| Product Summary | | Format: Hardcover | | ISBN: 9780618822195 | | Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company | | Publish Date: 6/9/2009 | | Buy.com Sku: 210223596 | | Item#: | | Buy.com Sales Rank: 56182 | | Dimensions (in Inches) 6H x 9.25L x 1.5T |
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| | | "Go Like Hell" tells the remarkable story of how Henry Ford II, with the help of a young visionary named Lee Iacocca, concocted a scheme to reinvent the Ford company: they would enter the high-stakes world of European car racing.
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In this thrilling examination of the Ford company's determination to defeat the Ferrari racing team in the illustrious 24-hour Le Mans race during the early 1960s, A.J. Baime conjures the almost mythical past of the auto industry's golden era, when safety features were seen as superfluous implements to the ultimate goal of speed. Baime's constructs his narrative around the battle between Henry Ford II and Enzo Ferrari, two pioneers of auto racing who waged a personal vendetta to see who could build the fastest, and thus, the best automobile in the world. From year to year the velocities of their machines increased, and so did the gruesome body count, as racers and spectators routinely perished in horrific crashes. Baime, an editor at Playboy magazine and amateur auto racer, brilliantly weaves exhilarating depictions of the furious action at Le Mans with back room intrigue and invention, as these two megalomaniacal figures seek achieve personal glory despite the rising human costs.
| Praise| "[This t]urbo-charged look at the heated race-car rivalry between Ferrari and Ford....[is t]he ultimate speed-read." 05/15/2009 Like the cars it describes, GO LIKE HELL is a streamlined marvel built for speed, fueled by testosterone and likely to elicit happy grins from anyone who has ever heard music in the squeal of a tire or the roar of an engine....[Baime] takes readers on a red-blooded ride to glory that will have them smiling all the way to the checkered flag." - Michael Merschel 06/21/2009 "[I]t is a pleasure to read Mr. Baime's GO LIKE HELL, an engaging account of Ford's herculean efforts, in the 1960s, to unseat Ferrari at Le Mans....While [the book] focuses on the racing, Mr. Baime does a nice job of briefly explaining the corporate battles that went on behind the scenes....All this drama is told well..." - Mark Yost 07/11/2009 |
| | Read A Chapter | Introduction In 1963, following a business deal gone sour, two industrialists from either side of the Atlantic became embroiled in a rivalry that was played out at the greatest automobile race in the world. In its broad strokes, this book chronicles a clash of two titans - Henry Ford II of America and Enzo Ferrari of Italy - at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In its finer lines, the story is about the drivers who competed and the cars they raced to victory and, in some cases, to their doom. The men whose names will appear form a list of automotive icons: Henry Ford II, Enzo Ferrari, Lee Iacocca, Carroll Shelby, Phil Hill, John Surtees, Ken Miles, Dan Gurney, Bruce McLaren, and a rookie named Mario Andretti. Equally as important is the automobile that is born in these pages: the Ford GT, a racing car that, more than forty years after it first made its mark, is still an automobile magazine cover staple. The car was designed and built for one reason: to beat the blood-red Fe Click to read more... Introduction In 1963, following a business deal gone sour, two industrialists from either side of the Atlantic became embroiled in a rivalry that was played out at the greatest automobile race in the world. In its broad strokes, this book chronicles a clash of two titans - Henry Ford II of America and Enzo Ferrari of Italy - at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In its finer lines, the story is about the drivers who competed and the cars they raced to victory and, in some cases, to their doom. The men whose names will appear form a list of automotive icons: Henry Ford II, Enzo Ferrari, Lee Iacocca, Carroll Shelby, Phil Hill, John Surtees, Ken Miles, Dan Gurney, Bruce McLaren, and a rookie named Mario Andretti. Equally as important is the automobile that is born in these pages: the Ford GT, a racing car that, more than forty years after it first made its mark, is still an automobile magazine cover staple. The car was designed and built for one reason: to beat the blood-red Ferraris on their home turf, during a time when Enzo Ferrari was enjoying the greatest Le Mans dynasty in history. The 24 Hours of Le Mans was (and still is) a sports car race. But in the 1950s and 1960s, it was more than that. It was the most magnificent marketing tool the sports car industry had ever known. Renowned manufacturers built street-legal machines that would prove on the racetrack that their cars were the best in the world. Sports car races were as beautiful as they were dangerous, and none of them was more so than Le Mans. In 1964, the first year Henry Ford II fielded a car at the 24-hour classic, Car and Driver magazine called the event "a four hour sprint race followed by a 20 hour death watch." It was "probably the most dangerous sporting event in the world." A win translated into millions in sales. It was a contest of technology and engineering, of ideas and audacity. No major American car concern since the Duesenberg brothers in the 1920s had won a major contest in Europe, where racing marques were fueled by decades of innovation on twisty, unforgiving courses. American stock car racing - on oval speedways - was a different game, involving less sophisticated drivers and cars. Success could only be achieved by the marriage of brilliant design and steel-willed courage. It would require a greasy-fingered visionary to run the show, a team of the most skilled drivers in the world, and the swiftest racing sports car ever to hurtle down a road. All things of which, the optimistic Americans believed, could be purchased with the almighty dollar. Henry Ford II''s vision of his company as a Le Mans champion began as a marketing campaign, an investment he hoped would pay off at the cash register. In the end, it became something far more. Nationalism, glory, a quest to make history like no automotive magnate ever had - Henry II had discovered a way to conquer Europe in the unfolding era we now call globalism. This is a work of nonfiction. All the events described in these pages actually occurred. The dialogue has been carefully reconstructed using countless interviews and contemporaneous accounts. Extensive notes on sources can be found in the endnotes. (Continues...)
Excerpted from Go Like Hellby A.J. Bairne Copyright © 2009 by A.J. Bairne. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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