By Steve Temple

Photos Courtesy of Superformance

The Ford GT40’s phenomenal 1-2-3 finish of LeMans in 1966 is the stuff of legend, a story that has been retold many times. What hasn’t been related as much as how replicas carry on its winning tradition in various ways, perpetuating the legacy of this iconic race car.

That’s where Lou Krukar’s Superformance comes into play. It not only re-creates the performance of the original, but has proved itself on some mind-bending, open-road events.

First, though, a bit of Lou’s background, which explains the mysterious “F85” meatball logos on the hood and doors. Turns out he used to race a 1965 Olds F85 (basically a Cutlass) up in Alaska. While that’s a far cry from a mid-engine racer like the GT40, he cut his competition teeth on a 3/4-mile oval dirt track. During this period in the mid Seventies, he came across a GT40 at the age of 21. Like so many car guys seeing one for the first time, his reaction was ecstatic: “The coolest car ever been made!” he recalls. “It was hard to put words into it.”

Lou went on to race some other cars in the early Eighties, even winning the Northwest Pacific Championship in a Brabham BT21. He didn’t do quite as well at Sears Pt. (“I got my ass kicked,” he admits), but was still game enough to compete with some Indy cars.

When his son was born, and two other kids after that, he hung up his racing suit and focused on his family life instead for a couple decades. Once they were grown, however, he jumped back into the fray with a Viper ACR and the GT40 shown here.  (He also drives a way-cool ’54 Studebaker Silver Hawk, but that’s another story.)

While his Superformance GT40 Mk II does have 427ci engine, the same displacement as the original 427 side oiler, it’s been modernized with a 575hp Roush stroked aluminum small-block 351 with AFR heads and an RBT transaxle with a MasterShift electronic paddle shifter.

When Lou acquired the Titanium Silver car in 2009, after chasing it down through a couple different owners, it hadn’t been driven all that many miles, and had a few issues, such as the computer leaving the injectors open, all of which were eventually corrected. Once sorted out, he took on the Silver State Classic Challenge that runs on public roads in Nevada.

“Open road events are so exciting,” he points out. “Running at high speed, not knowing what’s around the corner, or going over a knoll at 165 mph without knowing which way the road will go.” (Unlike most participants, he runs without a navigator.) This arrangement seems to work pretty well for him, as he took Second in class in 2014.

Next on his bucket list is the 200 mph run at Mojave Mile. The shots shown here were taken at Willow Springs for a documentary on the 50th Anniversary of the GT40 win at LeMans, mentioned at the outset.

So the GT40 lives on in his Superformance, and not just as a car to sip wine over at a grassy concours event. Lou is out there on the track, running the car hard as it should be!