A GT40 Detective Story

I thought I knew all there was to know about the GT40 - Ford's legendary race car from the 1960s. And then I saw a picture on Facebook of a GT40 at the Holman&Moody shop sometime between 1988 and 1990, taken by Russ Haines when he worked at H&M. Russ had asked if anyone knew anything about where this car was now. I thought this was going to be easy, but I would learn a lot more about the GT40 then I imagined before I figured it out. Not that I discovered something no one else had known, but this was a pretty obscure piece of GT40 history and putting it all together was kind of fun.

Many thanks to Russ Haines for letting me use his photos!

The Gulf Boys Go Racing (part 2)

In part 1 we ended with Grady Davis teaming up with John Wyer in late 1966, leading to the formation of JW Automotive Engineering (JWA) in England and the first official Gulf Racing team making its debut in 1967.  Lets pick up the story there...

The Gulf Boys Go Racing (part 1)

When Andrew Carnegie sold the Carnegie Steel company in 1901 to create US Steel, he became - at least by some measures - the richest private person then or since. But Carnegie had accomplished something even more impressive: Carnegie Steel had attracted and nurtured a technology base in the Pittsburgh region that would be unmatched until the rise of Silicon Valley nearly a century later. The Mellon and Pittsburgh National banks had grown rich financing the fledgling steel industry, and would continue to invest in Pittsburgh's entrepreneurs and engineers to develop the modern electrical power industry (Westinghouse), the aluminum industry (Alcoa), processed food (Heinz),  and heavy manufacturing (Blaw-Knox, American Bridge and others).

At the same time that Andrew Carnegie had been building Carnegie Steel, John D. Rockefeller was building the Standard Oil empire. While the automobile had not yet been invented, neither had the the electric light bulb or commercial electricity generation; petroleum products were in demand for lighting, heating and increasingly for commercial lubrication. In 1900 a number of Pittsburgh businessmen lead by William Mellon decided to get into the growing petroleum industry, and it wasn't their style to make a small investment in someone else's company; instead they got together and built a refinery near the newly discovered oil fields in Texas, followed by a number of pipelines, service stations, a fleet of oil tankers and other bits of infrastructure to support the rapidly growing automobile industry. A few years later, these investments were consolidated as the Gulf Oil company, which would soon grow to rival giant Standard Oil.

Born  in 1908, in a really small town in Texas not too far from Austin and the East Texas oil fields, Irion Grady Davis (you sometimes see him use his first initial, but mostly he just went by "Grady") had studied geology at Texas University, followed by a few years of polishing at Harvard. Fresh out of school, he went to work for Gulf Oil, spending 20 years in their Venezuelan operation. He apparently knew how to work with foreign governments to get things done, and in the mid 1950s was promoted to Administrative Vice President of Gulf Oil and transferred to Gulf's headquarters in Pittsburgh.  A few years later he was promoted to Executive Vice President - the number 2 spot in the company. He would play a big part negotiating with the Kuwaiti government for access to cheap middle eastern oil, which would allow Gulf to expand into Europe.

Grady Davis - early 1960s

Image shamelessly stolen from the Corvette Hall of Fame website, lots of good stuff there.

The Lost Art of Demolition Derby

Last August I stopped by my parent's house unexpected and found Dad wearing his good go-to-town blue jeans. Dad was getting ready to make his yearly pilgrimage to the county fair to see the Demolition Derby, something I hadn't done since my short-lived career as a derby driver back around 1980. Of course I tagged along, both to spend some time with Dad and relive old memories, not to mention the gastronomic wonders of a sausage and onion sandwich fresh off a food-stand griddle.

The Faceless Heroes of Shelby American (part 1)

Out on the Internets Carroll Shelby has become a legend of Paul Bunyan proportions; he is credited with designing and building every Ford racing car of the 1960s and single-handedly putting Enzo Ferrari in his place.  Not only is Shelby's history as a racing driver largely forgotten, but so are a few people who did much of the real work of making the Shelby name larger-than-life. Trying to explain the history to someone on a social network is pointless, but maybe here someone will read and appreciate it...

