Yahoo Autos Adam Carolla's 'The 24 Hour War' Is a Car Movie by Car People That Isn't Just for Car People
In 1966, Ford won the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time. The following year, they won again. The year after that, they won a third time. And in 1969, a fourth.
That achievement was arguably the greatest in the company's history. It came after years of struggle, more than a few public failures, and enough burnt cash to refloat the Titanic. Ford's Sixties Le Mans program was famously the result of a dispute between Henry Ford II and Enzo Ferrari-Ford had tried to purchase Ferrari (the company), only to have Enzo shut down the sale at the last minute. Ford the man vowed to get even, aiming his considerable resources at Ferrari's Le Mans record. The resulting warpath employed everyone from Bruce McLaren to Carroll Shelby and Indy 500 legend A.J. Foyt, putting the stops to Ferrari's unbroken, five-year winning streak at La Sarthe.
Collectively, Ford's wins were one of countless bright moments in a golden decade for both motorsport and culture in general. That first win made it onto the front pages of European newspapers, and it actually helped sell new cars. Ferrari never won Le Mans again, but Ford wouldn't go back until 2016. When Dearborn won last year, the world went less than nuts. But that makes sense: Both Le Mans and international motorsport are different now, tamer and less raw. So is the automobile itself. Racing is no longer a brutally dangerous pastime or the kind of thing that puts whole countries on the edge of their seats. And most of all, in 2016, there is no Henry the Deuce, no world-altering grudge match, no Enzo, no Carroll. The Ford-Ferrari war pivoted on how these men operated and thought, and they made that story what it was.
Adam Carolla's The 24 Hour War knows that. After a considerable amount of research and interviewing, Carolla has taken the Ford-Ferrari war and built it into a 100-minute documentary. The film, which is aimed at a general audience, sacrifices nth-degree detail and subject obsession for artistry and warmth. It's better for it.
War is the third big project from Carolla's production company, Chassy Media. The first two, Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman and The Bug Movie were nicely done but slightly uneven in pacing. The Bug Movie was directed and produced by Damon Ristau, but Winning and War were jointly assembled by Carolla and his producing partner, Nate Adams. They seem to have found their footing here, because the film works on a number of levels. For one thing, it's passionate and chock-full of detail; you can tell it was assembled by people who know cars and racing, know how car people talk and think. (Carolla doesn't lack cred; he's a collector and vintage racer who once owned multiple Lamborghini Miuras and a BRE Datsun 510 simultaneously. He also recently sold five vintage Lamborghinis in order to pay for a Le Mans-winning, ex-Paul Newman Porsche 935 that he plans on driving. For the record, this is just about the coolest thing you can do with a pile of collector-grade Lamborghinis.)
Most important, the deaths that took place during Ford's assault on Le Mans-chiefly Ken Miles, Shelby's star test driver and one of the best racers of his generation-aren't sensationalized. Blood is only brought to the fore when relevant to the story.
And it is relevant: Men died taking Ford to France. But given the era's brutality, those moments are kept to a remarkable, reverent minimum. And given that multiple players in the Ford-Ferrari story are no longer alive, Carolla's list of interview subjects is nothing short of amazing. There are obvious lights like Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney, and Edsel Ford II-the latter was at Le Mans in 1966, just 18 years old-but also Shelby designer and Daytona Coupe creator Peter Brock; drivers Jackie Oliver, David Hobbs, and Brian Redman; Enzo Ferrari's son, Piero; Richard Attwood, who gave Porsche its first Le Mans win, in a 917; Ralph Nader; and John Surtees. Plus lesser-known gems like Shelby driver Allen Grant, Shelby technician Charlie Agapiou, and Shelby tuner Gordon Chance. The latter group give some of the liveliest and (especially Agapiou, who trained under Miles) most emotional reflections in the whole beast.
Myself, I ended up watching War in the same way you might settle down with a pile of home movies: I cracked a beer, fell into the couch, and met a bunch of people I felt like I'd known forever. I ended up yelling at the screen, happily shouting out story beats ("REMINGTON!" "KENNNNNNN!"), because I'm a giant nerd. I nearly spilled my drink when Mauro Forghieri, Ferrari's legendary competition manager, came on-screen; I'd never seen him on film before, and he was just as charming as I'd imagined. (Subtitled Italian, on Enzo's intolerance of failure: "He put all the car components that had broken through the years in the library, and he called it the Museum of Horrors, to let us see how many stupid things we had made.")
Forghieri's presence is a stark reminder that these men aren't going to be around forever: He was just 27 when Enzo gave him control of Ferrari's racing department, in 1962, after most of the company's technical team had walked out. One of his first jobs was to sort the handling of the 250 GTO. He's there, talking, alive and well, but he was young then, one of the youngest in the story, and he is unmistakably not young now.
If you're of a similar bent, that might be War's best part: The chance to see and hear, in HD, from people only met in books or on YouTube. All against a backdrop of shocking color footage-GT40s at night at Daytona, or a rainy Sebring in 1965, tires floating away in the flooded pits.
On a certain level, as a car person, the film is also quietly satisfying. It's hard not to see these stories as "ours," the kind of thing normal people haven't cared about for years, and yet there they are, with real production value, being presented to the masses. But maybe motorsport movies are a thing now. Asif Kapadia's Senna, from 2010, was excellent; more important, it was a proper film, focused on the man and his achievements, watched by ordinary people and critically adored.
War isn't as powerful as Senna, but the two are different projects. I can't say if it's as relatable for ordinary people, because I'm not an ordinary person-I know these stories by heart and can't get enough of them. Comparing the two films is useful only inasmuch as both get your mind circling around the hows and whys of men who drive in circles for sport. And most of all, they give some hope that films like these could happen again.
In car media, there's a surplus of banal history to be mined and no shortage of people looking to preach to the converted. With Chassy and War itself, Carolla seems to want to do something different. Good for him. Good for taking a compelling, deeply human subject and making it about more than sheet metal-like the Ford-Ferrari war itself, War is a tale of struggle, failure, death and time and deeply human choices. Good for realizing that and getting it on film. It was about time someone did.
The 24 Hour War is available for rent or purchase on YouTube, Amazon Video, and Google Play. You can also find it on DVD and BluRay from chassymedia.com.
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