"Ford v. Ferrari" Film staring Matt Damon and Christian Bale - due out Nov 15 2019

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Juan Matus, Jun 3, 2019.

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  1. Mainline461

    Mainline461 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tamiami Trail
    After seeing this it's great to know that just plain simple entertainment is not dead. No art, depth not necessary; just a good time watching an enjoyable movie. Nothing wrong with simplicity … heck it's a film about building cars and racing them, and the people that made it happen.

    It was the fastest 2 hour and 32 minute movie I have ever sat though; it never slowed.
     
  2. Propinquity

    Propinquity Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gravel Switch, KY
    What a wonderful movie. I don't know jack about racing nor do I care now but I could relate to the human elements. Rudy was the football movie for people who don't like football and the same could be said for FVF with respect to racing.
     
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  3. Hagstrom

    Hagstrom Please stop calling them vinyls.

    It was a thrill to see this today. I enjoyed it, even when they took liberty with the real story. Some nice things I noticed - they had the wooden buck that CSX2287 was modeled on in one of the scenes. And it was great to see Alex Gurney playing his Dad Dan Gurney.
     
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  4. Burt

    Burt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kirkwood, MO

    In general, the Columbo "short block" V12 was a very reliable engine on the track, there was also a Lampredi engine that was built more like a scaled down Allison and it was not so reliable. I have no idea which iteration of the engine this particular Ferrari had.
     
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  5. For 1966 the Columbo engine was used in the cars race at LeMans. It was, and is a pretty good engine, but it was not up to par with the Ford FE at the time.
    Because of this the Ford GT was faster by a few MPH...I think the Ferrari topped out at 198 where the GT could make 210ish.
    Keep in mind the race limits are different than regular road driving limits.
    The race limits, specially in distance racing, try to get as much power as possible while also lasting the full length of the race at hand.

    This limits does not equal the ultimate limit of said engine. For instance the 289 could make in excess of 400 HP, but it was found through trial and error to be best for distance racing built to around 390 HP.

    This small disparity in speed between two race cars side by side does not look like much when both cars are relative to each other.
    With the GT slowly pulling away it seems plausible the Ferrari racer would try to keep pace...I mean its only a few mph more right?
    Well, take the Ferrari engine past its race limits, lap after lap, after lap, after lap, and pretty soon the good Columbo engine just can't take it anymore while the Ford FE is still good to go.
    The Ferrari engine breaks in some manner and the race is over for the Ferrari.
    Ford used this tactic and so did Ferrari, Jaguar, Porsche, and others who found they had a power and durability advantage over the competition.
     
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  6. Duke Fame

    Duke Fame Sold out the Enormodome

    Location:
    Tampa, FL
    If you want a more in depth background, see the documentary that preceded 'Ford vs. Ferrari', "The 24 Hour War".

     
  7. FVDnz

    FVDnz Forum Resident

    Just came back from seeing Ford vs. Ferrari (a.k.a. Le Mans '66) and undoubtedly, has to be one of the best films I've seen all year. Additionally, I saw the Roger Donaldson directed McLaren which celebrated the life of Kiwi Bruce McLaren before going to see the movie (highly recommended too I may add). Awesome to hear name drops of McLaren, Chris Amon and Denny Hulme in there not to mention actors playing them too. That's really cool to hear that Dan Gurney's son got to play his father in the film - really cool indeed. And Christian Bale was without a doubt, the star of the film even though Matt Damon was great as well.

    Going to look forward to own this on Bluray as when I get my home built next year, and once the Home Theatre room is all set up, this film is going to kill in there! :)
     
  8. Burt

    Burt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kirkwood, MO

    Engine TBO (longevity) vs. power output is actually a very interesting subject and one I spent some time working on when I was working for a military contractor who had a genset contract for a unit that had a critical power to weight requirement. I had been involved in experimental aviation and knew Dave Blanton, who had a business converting Ford four cylinder and V6 engines for homebuilt airplanes, somewhat, and although I did not have an engineering degree I had the right combination of electronics troubleshooting and mechanical aptitude that I wound up doing what was typically a ME degree billet. Our design used a custom built flat twin engine using SCAT VW cylinders and what amounted to a road coach bus alternator in a custom magnesium housing. It was probably a third of the weight of a conventional off the shelf genset of its power output. We built several prototypes and were prepared to go into semi-volume production when the Navy decreed that gasoline was a forbidden substance aboard ship. They did allow a vile brew called "otto fuel" (not to be confused with "auto fuel"...) but not gasoline. Since our customer had to be able to take their stuff on "the boat" that was the end of that. We heard they went to a British built corporate jet APU that would run on jet fuel that was actually a Wankel, derived from a Norton police motorcycle, but that was just a rumor, we never were told for sure. We destroyed every single thing to do with the project so the accountants could maximize the tax writeoff. All the parts, all the prototypes, all tooling, all drawings, we did not even keep pictures of the unit. This was under NDA but the company no longer exists so there is no entity that would have standing to enforce it.