The Last of the V8 Interceptors - part 5 of the Muscle Car History

In the last installment of this mini-series I covered the immediate aftermath of what was the Muscle Car Era through the rebirth of the muscle/pony car in 1982, and after banging away at the keyboard, I was thinking I was pretty much done. I thought this was going to be where I wrapped up loose ends and made a few snarky observations about the state of the performance automobile and today's muscle car culture.  But it looks like that will have to wait a bit longer.

The problem with being 55 years old is that I tend to think everything that I've been around to see happen is recent history. It seems like just yesterday that I traded my well worn '69 Road Runner for a brand new '83 Mustang GT, but a lot has happened since then, and since I'm trying to tell the whole story I just can't leave 30 years out...

Life After Death - part 4 of A Muscle Car History

When I started writing this mini-history about the American Muscle Car phenomena, I expected to knock out 10 paragraphs and call it a day.  When you're doing this blog-thing, 10 paragraphs is sort of the sweet spot for telling a good story, keeping the reader's attention, and not spending all your time writing about things instead of actually doing things to write about. But somehow this story got in my blood and I decided to do a multi-part series, and even after I covered the backstory, the rise and fall of what is generally considered the Muscle Car Era (1964-1970), there was still lots of stuff left over. Let me try to wrap it all up in 10 sweet paragraphs.

The Day the Music Died - part 3 of A Muscle Car History

Don McClean released the album American Pie in 1971, his anthem to the rock-n-roll of the just ended 1960s. The title song runs for over 8 minutes and takes up most of the first side of the vinyl LP, but it still managed to be a big hit. The lyrics are cryptic in the way of early Bob Dylan, but while exactly what it all means is up for debate (McClean once said "It means I don't ever have to work again if I don't want to!") the names and events mentioned clearly refer to the songs, singers and musicians of the decade. It starts with a verse about the day in 1959 that early rock-n-roll legends Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash - "the day the music died" - but its just as easy to imagine he was singing about the end of the hot-rod and muscle car era.

The evolution and popularity of fast cars largely paralleled that of rock-n-roll (and a lot of early rock-n-roll featured hot-rods and muscle-cars, including songs like Hot Rod Lincoln, Mustang Sally, Little GTO, Dead Man's Curve, and every song the Beach Boys put out before 1966). But by the late 1960s music had gone in a new direction - much like the rest of pop culture - thanks largely to the Beatles and the war in Vietnam.

More Muscle Car History - Part 2

How to describe the 1960s to someone who wasn't there?  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... The economy was booming, the US was going to the Moon, there were riots in the streets and 1000s of young men would die in Vietnam. The decade would start with incredible optimism and faith in the "American Way" and end with riots and a deep mistrust of government and industry that lingers to this day.

In the part 1 of this ramble down memory lane I told the story of the great American performance car from automotive pre-history up to 1964 and the first Mustangs and GTOs, and then I ran out of gas. While the muscle car era lasted less than a single decade, a lot of things happened in that time that would shape the future of both the automobile and American culture. With the background out of the way, lets set the Way-Back machine to the summer of 1962 and take another  look.

A (not so) Brief History of the Muscle Car - Part 1

When I got my drivers license in 1976, the only cars I (and most other working-class teenagers) could afford were well worn 1960s muscle cars. With plain-jane 1960s Mustangs and Chevelles and such selling for north of $20K today that probably seems a little unbelievable, but in 1976 we had just weathered the first OPEC engineered oil crisis. Leaving the politics and economics involved for another day, in the fall of 1973 the price of gasoline at the pump had gone up from less than $0.50 per gallon to more than $0.70 a gallon (remember minimum wage then was just $2.30/hour). Worse than the price hike, for several months there was a shortage of gas combined with panic buying that caused gas stations to literally run out - which at the time seemed akin to the sun not rising.

Suddenly all anyone cared about was fuel efficiency. Everyone wanted 6 cylinder Dodge Darts and Ford Mavericks; big-block muscle cars filled the classified ads at give-away prices.  Since high school kids don't drive all that much or have families to support, we were the only ones who could afford to drive 10mpg cars (just not very far). I bought my '69 Road Runner, with 70K miles on the clock and one dented quarter panel - for a whopping $500! As a result my high school parking lot looked like a scene out of American Graffiti.

