Determined to defeat the Italian marque after several failed attempts in the years prior, Ford developed the GT40 and, together with customer teams, entered multiple examples in the 1966 race. The cars driven to the historic win were a trio of GT40 Mk IIs, and one of those went up for auction in 2018, finally selling for $9.8 million.

The Blue Oval brand will field a full factory FIA WEC team to try and capture its first outright win in nearly six decades.

After the 1960s, Ford exited from the top-tier prototype class and competed in production-focused class racing around the world. In 2016, it won the Le Mans GT class with a mid-engine GT, and then finished second in the GT class last year with the debut of its Mustang GT3.