chapman approached ford and also david brown of aston martin, each without initial success. chapman's friend and ford great britain's pr director walter hayes arranged dinner for chapman with copp. hayes and copp developed a business plan, which was backed by ford uk's new chairman stanley gillen, and approved by ford's detroit head office as a two-part plan - stage one would produce a four-cylinder twin-cam engine for formula two; by may 1967, stage two would produce a v-8 formula one unit. in return, chapman agreed to engineer "specials" for ford, the first of which was 1963's lotus cortina.