As I now approach curmudgeon-dom (hold on a second while I chase some kids off the lawn :) - I'm often amazed at the confused and generally rose-colored view that today's car buffs have of those halcyon days. Like most (all?) 1960s American cars, muscle cars had the aerodynamics of a brick, the handling of a well worn pickup truck, and they rusted faster than a 16 year old kid could sling Bondo. The only things they did really well was go like stink and attract attention like Miley Cyrus at an awards show - and being part of that sure was fun!

Racing Ponies

Not too long ago I wrote the story of how the Ford Mustang came to be. In 1965 they were flying out of the showrooms as fast as Ford could build them. But the 60's were a time when change happened fast.  The basic formula for the Mustang was simple: take a small sedan and re-skin it with racy sheet metal, drop in a small block V8 and add bucket seats. Ford had leaked enough teasers to build interest in the Mustang before the car went on sale that the competition at GM and Chrysler already had their own "pony" cars in development when the Mustang went on sale.

Ford knew that while most Mustangs would be used to commute to work or bring home the groceries, the appeal of the car was its sportiness. Even before the Mustang was on sale Ford was preparing to give the Mustang a racing pedigree. Alan Mann Racing in England was already campaigning the Falcon in European rally races; in early 1964 they received one of the first Mustangs off the production line for testing purposes, followed shortly after by 6 more cars to prepare for racing. Holmann&Moody shipped an equal number of race-prepared 289s across the pond. The Mustangs - red coupes - were prepared for rally racing and placed 1st and 2nd in the Touring Class of the 1964 Tour de France (a series of French road races - not the bicycle race), beating the Jaguar MkIIs that had dominated the class for several years. Interestingly enough, Carroll Shelby was also there with his Cobra Daytonas, which lost this series to the Ferrari GTOs.

In the US Ford really wanted to beat rival Chevy's Corvette, but the only place the Corvette was being raced was in amateur Sports Car Club of America races - an organization that interpreted Sports Car to mean two seater and set the rules to allow only minimal modifications. But where there's a will there's a way:
Ford would go to Carroll Shelby - already building Ford powered Cobras and working on the factory GT40 race cars - to turn the Mustang into an SCCA legal race car.

Shelby was king of the loopholes: by setting himself up as a manufacturer, he could make all sorts of changes to the Mustang that Ford would never want their name or warranty attached to. To handle that pesky two-seat rule Shelby simply unbolted the back seat and installed a fiber-glass package shelf, which was the perfect place to fit the spare tire after Shelby installed a bigger gas tank that filled up the trunk.  The SCCA rules allowed modifications to either the suspension or the engine, but the Mustang really needed both in order to be competitive with the fuel-injection and independent-rear-suspension of the 'Vette. Shelby first upgraded the Mustang's suspension, transmission, and rear end, and bolted headers and a bigger carburetor to the stock engine to create the street GT350 and then further tweaked the stock Ford 289 to create the GT350R racing cars. With every spare ounce stripped from the GT350R, and the tiny 289 pushed to 350hp, the Shelby Mustang handily beat the plastic Chevys, winning 5 of the 6 regional SCCA championships, with Shelby team driver Jerry Titus winning the overall SCCA B Production championship in 1965.

The Camaro and Firebird would appear in showrooms in 1966 as 1967 models.  The first Plymouth Barracuda actually went on sale in 1964 a week before the Mustang, but its styling was so dated in comparison that no one paid it much attention; Chrysler gave the car a massive restyling that also appeared in the '67 model year. Both GM and Chrysler took the opportunity to design in lots of room under the hoods: all 3 cars had big-block options that would soon grow to include the biggest (7+ liter) engines available.

