Mark Donohue’s 1967 Can-Am Lola T70

The Sunoco Race Fuels booth at the 2017 PRI (Performance Racing Industry) trade show featured a Lola T70 Mark IIIB car as raced in 1967 SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) J Wax Canadian-American (Can-Am) Challenge series for FIA Group 7 cars by Mark Donohue for Roger Penske Racing Enterprises.

 

The FIA Group 7 regulations developed in 1966 specified few rules - the cars had to be fitted with fenders, windshield, two seats, two doors, headlights, taillights, roll bar, dual braking system and a self-starter and that they must run on commercial gasoline.

 

 

 

This particular Lola chassis was the third of three Lola T70s purchased by Penske over a two-year period.  Lola Cars, based in England was founded in 1958 by designer Eric Broadley. The T70 was by far the company’s most successful customer car with over hundred cars built in three iterations, with its reputation established after a Lola T70 Mark II driven by John Surtees won the inaugural SCCA J Wax Can-Am series in 1966.

 

 

The first Penske Lola car, a Mark II series identified as chassis number SL71/21, was raced during the 1966 season but after just three races was destroyed in a crash in the Watkins Glen Grand Prix after contact with John Cannon’s spinning Genie owned by actor Dan Blocker. The subsequent fire after the crash virtually destroyed SL71/21 which was replaced by Lola Mark II chassis number SL71/32.  

The second Penske Lola T70 chassis powered by a 327-cubic inch Chevrolet V-8 built by Traco Engineering was dominant in the 1967 United States Road Racing Championship (USRRC) as Donohue won five of the series’ first seven races - the rounds at Las Vegas’ Stardust International Raceway, California’s Riverside International Raceway, the sandy Bridgehampton Road Course on Long Island, Watkins Glen, and Pacific Raceway in Kent Washington.    

 

Chassis SL71/32 was damaged in a July 1967 crash during a private Firestone tire test at Riverside and though it was later repaired, Penske needed a new car for the start of the 1967 SCCA Can-Am Series so he took delivery of our feature car, identified as chassis SL75/124, a Mark IIIB lightweight Spyder.

 

The new dark blue Lola debuted at the 1967 USRRC season finale at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course powered by a thundering Chevrolet 427-cubic inch V-8 engine. Donohue set quick time in qualifying, posted the fastest lap during the race and won the race by three laps over Jerry Hansen to clinch the 1967 USRRC championship.    

Despite the Lola’s Mid-Ohio success, testing showed that the 427-cubic inch engine lacked reliability, so for the 1967 Can-Am series the car was powered by a 327-cubic inch Chevrolet engine.  With finishes in only three of the series’ six rounds Donohue finished tied with John Surtees for third in points behind Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme and their dominant McLaren M6As.  

 

 

The key visual elements of this Lola T70 are the unique ram-air inlets located on either side of the roll bar. In his 1974 book The Unfair Advantage Donohue remembered the inlets as “….the greatest things! They made the car look like a spaceship. We didn’t realize that they were interfering with airflow to the rear spoiler, which probably offset any gains in horsepower. And they would crack, and they would fall apart, and we even sucked their screens into the carburetors.”  

Penske sold the car to the Carroll Shelby and Shelby Racing used it to test various engines and suspension parts.  Later in 1968, long-time Shelby American employees, brothers Charlie and Kerry Agapiou were encouraged by the Ford Motor Company to start a Can-Am team, and they bought using the Lola T70 from Shelby and raced the car with a hugely powerful Ford 427-cubic inch bored out to 464 cubic inches.

 

The Agapiou brothers started the season with Ronnie Bucknum as the driver but later George Follmer came on board. The car proved to be powerful and fast but unreliable though Follmer did finish second in the final 1968 Can-Am race at Las Vegas.

 

 

After its racing career ended, Lola SL75/124 was rebodied as the T70 coupe version and it spent time in a museum, but later it was sympathetically restored to its 1967 Can-Am appearance. Currently fitted with a 365-cubic inch Chevrolet V-8 engine it is raced in vintage events frequently.  

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All Photos by the author

 

The historic1967 LeMans winner

 

Deservedly the centerpiece of the Ford Motor Company exhibit  at the 2017 SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) show was the 1967 24 Heures du Mans (24 hours of LeMans) winning Ford GT40 Mark IV chassis  number J-5.

 

 

This car represented the ultimate development of the Ford GT40 series which first appeared at LeMans in 1964, as Henry Ford II was driven to beat the Italian Ferrari team. The initial Ford Advanced Vehicles Limited effort with British built chassis originally designed by Lola Cars powered by Ford’s 260 cubic inch V-8 engines managed by John Wyer did not perform well, and for 1965 management of the program moved to Carrol Shelby’s Shelby American Racing Team.

In 1965 Shelby American was still pushing its Cobra Daytona coupe program and after a difficult 1965 LeMans appearance in which both the Mark IIs entered retired with transmission failure, in 1966 the Shelby American GT40 Mark IIs powered by Ford 427 engines dominated at LeMans. 

The 1966 finish was botched as Ford tried to stage the 1-2-3 finish and the team of Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon were declared the winners of race over the team of Ken Miles and Denis Hulme.  The next iteration of the GT40 known as the “J-car” (chassis J-2) was destroyed in testing and killed Ken Miles and Ford dropped its development.  GT40 Mark III were cars built for road use.

Six (6) GT40 Mark IV chassis were built at Kar Kraft Inc. in Detroit powered by the mighty 427 Ford V-8 engine with cast iron block and aluminum cylinder heads fed by a pair of Holley four barrel carburetors that developed an estimated 530 horsepower and carried the Mark IV to terminal speeds of 212 miles per hour on the 3-1/2 mile long Mulsanne Straight. Lessons learned from the deaths of Walter Hangsen and Ken Miles meant the Mark IVs were more stoutly built with a steel roll cage.

 

 

 

Four Mark IV chassis were entered for the 1967 LeMans 24 hour race, two cars by Shelby American on Goodyear tires consisted of the driver team of three-time Indianapolis 500-race winner AJ Foyt and Dan Gurney in the red #1 car and the other team of 1966 LeMans winner Bruce McLaren and Mark Donohue in the yellow #2 car.

The other two Ford GT 40 Mark IVs were entered by the Holman Moody team shod with Firestone tires driven by teams of Lucien Bianchi and Mario Andretti in the bronze #3 car and the other by Denis Hulme and Lloyd Ruby in the dark blue #4 car.  The red #1 car chassis J-5 was visually different from the other entries because of the “Gurney Bubble” over the driver’s seat to accommodate Dan Gurney’s 6-foot-3 inch height.

The car #2 of Donohue and McLaren finished fourth while the #3 car assigned to Bianchi and Andretti and the #4 car of Hulme and Ruby were both eliminated in accidents during the 19th hour.   Foyt and Gurney in the #1 car led the race for the last 23 ½ hours and completed 388 laps (3251 miles) at a record breaking average of 135.48 miles per hours and won by four laps over the Ferrari 330 P4 driven by Ludovico Scarfiotti and Michael Parks.

 

The car that crossed the finish line on June 11 1967 was truly “all American”- car built in Detroit powered by an American-built Ford engine riding on American Goodyear tires driven by a pair American drivers.  This car chassis J-5 only ran one race and today the conserved car is part of the collection of the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit, Michigan.

To learn more about Ford Motor Company’s racing program at LeMans in 1967 and view historic photographs visit https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/expert-sets/101482