The only roadster that participated in the 24 Hours of Le Mans marathon is to be sold for a tidy sum (29 photos)

In mid-May, Mecum auction house will put up for auction one of the first racing prototypes of the Ford GT40, built at the turn of 1964 and 1965. This is the car known as GT/109 - a roadster that was part of one of the first stages of Ford's Le Mans program. In total, only five open-body GTs were built at that time, and only one of them went to the 24 Hours of Le Mans track.





Price expectations are not announced, but in 2020, this car was already tried to be sold, and then it was planned to get up to 10 million dollars.

Between January 1964 and April 1965, Ford built 12 prototypes called the GT Competition. Only five were roadsters, and only two survive today, but chassis number GT/108 was tested as a road-legal variant.

The GT/109 on sale was a Le Mans-ready car, taking into account the experience gained by Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles' team at Daytona and Sebring in 1965, where closed-body prototypes managed to reach the podium. At the Sarthe circuit, the sports car was driven by French drivers Maurice Trintignant and Guy Legier, but the car was forced to retire on lap 11 due to a gearbox failure.

After the race, the car was repaired and stored for some time, first at Shelby, and then at Ford. In 1968, it was bought by the famous American customizer Dean Jeffries, in whose family the rarity remained until 2013. Now the car belongs to Dana Mecum, the founder of Mecum auctions, who financed the restoration of the roadster to its 1965 condition. The roadster wears the same Ford of France livery and the same side number as in the "24 Hours of Le Mans".







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