With all of these muscular little 4 seaters being built in Detroit, in 1966 the SCCA created a new racing series just for them: the Trans American Sedan Championship, or just TransAm as the series quickly came to be known. To entice manufacturers (and big name drivers) to participate, the SCCA established a point system to award a manufacturer's championship.  Now Ford had a another loophole to fill: obviously they wanted to compete with the GM and Chrysler cars in the new series, but Shelby had homologated the fastback Mustang as a two-seater, and TransAm demanded four seats. Rather than re-homologate the fastback cars the notch-back Mustang coupes were homologated  (and of course many of those cars promptly received the same Shelby parts and suspension modifications developed for the fastback GT350Rs). Shelby built a few dozen TransAm ready '66 and '67 Mustangs - a few for the "factory" Shelby team and the others sold through Ford to independent racing teams.

With factory and Shelby support, the Mustang took the Trans Am manufacturers championship in both '66 and '67. Interestingly enough, one of the Shelby team cars was sponsored by Grady Davis, a Gulf Oil VP with a taste for racing whose office was in downtown Pittsburgh.

Now that the competition had arrived, it was clear that the '67 Mustang would have to be something special just to keep up. And in my opinion, Ford nailed it: the '67 Mustangs were just enough bigger to fit a big-block engine, and as a result Ford cleaned up much of the "stubbiness"  that gave the first generation car a few unflattering angles. Based on the roaring success of the first few years, Ford cut a few less corners as well; there was a bit more chrome and trim available, without crossing the line into gaudiness. Under the hood, the top option for '67 was a 390 V8. Much like Ford's small-block, the big-block "FE" motor was not an especially high-performance design. In the "S-code" Mustangs, the 390 carried a 320 hp rating, although that was probably a little optimistic. The 390 was barely a match for the 327 Chevy small-block, let alone the 396 Chevy big-block that was available in the new Camaro. For the '68 model year Ford would up the ante with a hot-rod version of the 428 inch station wagon motor, using cylinder heads developed for Ford's 427 NASCAR engine to create "Cobra Jet" Mustangs that were on more or less equal footing with the best the competition had to offer (yes, there were a few big block GM and Chrysler engines available that could out-muscle a Cobra Jet, but their extra top-end power was largely overkill for the stoplight grand prix action most of these cars were limited to).

Still, sales of the '67 Mustang dropped about 20%, and dropped again for the '68 model. The Mustang would never regain the insane sales numbers of the first two years, but Ford had created a racing heritage for the car that would carry it through rough times ahead (when America fell out of love with fast cars during the oil embargoes of the 1970s).

But I'm getting ahead of myself - Ford racing would close out the '60s with a bang, or more accurately - a Boss. But this article has gone long enough; that's a story for another time...

Don

Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix

Just a quick note for old car buffs and modelers: the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix is kicking off next weekend - July 12th through the 21st (the racing and cars shows in Schenley Park are the last weekend - July 20th and 21st).  Check out the details here: http://www.pvgp.org/

The Ford Mustang has been chosen as Marque of the Year, and while the Schenley Park course is a little too tight for the big V8s, the Mustangs and other hairy chested cars will be racing the weekend before at the Pittsburgh International Race Complex (http://www.pittrace.com/)  - just north of the Beaver Falls exit of the Turnpike (map).

In addition to the racing, Saturday in Schenley (July 20th) is the day all the local car clubs organize car shows throughout the park; if you can't find something cool to look at there you just don't like cars... Both weekends are definitely worth a road trip - and make sure to clean out the memory card in your camera as there will be lots of cool stuff you just won't see at the local car cruise.

The Mustang Turns 50!?!

The first Ford Mustangs appeared just about the time I started to notice cars were cool, and even at 4 years old I knew the Mustang was a lot cooler than Dad's Galaxie or the Impalas and Furys that my uncles drove.  So it was with quite a shock that I happened across a web page showing an artist's conception of the all-new Mustang that will launch next spring to mark the pony car's 50th anniversary. Because if the Mustang is going to be 50, that means I'm going to be... well, you can do the math.

The roots of the Mustang go back to the early 1950s. Its hard to imagine, but in those post-war days Ford sold just 1 model of car. To be sure, it was available in different trim levels and body styles under various names (Mainline, Customline, Crestline, Crown Victoria, Fairlane, etc) but aside from the chrome, they were essentially the "same" car.

