Interview: Ed Hull

Le Mans, 1967. Giddy as a couple of kids, Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt are spraying champagne on everyone within range—race officials, photographers, crew members, even Henry Ford II. The calendar says June 11, but it’s really the Fourth of July and waving the Stars-and-Stripes is in high fashion. Driving the fastest sports prototype of its day—the American-built Ford Mk IV—Gurney and Foyt have vanquished the 2nd-place Ferrari P4 by a whopping four laps. Everywhere you look, Ford people are basking in the glory—Roy Lunn, Carroll Shelby, Phil Remington, Homer Perry, Carroll Smith, plus a faceless supporting cast of about 100 or more flown in for the race, and Henry Ford II himself, whose deep pockets have made it all possible.

Among the faceless that day is an unassuming design-engineer named Ed Hull. Roy Lunn headed up the group that produced the Ford Mk IV, but it is Ed Hull who designed the 1967 Le Mans winner, a little-known fact overlooked that day at Le Mans, and often overlooked today. Ed Hull is not one to grab attention. He’s the kid you remember in school with his nose in a book, destined to be a physicist, or an engineer.