Ford F3L 1968

The Ford P68 (or more commonly known as F3L) has to be one of the prettiest race cars ever built! Unfortunately its race career was not as pretty.

The P68 was unveiled in March of 1968. At the end of 1967 Ford withdrew from sportscar racing leaving several teams to carry on on their own with the somewhat outdated GT40. Some teams decided to update the GT40 and continue racing it, however Alan Mann Racing ( who had previously run both rally and racing programs for Ford with considerable success) decided to build a brand new prototype car around Ford Europe's recently introduced 3.0L DFV V8 Formula One engine. Raising sponsorship from Ford Europe, as well as Castrol and Goodyear they procured the services of leading Ford aerodynamicist Len Bailey, who had designed much of the GT40's bodywork, to work on their new car. With a Cd of only 0.27and a frontal area of 14ft² the 3.0L engine was sufficient to push the P68 to over 350km/h. However, former driver Frank Gardner has criticised Bailey's pursuit of aerodynamic efficiency at the expense of driver comfort. In order to keep the P68 on the road, Bailey incorporated a patented, vortex-generating tail scoop, intended to create downforce without adding to drag. However, although the car has since been shown to produce moderate downforce at speed, this is mostly over the front wheels. The resultant high-speed instability led to both John Surtees and Jack Brabham refusing to drive the car. Over the following months the P68 sprouted ever larger rear spoilers, and small chin spoilers, in an effort to stabilize the car.

The first competition appearance of a Ford 3L prototype was at the BOAC 500 race at Brands Hatch. Despite having good pace, the car was criticized for instability at high speeds and, due to mechanical and electrical failures, did not finish any of the races for which it was entered.

For the 1969 season the P68 was used as the basis for an aborted, fully open Spyder, dubbed the P69 which you can see in the last picture. The P69 sported large, free-standing wings mounted to the top of the suspension mounts. However, these were banned on safety grounds early in the season after similar systems failed on F1 cars rendering them completely unstable. Without these wings the design was considered unraceable, and since the cost to completely redesign the car to compete with the dominating Porsche 907s was deemed too high the development program was stopped.