Ford v Ferrari

Factual error: While Miles and Shelby share a "fizzy pop", Miles is holding a glass Coke bottle. The Coke logo on the bottle wasn't invented until circa 1985, roughly twenty years after the film is supposed to take place. (01:16:11)

Factual error: During Lee Iacocca's slide presentation to Henry Ford II in 1963, there are two slides that reference James Bond. One shows him standing next to the Aston Martin DB5, which made its debut in "Goldfinger" in 1964, and another shows a still image from "Thunderball", which was released in 1965.

wizard_of_gore

Factual error: Christian Bale is eating a bag of potato chips. That bag is foil-lined or made of some type of polymer blend. Potato chips were packaged in a wax-paper/plastic bag in the mid-sixties. The inside of the bag would have been whitish, not silver.

George Spelvin

Factual error: When Ken is in a room seeing a brand new Ford engine being tested, he and a Ford engineer are wearing hearing protection. The protection being earmuffs, which look way too modern for the 1960s. They have a detachable earmuff, which wasn't introduced until decades later.

Matdan97

Factual error: Throughout the movie, Ken wears a pair of Ray Ban Balorama (4089) sunglasses. His pair however, has the Ray Ban logo on the temples; in the 1960s, Ray Ban sunglasses didn't feature the logo on the temples or lenses.

Matdan97

Factual error: When Mollie is scaring Ken in the station wagon, they pass a red Chrysler 300 twice (tip of the hat to the chase scene in Bullitt). The Chrysler is a 1965 model, and the scene takes place in 1964.

Leicaman

Factual error: The meeting at Ferrari would have taken place outside of Modena. The photographer raced on a scooter, apparently to an Agnelli Villa, which would have been outside Turin, about 200 miles away.

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Trivia: The Le Mans scenes had to be shot on multiple circuits in order to accurately represent the 60s course, which made continuity extremely difficult in terms of clock times, car positions, and weather. CGI was used extensively to prevent mistakes.

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Question: During La Mans, it shows Shelby taking a stopwatch from Ferrari's pit and dropping a nut on the floor. Is there any indication Shelby ever cheated during a race like this (whether at Le Mans or somewhere else)? Like, was he ever caught or accused of cheating? I get there's a lot of artistic licensing taking place in this film, so I understand if it was made up, just curious if it was based on anything from Shelby's life.

Bishop73

Answer: Technically, neither of these incidents would be considered cheating in the classic sense. Stealing the stopwatches would be just that, stealing. It's likely that some other members of a team like Ferrari had back up stopwatches. Dropping the lug nut in the Ferrari pit would just be a mind game to put doubt in the minds of the pit crew as to whether they got all the lug nuts on the wheels. Neither of these incidents would affect the performance of the race car. It was mischief, not cheating.

This doesn't answer the question at all (and seems like someone's trying to correct this thinking it's a mistake entry). I said "cheating like this" for the 2 examples I gave, because it's cheating (by definition) but not necessarily breaking La Mans rules. Plus I also asked about actual accusations of cheating.

Bishop73

It's called gamesmanship, how is dropping a lug nut to make the Italians think they had forgotten one cheating? Now if he had taken the lug nut so it delayed their pit stop or so it wasn't put on at all that's a different story. You seem like you never competed if you think those things are cheating.

And stealing a stopwatch is gamesmanship too? The question is was this based on anything. I've never competed in LeMans, but in a majority of sports there are rules against deceiving the other team (for example a balk). Seems like you've never played sports.

Bishop73

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