What Is Ken Miles’ Net Worth?
Ken Miles was a British sports car racing engineer and driver who had a net worth of $10 thousand at the time of his death in 1966. That’s the same as around $100,000 in today’s dollars after adjusting for inflation.
Ken Miles was portrayed by Christian Bale in the 2019 movie “Ford v Ferrari.”
Miles served as a Staff Sergeant in the British Army. He won the USAC Road Racing Championship in 1961 driving a Porsche 718 RS 61 and won the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1966 for the Shelby American Inc. team with Lloyd Ruby. Ken won the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1963 in an AC Cobra, in 1965 in a Ford GT40, and in 1966 in a Ford GT-X1. He was known for being a British driver competing with American teams. Miles was posthumously inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame in America (2001) and the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame (2020). His son, Peter, is the executive administrator of a vintage car collection worth more than $80 million. Ken Miles passed away on August 17, 1966, in a racing accident in Southern California at the age of 47.
Early Life
Ken Miles was born Kenneth Henry Jarvis Miles on November 1, 1918, in Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, England. Ken was the son of Clarice Jarvis and Eric Miles, and as a teenager, he attempted to run away to the U.S. When Miles was 15 years old, he dropped out of school and took a position as an apprentice with Wolseley Motors. The company sent Ken to a technical school, where he learned about vehicle construction. Before joining the British Army during the Second World War, he raced motorcycles. After joining the military, Miles served as a driving instructor in the Territorial Army. In October 1942, Ken (then an armament artificer) co-founded the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), and he subsequently transferred to the REME Training Establishment. He was later posted to the Guards Armoured Division Workshops and the 29th Armoured Brigade Workshop. On June 15, 1944, Miles landed in Normandy, and he was later posted to the Light Aid Detachment of the 15th/19th King’s Royal Hussars. He served in North West Europe until the war ended, and at that time, he was a staff sergeant. Ken was a tank commander during his time in the military, and the experience reportedly fueled a new love for high-performance engineering. Miles was discharged to the reserves in April 1946.
(Photo by Bernard Cahier/Getty Images)
Career
After the end of the war, Ken raced Alfa Romeos, Alvises, and Bugattis with the Vintage Sports Car Club before switching to a Ford V8 Frazer-Nash. In 1952, he moved to the U.S., settling in Los Angeles, where he took a job with MG distributor Gough Industries as a service manager. The following year, Miles won 14 consecutive races in Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) racing in an MG-based car he designed and constructed. He designed another MG-based car for the 1955 season that was dubbed the “Flying Shingle.” When Ken raced the car at Palm Springs in March, he finished in first place but was later disqualified because the car’s fenders were too wide. In 1956, he raced a Porsche 550 Spyder at most SCCA and Cal Club events. During the 1957 and 1958 seasons, Miles raced “the Pooper,” a 1956 Cooper with a Porsche 550S transmission and engine that was very successful in the SCCA F Modified class on the West Coast. In the ’60s, Ken was an important member of the Shelby/Cobra race team as a driver and a mechanical engineer. He once said of himself, “I am a mechanic. That has been the direction of my entire vocational life. Driving is a hobby, a relaxation for me, like golfing is to others. I should like to drive a Formula One machine, not for the grand prize, but just to see what it is like. I should think it would be jolly good fun!”
Ken Miles Le Mans 1966 (Photo by Reg Lancaster/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Miles had a pronounced Brummie accent and a sardonic sense of humor, and his racing crew nicknamed him “Teddy Teabag” due to his affinity for tea and “Sidebite” because he spoke out of the side of his mouth. He was instrumental in the development and success of the racing versions of the Shelby Cobra 289 in SCCA as well as Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and United States Road Racing Championship (USRRC) in the early to mid-1960s. Ken was played a huge role in the development of the Daytona Coupe and the 427 versions of the Ford GT and the Cobra. In 1963, Miles became Shelby-American’s chief test driver. During his racing career, he developed a “reputation for courtesy on the track,” and he was sometimes referred to as the “Stirling Moss of the West Coast.” Miles finished in second place at the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1965 and won the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring in 1966.
Personal Life and Death
Ken and his wife, Mollie, welcomed son Peter on September 28, 1950. In August 1966, Miles began test driving a J-car for Shelby-American. On August 17th, he spent the day testing at Riverside International Raceway in Southern California. While driving downhill at more than 200 miles per hour, Ken’s car flipped and caught on fire. The car subsequently broke into pieces, and Miles was killed when he was ejected from the vehicle. He was interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery at the Abbey of the Psalms Mausoleum.
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