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Be iconic: Why Detroit performance brands have descended on Le Mans this weekend
Posted by Talbot Payne on June 14, 2025
Le Mans, France — If the Indy 500 is a showcase for driver glory, the 24 Hours of Le Mans is the premier race for manufacturer prowess. Win Indy, and its resulting fame will change a driver’s life forever. Win Le Mans, and an auto brand becomes legend.
Ferrari, Porsche, Audi and Ford have become international household performance names with their dominance of this 24-hour epic. No wonder, then, that the motorsports world was atwitter Thursday when General Motors Co.’s Cadillac swept the front row to claim pole position.
When the green flag drops at 4 p.m. Saturday local time (10 a.m. in Detroit), two Cadillacs — their Team JOTA liveries glistening in the French afternoon sun — will lead a packed international field of Ferrari, Porsche and Aston Martin to create an image seen around the globe.
The #12 Cadillac V-Series.R of Alex Lynn led a front-row lockout of qualifying alongside the sister #38 car at Le Mans on Thursday, June 12, 2025. Michele Scudiero, Cadillac
“Cadillac locking out the front row is an important thing,” said English driving ace Alex Lynn after putting his Cadillac V-Series.R on pole. “Only the most iconic brands have done that. Cadillac is the first American brand to take the pole since the legendary Ford GT40. We are in the shadows of greats. If we can win this race on Sunday we can cement our car as one of the icons.”
No wonder multiple Detroit brands are competing this year against the world’s best racing manufacturers in rural France before over 330,00 spectators and another 118 million watching around the world. Motorsports has been a key marketing, engineering and sales tool, but the advent of social media and the popular “Drive to Survive” Netflix series covering Formula One has taken motorsports to a new level by broadening its demographic appeal to a younger, gender-diverse audience that auto brands crave.
“’Drive to Survive’ changed everything. It’s making racing globally cool again, and the trickle-down effect we see from F1 is really big,” said Lynn. “We are riding that wave, and showcasing to young people that Cadillac is cool.”
The same electronics revolution that has transformed Hypercars into hybrid rocketships has also exposed youth to racing via simulators and online games where they can act out their fantasy to be, well, Alex Lynn.
“The consumer who is following racing these days is much younger,” said Vice President for Global Cadillac John Roth in an interview here. “They are EV-oriented, they are technologically curious and we put a lot of technology into our vehicles like the Lyriq-V that is the quickest Cadillac we’ve ever built in the marketplace. So there’s a lot of correlation between the V-Series race car and V-Series production car — customers may not attend a race, (but) it’s a great platform to elevate the brand.”
General Motors Co.’s Cadillac chief, John Roth, is using Europe’s most famous sportscar race to boost the Detroit brand’s entry into the rarified European luxury market — and Cadillac claiming the front row on the starting grid of 2025’s 24 Hours of Le Mans is a big step in the right direction. Henry Payne, The Detroit News
Le Mans also attracts the world’s best drivers, like Lynn, who is not just a fast pilot, but a global brand ambassador in an industry that craves brand awareness and looks for ways to burnish it.
Dearborn-based Ford Motor Co. has been a global icon for some time. In the 1960s, the Ford GT40 dominated Le Mans for four years — two of them as a factory-backed team, two entered by a private team.
That put the Blue Oval badge on par with Ferrari (which it tried to buy at the time) and Porsche as legends of motorsport. Ford also partnered with England’s Cosworth to produce one of the Formula One series’ premier engines, the Ford-Cosworth, in the 1960s.
Ford’s decision to return to Le Mans prototype racing in 2027 (it announced its chassis partner, Italy’s Oreca, at Le Mans Friday) and Formula One in 2026 (again as an engine partner, this time with Red Bull) reaffirms that it belongs with the world’s best.
“Ford has a special history here. It’s the moment that Ford went global in 1966,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in an interview here. “This is a big commitment to us. There is no better advertisement for the capability of the company than winning a Le Mans, or it just says your company knows what they’re doing in the car business.”
Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans:” We want to sell race cars to customers worldwide.” A certified race-car driver, Farley drove in the new Mustang challenge on the historic 8.5-mile course. Chris DuMond, Special To The Detroit News
For both Ford and General Motors, the international World Endurance Championship and North American IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Series have provided a proper platform to justify the enormous dollar investment that motor racing requires. By agreeing to the same set of sports car rules across continents (and across races like the 24 Hours of Le Mans and 24 Hours of Daytona in Florida), IMSA/EC has opened a global stage for GM and Ford to sell GT race cars as rivals Porsche and Ferrari have done.
“We want to sell race cars to customers worldwide. I have made my career making bad decisions in motorsports,” said a smiling Farley as he overlooked the Ford Chicane on the Le Mans course. “And most of it was a marketing program to get someone interested in a brand. We needed to make motorsports a sustainable part of the company.”
Ford introduced the Mustang GT3 race car for the first time at Le Mans last year — just as it entered the same car in IMSA’s North American series. It made a big splash, placing third and fourth, and the factory team — run by Proton Racing — is back this year. Just like its Ford F-150 Raptor off-road entries in the Baja 1000 and King of the Hammers, the Mustangs are here to sell to customers.
“Racing is an indigenous sport for our industry — we don’t make shampoo,” said Farley. “There are a few events like Le Mans that really put you on the map. We want to sell more (F-150) Raptors and Tremors and Broncos, so we race the King of the Hammers, too.”
Chevy pioneered the GT3 effort back in 2000 with its Corvette entries, racking up nine Le Mans class wins over the last 25 years. It has now pivoted to a customer-based race model, and its three cars here this weekend are entered by customer teams TF Sport and AWA Racing.
As the racing and production programs became more integrated over that time, Chevrolet attracted more engineering talent. Roth points to Tony Roma, who has worked on both the Corvette and Cadillac production performance programs.
“Tony is a race car driver and a great example of translating that feel of what it is like to be behind the wheel of a high-performance Cadillac,” said Roth. Then he “translates that back to the vehicles that will sell to a new generation of buyers.”
The #51 Ferrari 499P Hypercar exits “Indianapolis” during Hyperpole qualifying and takes P3 at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in Le Mans, France on June 11, 2025. Ferrari has three entries in the Hypercar class of the 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans. Chris DuMond, Special To The Detroit News
That integration has carried over to Cadillac’s European expansion. Keely Busn is program manager for the Cadillac V-Series.R Hypercar and regularly advises, for example, Caddy’s Paris showroom.
“We introduced the livery for our Team JOTA race car in the Paris showroom, for example,” she said in Cadillac’s Le Mans pit. “We coordinated the motorsports display in the showroom that drives home the brand’s performance and precision. If you want to translate what it means to be at the pinnacle of motorsports, it’s good to have a dealership in Paris.”
The V-Series.R that took pole here has a distinctly American V-8 sound. But Roth said racing informs more than just powertrains.
The #12 Cadillac V‑Series.R Hypercar enters “Indianapolis” during Hyperpole qualifying and takes P1 at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in Le Mans, France on June 11, 2025. Cadillac has four entries in the Hypercar class of the 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans. Chris DuMond, Special To The Detroit News
“Not only do we go out every day to compete with global luxury brands that we compete with in the retail space, we also get accelerated learnings on how vehicles perform. What’s the aero like? What’s the brake feel like?”
He continued: “That translates back to our EV vehicles that we sell in our retail environment. Aero gives an EV better range. Tires in an EV give better range. Racing is a great platform (that brings) learning back to what consumers enjoy in a vehicle.”
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or @HenryEPayne.