Ken Miles - The Shelby American Years

His name is Dave Friedman and his well-presented book is about a here-to-fore little known English ex-pat racing driver named Ken Miles who was so much a part of the Shelby Cobra story that (at least for this fan) it just leaps off the page here and roars on for some 230 (plus) pages.

The story here begins in 1963, with car mechanic Miles battling the giants of the West Coast sports car racing, among them: Dick Guldstrand, Bob Bondurant, Dan Gurney, Bill Krause, JP Kunstle, Jack McAfee, and Dave McDonald; Miles competing in lightweight machinery like 550RS and RS61 Porsches. A great driver, and an even greater mechanical genius, he became one of the first members of the vaunted Shelby American racing team contributing both driving skill and an intimate understanding of what made race cars go fast and stay together. Working with some of the best design and mechanical talent ever assembled (the great Phil Remington, Peter Brock, and many others, like John Morton, and the Agapiou brothers) he was an instant fit there.

As it turned out, the former WW2 British Tank Commander (he was there at Normandy) was the sort of team leader that Carroll Shelby needed and came to rely on heavily to make the whole show work as well as it did. The photos are evocative - racing action and pit scenes that reveal the intimate details of the sport in sharp relief. These photos are the lasting character studies of the men and the machines that proudly wore the COBRA name on racetracks all over the world.

And then there’s Le Mans. What some called a "mistake" and others an outright steal of victory in the greatest long-distance race in the world - the 24 Hours of Le Mans - is graphically documented here by Friedman. The decision at the 1966 event* on an echelon finish for the three leading Ford GT40’s put the car that Miles and Dennis Hulme had lead most of the race in, slowed down and running slightly ahead of the Bruce McLaren/Chris Amon team car for a PR stunt “photo finish” when the checkered flag came down to end the grueling twice around the clock endurance contest.

With that the officials ruled that the McLaren/Amon car had started the race further back on the track (the famous “Le Mans Start” where cars are lined up at the pit wall and the drivers run across the track and jump in to begin the race) and therefore had covered the greatest distance for the 24 hours of the race.

Friedman quotes Miles’ friend and crew chief Charlie Agapiou about the finish, "Ford didn’t want Ken to win at Le Mans. They wanted the headlines to read: 'Ford Wins Le Mans' not 'Miles Becomes The First to Sweep Daytona, Sebring, and Le Mans'". Shelby later took responsibility, saying: "That was my (expletive)" and admitting that he should have overruled the onsite Ford brass who had ordered the blanket finish. It was something that a stoic Ken Miles sucked up, but that really hangs heavy in Friedman's photos of that day.

At the book’s end there’s just no real way around the tragic accident that took Miles’ life only two months later at Riverside Raceway. Friedman relates that awful story in measured terms (with no graphic photos) simply trying, it seems, to make some sort of sense of the man’s death testing a new iteration of the GT40 called the “J-Car.”

Ken Miles was 48 years old.

Author’s Note

“Stokes, it was just a movie… relax man,” that’s what I’ve heard way too many times from good friends, strangers, others, and directly from one of people who was portrayed in the film.  Doubtless you know what movie I’m referring to here.

“Ford v Ferrari” was a fairly well-made Hollywood film and most of the events that were chronicled actually happened to one degree of another.  It’s just my sense (and I was around back then and at races that he competed in) that Ken Miles was not as much an unlikable, surly character as he was simply single-minded.  And, sorry, but Matt Damon as Shelby did not work for anyone who ever was in the guy’s presence.