Alan Man Racing turns 60 – Learn its History

Alan Mann Racing in the UK today specializes in maintaining classic cars and developing restmods, but was once the mainstay of the racing scene, as explained in this video.

Alan Mann Racing, or AMR for short, was founded in 1964 by racing enthusiast Alan Mann. Mann soon negotiated with Ford to run the Lotus Cortinas. Defining the team was the beginning of a close partnership between AMR and the Blue Oval.

This is the era of Ford's overall performance push, the carmaker won in as many categories of races as possible to sell road cars AMR took full advantage of Ford's big stature, not only the Lotus Cortinas, but also the Mustang, Falcon, and perhaps the most famous. Amr won the 1968 British Saloon Car Championship, was the Mk1 escort. Everything was decorated with the team's signature red and gold coloring.

It was not only the coloring that made AMR stand out. The drivers and mechanics of the time still recall Alan Mann's gentlemanly persona and the impeccable preparation of the car. Although he was not a fan of the Lotus Cortina that he thought was hard to drive, racing legend Jackie Stewart admitted that the AMR car was a "Crème de la crème" compared to other team Cortina.

Stewart — who was supposed to be 3 times F1 champion - was only one of the many famous names racing for AMR 1. Others included Graham Hill, Jackie Ix, Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren and Mario Andretti. During that same period, AMR also did some film work, including helping with the car chase scene in "Goldfinger" and building a car for "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"."

The AMR also ran the Cobra Daytona Coupe, developed in the United States by Shelby American, before leveling up to the GT40, like a standard Cobra roadster. He also contributed to the development of the lightweight body of the GT40, which fights against Ferrari, and in the 1966 Le Mans 24 Hours race two examples were built and raced. Both were to retire, but Ford celebrated the partnership in 2022 with a special version of the modern GT supercar.

Apparently not discouraged, AMR began working on a clean-sheet sports racing prototype for Ford called the f3L. The goal was to achieve 400mph with the 200 horsepower the car did, but it was hard to drive and never finished the race. By that time Ford had also reduced his racing efforts, effectively ending his time as a frontline racing team at amr. Alan Mann shifted his focus to the aviation industry.

The company then returned to racing in 2004 by preparing a historic race car and gradually expanded to other projects, including the electric conversion of the 1960s mustang.Recently, Amr is working on the high performance division of Boreham Motorworks, a modern iteration of the Ford Escort Mk1 that AMR raced in its famous heyday. To become a British company