1965 GT40 in Monument Valley

Ford tried to buy Ferrari in 1963, and the deal collapsed. Henry Ford II then told his racing division to build a car that could beat Ferrari at Le Mans. The result was the GT40: GT for grand touring, 40 for its height in inches, measured at the top of the windscreen.

It worked, though not at once. Ford won Le Mans in 1966, with Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon in a 7.0-litre Mk II, and again in 1967 with Dan Gurney and A. J. Foyt in the Mk IV, a car built entirely in Michigan.

The wins of 1968 and 1969 went to the older Mk I, run by John Wyer's team in the pale blue and orange of Gulf Oil. In 1969 Jacky Ickx and Jackie Oliver won in the same chassis that had won a year earlier, beating a Porsche 908 by a few seconds after twenty-four hours.

In the picture it sits on red dirt at sunset in that blue and orange, a number 1 in a white roundel on the door, with two sandstone buttes standing up behind it in a pink-orange sky. The setting is Monument Valley, on the Utah and Arizona line, and a dry shrub at the lower left is the only other thing in view.