“By the time I raced a GT40, it was a well-proven car,” says Jackie Oliver. He’s not kidding. First came the terrifying stories of aerodynamic instability, later the debacle of Le Mans 1965. But then Ford threw the kitchen sink at it. The 7-litre cars finally broke the Ferrari stranglehold in 1966-67 – and then a rule change outlawed them. Group 4 gave the 5-litre GT40 a second wind and JW Automotive scored two more victories. The legend was complete.

Oliver had his first taste of the GT40 in 1968. “I was in a third JW car,” he recalls. “Brian Muir put it in the sand at Mulsanne and lost two hours.”

In 1969, sharing with Jacky Ickx, Oliver scored what he later realised would be the biggest win of his life. That closest-ever finish, with Ickx and Hans Herrmann’s Porsche 908 separated by just 120 metres, followed the Belgian’s safety protest of strolling to his car at the traditional sprint start. “When Jacky told me what he was going to do, I just said ‘if you want’,” says Oliver. “I was quicker than Jacky at night for some reason. David Yorke always said that won us the race.”