Ken Miles

But he's not racing.

Ken Miles, right? Yeah, Ken Miles.

Yeah, Ken Miles.

And it was his son.

Pete Miles.

Yeah, but he's up there and he goes, yeah, this is my dad.

And I go, really? Because I looked at the card and I'm like...

You related to Ken Miles? Yeah,

Mm-hmm.

What I really love about this story, too, is, like, Ken Miles is the ultimate grassroots hero-

Yeah

... who was, like, a race car driver mechanic-

First fact-check.

Fact-checked, he did not look-

First fact-check, Ken Miles

...

Exactly.

So they order their lead driver, Ken Miles, to slow down and let the second-place Ford, driven by Bruce McLaren, catch up.

They orchestrate this perfect staged dead heat, and Ken Miles just naturally assumes he has either won or tied, but the Ford executives completely forgot to consult their own rule book.

Which is such a massive oversight.

Unbelievable, right? So Bruce McLaren had qualified slightly worse than Ken Miles the day before, which meant McLaren actually started the race a few positions further back on the starting grid.

What's fascinating here is the brutal, unforgiving interpretation of the rules by the race officials because McLaren started further back on the grid, and the two cars crossed the finish line at the exact same moment 24 hours later.

Right.

So they hand the victory to McLaren based on a technicality of parking placement.

Um, it's the story of...

The story largely revolves around two individuals, uh, Ken Miles, tragically killed in a, uh, racing training back in the, in '67, and Carroll Shelby, who invented the Shelby roadster car, the Shelby sports car.

I'm, I'm reading the bio...

That...

They're actual competitive, like SCCA races, starting in the late 50s, right? And then in 1963 was a real significant year.

So Carroll Shelby, Ken Miles, and the Shelby America crew had just been racing out at Watkins Glen in New York.

And they're on their way back to home base there in Venice Beach.

in California, and they find out that there's a privateer racer that is going to race a Cobra in Garnett, Kansas.

So the Corvette guys are talking trash already.

So Shelby's like, you know what? Let's drop on down to this Garnett place and let's show them what's up.

So Shelby rolls into Garnett, Kansas in July 1963 with Ken Miles, a bunch of Cobras and And they end up finishing one, two, three in the unmodified class and sweeping that.

And then I think the only difference was they had an electric differential cooler.

In the real life story that inspired this film, an American company attempted to purchase an Italian company before negotiations dramatically fell apart.

Ken Miles, one of the two real life men at the center of this film, died in 1966 while testing an experimental vehicle in California.

Okay, now we've gone over them each twice.

So now if you still want more time, you should pause because I'm going to reveal those answers in five, four, three, two, one, zero.

So, so Nigel goes on to say that in researching his Cobra for years, he discovered the man behind the Cobra.

And that's the British version of Smoky Unik, Ken Miles.

And if you've seen Ford versus Ferrari, they start to teach you how to appreciate what Ken did for it.

But Ken Miles was the British version and we had Smoky Unik.

And he said that his inspiration was Ken Miles and that cinema's on his way.

And he said, you know, the true horror, the true hero of the Shelby Cobra is Ken Miles.

It's not Carroll Shelby.

And I'll get into a little more of that.

But anyway [laughs].

But Ken Miles was way out there, and they told him to slow the car down so that they could have-

Bro, where was Bruce?

So as a result, the cars finish like this.

... and because Bruce McLaren's car started 80 feet back, but they finished eight feet apart-

Wow

... technically Bruce McLaren had driven a longer distance, and so he was technically the winner of the race, as opposed to Ken Miles driving the car that was actually winning.

And technically he wasn't given the win.

I met Carroll Shelby.

Carroll Shelby went to Ken Miles, the British, one of the greatest guys.

And he said, we have a blank check, unlimited funds.

How long will it take to beat Ferrari? He said, minimum 10 years.