolution of the various threads (experimental Mustangs/Mach 1 etc; GT40s; X-1/J-car/Mk4) all stemming from the ''Mustang 1 experimental sports car''.

I don't have the means to post any scans from this, but if anyone wants to see anything from it I could scan and e-mail...

(I never think of the MkIV as being a GT40 at all. I guess you may say that's just semantics, but I can't find much they have in common)

[cjpani]

Hope this helps:








Sorry about the size, I still can´t manage to resize them.


Carlos

[Vitesse2]

Originally posted by cjpani
Sorry about the size, I still can´t manage to resize them.


Carlos

Carlos: have you tried a prog called Irfanview? Ray put me on to it a while back - very simple to use. Freeware too! Available from all the usual download sites.

[Ray Bell]

I struggled through it all and reduced them for you, cjpani...

Then I saw Richard's post. Anyway, you can obtain the downsized pics from

www.austarmetro.com.au/~raybell/FordJpics

Just take them out of that folder and put them on your site with the same names as they have at present (they are currently renamed...) and they will come up at the desired size.