The U.Ok.’s Alan Mann Racing at this time focuses on sustaining traditional automobiles and creating restomods, nevertheless it was as soon as a mainstay of the racing scene, as this video explains.
Alan Mann Racing, or AMR for brief, was based in 1964 by racing fanatic Alan Mann, who’d gotten his begin working a storage that ready race automobiles for competitors. Mann quickly negotiated a take care of Ford to run Lotus Cortinas. It was the beginning of an in depth partnership between AMR and the Blue Oval that might outline the group.
This was the period of Ford’s Whole Efficiency push, when the automaker sought to win in as many classes of racing as potential with a purpose to market its street automobiles. AMR took full benefit of Ford’s largesse, racing not solely Lotus Cortinas, but additionally Mustangs, Falcons, and, maybe most famously, the Mk1 Escort with which AMR gained the 1968 British Saloon Automobile Championship. All had been decked out within the group’s signature purple and gold livery.
2022 Ford GT Alan Mann Heritage Version
The livery wasn’t the one factor that set AMR aside. Drivers and mechanics from the period nonetheless recall Alan Mann’s gentlemanly persona and the impeccable preparation of the automobile. Whereas not precisely a fan of the Lotus Cortina, which he thought of troublesome to drive, racing legend Jackie Stewart acknowledged that the AMR automobiles had been the “crème de la crème” in comparison with different groups’ Cortinas.
Stewart—who went on to grow to be a three-time F1 champion—was simply one among many well-known names to race for AMR. Others included Graham Hill, Jacky Ickx, Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren, and Mario Andretti. Throughout that very same interval, AMR additionally did some film work, together with serving to with car-chase scenes in “Goldfinger” and constructing automobiles for “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”
AMR additionally ran the Cobra Daytona coupe which, like the usual Cobra roadster, was developed within the U.S. by Shelby American, earlier than leveling as much as the GT40. It even helped develop a light-weight physique for the Ferrari-fighting GT40, with two examples constructed and raced within the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans. Each ended up retiring, however Ford celebrated the partnership in 2022 with a particular model of its trendy GT supercar.
Apparently not discouraged, AMR started work on a clean-sheet sports-racing prototype for Ford referred to as the F3L, powered by the Cosworth DFV V-8 from F1. The aim was to realize 200 mph with 400 hp, which the automobile did, nevertheless it was tough to drive and by no means completed a race. By that point Ford was additionally curbing its racing efforts, successfully ending AMR’s time as a front-line race group. Alan Mann shifted focus to the aviation business.
The corporate would then return to racing in 2004 by making ready historic race automobiles, regularly increasing into different tasks, together with an electrical conversion of a Sixties Mustang. Extra not too long ago, AMR signed on to grow to be the high-performance division of Boreham Motorworks, a fellow U.Ok. firm engaged on a trendy iteration of the Ford Escort Mk1 that AMR famously raced in its heyday.
