The ACO's ideas had the desired effect and there were 79 applications for the race to be reduced to 60 cars to practice for the 55 starting places. Aside from Ferrari and Maserati, a number of companies arrived with new prototypes including Aston Martin, Tojeiro, TVR, Abarth and OSCA. The CSI windscreen rules were influencing design, favouring closed-cars, and only 6 of the 55 starters were open-top. There were 28 ‘works’ entries. Four-car teams came from Ferrari, Abarth and
Panhard et Levassor. Most other works and privateer teams brought 3-car teams. Again, Ferrari was the dominant marque in the race with 18 entries – the biggest representation from any marque at a Le Mans. Sports-car specialist Abarth was next with 9 cars. SEFAC Ferrari had bounced back from the chaos at the end of 1961, when top designer
Carlo Chiti led a
walkout of key staff from the company. His last design, the new 330 TRI/LM was finished by
Mauro Forghieri. This last front-engined Ferrari sports car had a 4-litre V12 developing a mighty 390 bhp. It was given to Ferrari's best endurance pair,
Phil Hill and
Olivier Gendebien. The same engine was also fitted into an updated version of the
250 GTO (Chassis No. 3765), the 330 LMB to be driven by
Mike Parkes and
Lorenzo Bandini. Ferrari also arrived with two variations of its successful mid-engine cars, the
246 SP V6 for the fan-favourite Rodriguez brothers, and the 268 SP V8 for
Ludovico Scarfiotti /
Giancarlo Baghetti. The previous year's TRI/61 cars were sold, one each, to the two Ferrari customer teams: the
North American Racing Team (NART) who also had a non-standard 250 GT that had to enter the ‘Experimental’ category. The other went to Italian Count
Giovanni Volpi’s
Scuderia Serenissima team. However, the count had incurred
Enzo Ferrari’s wrath by hiring Chiti and his fellows and could no longer buy Ferrari cars. He therefore got Chiti to redesign a
250 GT with large aerodynamic back end. Nicknamed the ‘breadvan’ its low profile made it very fast, and it was given to
Carlo Maria Abate and
Colin Davis. Bucking the trend of moving toward mid-engined cars, the new Maserati T151 was a front-engined 3.9-litre V8 generating 360 bhp and an aerodynamic
Kamm tail. Four were entered, including two for
Briggs Cunningham and the new Maserati France team. They proved to be the fastest cars on the straights, reaching 287 kp/h (180 mph). However they lost time to the better-handling Ferraris through the curves. Aston Martin returned to Le Mans with a new prototype based on its DB4 – the
Project 212.
John Wyer, the team manager and mastermind behind their
1959 Le Mans win was now the company's CEO. The 4-litre Straight-6 engine developed 330 bhp and pushed the car to 270 kp/h (170 mph) down the Mulsanne straight. The car would be raced by
Masten Gregory and
Graham Hill. Le Mans regulars, the
Ecurie Ecosse team, got
John Tojeiro to build them a pair of coupés, utilising a mid-mounted 2.5-litre
Coventry Climax F1 engine. The chassis were barely finished in time, and were dispatched to Le Mans unpainted. When the transporter had a traffic accident in Kent en route, it damaged the ready car, so the team chose to scratch the unassembled car. In the middle-sized engine classes, there was only a single entry from TVR, the small British sports-car manufacturer, in the 2-litre class. A similar British company,
Marcos, was in the 1.6-litre class against a pair of
OSCA 1600GTs. The 1300cc class was solely contested by five
Abarth coupés, now powered by 125 bhp SIMCA engines. In the smallest classes there was a remarkable change to the entry list from the previous years. Abarth augmented their larger cars with standard 700cc Fiat-engined cars. After the break-up of the Deutsch et Bonnet partnership, Panhard and Bonnet arrived with new cars.
Charles Deutsch stayed with Panhard power for the returning works team, while
René Bonnet presented his new
Djet with Renault engines. At the recent race at a wet Nürburgring,
Colin Chapman’s Lotus 23 driven by
Jim Clark had led the whole field. He entered two such cars for Index honours, but was stymied at scrutineering because the front and rear wheels had different numbers of wheel studs. The officials said the compulsory spare wheel therefore could not be universally applied. Chapman pulled the entries and swore he would never return to Le Mans – and never did. As with previous years, the GT division was dominated by Ferrari cars. As well as three of the 250 GT, there were five of the stunning new
250 GTO entered by customer teams. It carried the 3-litre engine from the Testarossa sports car. Although the GT regulations stipulated that 100 examples had to have been built, Ferrari was able to convince the authorities that it was actually a derivation of an existing model - the 250 GT. Permitted under the rules loophole, it could use that production record to get homologation (the ‘O’ in ‘GTO’). The previous year's Jaguar E2A prototype had now been homologated as the
‘E-type’ and there were three such cars entered, including
Briggs Cunningham’s team again. Cunningham was co-driven by Le Mans race-winner
Roy Salvadori because he could not fit into Brigg's Maserati cars. As well as an
Austin-Healey 3000, there were also a pair of
Aston Martin DB4s including a return from Frenchman Jean Kerguen. The biggest car in the field was the private American-entry
Chevrolet Corvette, virtually stock with its 327 cu in (5.4-litre) Stingray engine modified to produce 360 bhp. In the 2-litre GT class, the
Morgan Plus 4 works car was entered again after being rejected in the previous year for looking too old-fashioned. The Super Sport version had an uprated Triumph engine produce 115 bhp and capable of . The 1.6-litre class was to be a battle between three Porsche-Abarths (Porsche 356 B Carrera GTL Abarth, also referred to as Porsche 695 GS Abarth) and three works Sunbeams. Porsche had decided not to enter their new Flat-8 in the Experimental class. In the 1.3-litre class it was between the Elites of Team Lotus and the Alfa Romeo Giuliettas of the Scuderia St Ambroeus. ==Practice==