Genuine 1965 Ford GT40 Le Mans Prototype for Sale, Priced Like a Mansion in the Hamptons

No motor vehicle before or since has quite the same combination of trans-Atlantic appeal, genuine racing pedigree, and a story so ludicrous it sounds like something you'd read in a piece of folklore. More kit cars and special small-production tributes have come close—namely, the two times Ford themselves built them. But now, the real artifact is for sale.

Coming to us from a private seller on eBay out of Hermosa Beach, California, this 1965 GT40 Mk 1 was a labor of love for Carol Shelby himself. The story is known the world over. Ford was on the cusp of buying Ferrari, plus their racing operation, from old man Enzo Ferrari himself, before the elder Italian patriarch promptly told them all to take a hike in Italian at the very last minute.

Enraged at this affront, Ford spent the next half a decade trying to take Ferrari's lunch money at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and other high-profile endurance racers in Europe and North America. Ford had to build a minimum of 50 examples to meet strict homologation regulations imposed by the FIA, the premier sanctioning body in international endurance racing.

Enough trial and error went down under the Mk I's watch to drive an engineer insane, and enough losing to almost make Ford throw in the towel. Ford was humiliated at Le Mans in 1965, where not a single one of the five race cars entered, all running 289-cubic-inch (4.7-L) V8s borrowed from Mustangs, managed to endure the full 24 hours to the finish line. 

Not to fear, as Carroll Shelby and his team responded to the challenge of winning Le Mans with the further refined GT40 Mk II. Now sporting a 427-cubic-inch V8, Ford proceeded to clean Ferrari's clock year after year for the rest of the decade. At one point in 1969, Ferrari even lost at Le Mans to a privately-funded modified Mk I GT40 driven by the eccentric English gentleman's racer John Wyer.

This particular GT40 Mk I comes from before all the success, the reverence, and the notoriety. A time when Ford was shoving Mustang engines in the back of low-strung prototype cars in the hope that one of them would one day finish the race, let alone win its class outright. As such, every aspect of this car, every nut and bolt of its construction, is new-old stock parts or fully refurbished.

It all adds up to a sticker price of an eye-wattering $2,500,000. That's enough to live off of comfortably for the rest of your life, or have fun in one of the most historic race cars ever. We know which one we're picking.