    At any rate, what takes an engine out in street or conventional marine/ industrial use-bearing and bore wear, or long term related cracking of metal parts leading to things like cam or oil pump drive failures, etc-isn't what kills a racing engine usually. Catastrophic structural failures of crankshafts, conrods, or major castings are much more common. That said, these are usually correlated with vibration and the resonant characteristics of all these parts come into play. Sometimes there will be a resonant peak at a certain rpm that will greatly stress a part but if you are at a higher rpm that resonance goes away.

    Ford had the raw budget to build dozens of engines and run them for days, or weeks at a time on the dyno whereas I'm sure Ferrari was far more limited in how much of this they could do. Ford also had the beginnings of computer analysis available whereas neither Ferrari nor anyone else in the automotive business in Europe were quite to that level yet. Enzo Ferrari was all too conscious of this and that's why I tend to disbelieve that he really wanted to be part of Agnelli's Fiat empire over that of Ford. Fiat was probably well behind the Germans and the French and the English in this regard.

    What we found is that power per se was not the limiting thing, generally. RPM, torque, BMEP, and the torsional resonance of various parts were and oddly enough sometime a given engine might be able to run longer at a higher RPM than a lower one or at a higher total power setting than a lower one even at the same RPM.
     
  9. JerolW

    JerolW Senior Member

    ^ That's very interesting. Thanks. I knew that kind of stuff happened. You explained it nicely.

    jerol
     
  10. daglesj

    daglesj Forum Resident

    Location:
    Norfolk, UK
    Not watched the movie yet. I did however, watch the documentary "Shelby" on Netflix the other night.

    It was pretty good on the whole. Went into reasonable detail on the ups and downs. Two things that annoyed me was the soundtrack often blotted out what a few of the older geezers were saying (and trust me some of them are pretty wheezy) and the initial development of the GT40 was glossed over virtually entirely.
     
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  11. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    yes, I watched it too after seeing F vs F. Recommended!! He was quite a guy. Borderline shyster there for a while (you get a very quick taste of that in f vs F).
    Nice to see he and Ford mended fences.
     
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  12. Great movie, great story, but also a reminder of the speeds back then were man on the moon level vs. tech and safety. Really astonishing to be doing 200+ mph at LeMans back then in those cars and track at the time. That's Indy speeds on a rustic tracks vs. today's LeMans.

    Also, lubricant tech was also fairly early too, and yet the limits of engine tech was pushed so hard.
     
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  13. Vinyl is final

    Vinyl is final Not Insane - I have a sense of humor

    Location:
    South central, KY
    My grandson and I watched "The 24 hour war" about a year ago. It is an amazing documentary. Another we just saw last week was the Carrol Shelby story. Another winner.

    We saw them on either Netflix or Amazon Prime (I forget which).

    I highly recommend watching those before you see the movie. It will really bring context to the whole thing.
     
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  14. Dhreview16

    Dhreview16 Forum Resident

    Location:
    London UK
    One of the most enjoyable movies of the year for me (by the way, it’s Le Mans ‘66 over here), and didn’t flag despite its 2.5 hours length. Bale and Damon both very good, as you’d expect.
     
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  15. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    How do people in the UK react to Bale's accent? (yes, I know it's natural for him). Some over here think he over does it. (??)
     
  16. Dhreview16

    Dhreview16 Forum Resident

    Location:
    London UK
    It’s a bit overdone in my view, but Myles was born near Birmingham, and there are lots of people from that part of the world (the West Midlands) with very strong accents. It’s distinctive. I would have thought it would have lessened with his time in the US, but who knows. As a Brit, it’s unusual to hear him with a strong English regional accent after things like the Big Short and the Dick Chaney movie.
     
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  17. FVDnz

    FVDnz Forum Resident

    Yes, Bale sure hardly ever gets to speak his native accent in film. Reign of Fire with Matthew McConaughey was perhaps the other film where he's not playing an American as far as I know.
     
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  18. JohnT

    JohnT Senior Member

    Location:
    PA & FL gulf coast
    Went and saw this over the weekend. Very enjoyable and one of the better racing movies I’ve seen.

    So many scenes but Shelby taking the Deuce for a spin was off the charts. Mainly because I saw Leno trying to squeeze into an original Gt40 and It was difficult for a full grown man to fit into that cockpit then pull serious G’s. But I guess it actually happened.

    Looking forward to owning the blu-ray.
     
  19. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    SO good! Unfortunately it's not the kind of role that gets Oscar nominations :(
     
  20. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    Yeah, I gotta see those now. Are they streamable? If not, on Blu? DVD? I can go to my friend's, he'd watch 'em
     
  21. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    We started with Fords when Grandpa bought a used Model T when he came home from fighting in Nicaragua, but I gotta hand it to Chevrolet for the longevity of their small-block design. Now, I know they reversed the head flow etc, but is the basic cylinder bore architecture still the same?
     
  22. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    Did Ken Miles really get paid $200 a day? I calculated, that's like $400k per annum in today's money!
     
  23. Raylinds

    Raylinds Resident Lake Surfer

    I have Le Mans on BD, but I think Grand Prix is only on DVD. It looks very good, though. I am not aware of a source to stream these.
     
  24. Andy Dursin

    Andy Dursin Forum Resident

    Location:
    Providence RI
  25. Raylinds

    Raylinds Resident Lake Surfer

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