So when Ford introduced the two-seat Thunderbird in 1955, it was a big deal. While a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the Corvette, the Thunderbird was much more luxurious and well built (and less sporting) than Chevy's two-seater. The Thunderbird only made sense as a second car; it was first and foremost a car to be seen in. The automobile had become such an essential part of American life that families were beginning to consider a car for both Dad and Mom, and automakers were beginning to think in terms of a range of different models, each tailored in size, cost and features to a particular segment of the market.

Much like the early Corvette, the Thunderbird was a flop in the showroom.  The T-bird certainly appealed to young men thinking it was the perfect car to drive their girl friends off unchaperoned, but the middle-aged doctors, lawyers and bankers who could actually afford one (it cost nearly twice the price of a new full-size Ford) didn't have girlfriends - or if they did, they didn't want to be seen driving them around with the roof down!

At Ford, number-cruncher Robert McNamara studied the demographics and decided the Thunderbird should be a 4-seat monster capable of carrying multiple sets of golf clubs to the country club and sealed the two seater's fate. He then turned his attention to every day transportation, and decided Ford should build a small, efficient 5 passenger sedan; a first car for young families or a second car for slightly older Moms to haul the kids to football practice and piano lessons. That perfectly practical (and perfectly boring) little sedan was the Ford Falcon, introduced in 1959, a car that would anchor the small end of Ford's model range for the next decade (and its spiritual descendants, the Maverick, Fairmont and Tempo for two decades after that).

But what does all this have to do with the Mustang? Enter Lido "Lee" Iacocca. Iacocca grew up in Lehigh Pennsylvania, the son of Italian immigrants. Due to to a case of rheumatic fever as a child, he ended up 4F and spent the WWII years in college studying engineering. He joined Ford as an engineer in 1946, but quickly decided that sales and marketing were more to his liking. He was an ambitious man with his eye on a corner office type job, and as the cliche goes, he climbed quickly through the ranks; by 1957 he was McNamara's right hand man. Where McNamara understood logistics and manufacturing costs, Iacocca had worked with the salesmen at the dealerships and understood all the irrational reasons that people bought cars. Then came the fateful day in the fall of 1960 when JFK called to offer McNamara a job as Secretary of Defense. In the blink of an eye, 36 year old Lee Iacocca was vice-president of the Ford car and truck group.

The Falcon was actually selling in reasonable numbers, but it wasn't making Ford much money. The car was stealing sales away from the full-size Ford, and there were few high-markup options available for the salesmen to add on. With McNamara out of the way, Iacocca began changing the product line to offer cars people not only needed but wanted, and more importantly that would make profits for Ford.

Ford had invested many millions of dollars in the Falcon so Iacocca couldn't just scrap it, but he could add trim packages, bucket seats and bigger engines. But there was only so much you could do with the Falcon's bland shape. Iacocca did his own demographic studies and realized the oldest baby-boomers were just reaching driving age, and in a few more years would be buying cars of their own. College campuses were awash in MGs and bathtub Porsches and the like, brought home by servicemen cashing in on GI-Bill funded educations. At rival Chevrolet, the Corvette was slowly gaining a following and the Corvair Monza was being promoted as the "poor man's Porsche". If Ford wanted to stake a claim on youth buyers they needed a fun, sporty car at a price even high-school graduates could afford.

Iacocca assembled a team of executives known as the Fairlane Group, a sort of skunkworks team who met at the bar of the Fairlane Inn twice a month to discuss potential projects.  The first result was a tiny two-seater show car with lightweight construction and a mid-engine V4 borrowed from a Ford of Europe small car, called the Mustang I. While distinctly sporty, it lacked the broad appeal Iacocca was looking for: he realized that to avoid a repeat of the Thunderbird the new car had to seat 4 (although maybe 2 of those seats could be child-sized) and have enough trunk space to bring home a week's groceries.

Meeting the price target meant the new car would need to share Falcon mechanicals, but at least the styling had to hint at Ferrari. The final design came down to a contest among the various studios inside of Ford. Joe Oros lead the team in the Ford studio who brought in the winning design. Legend has it that it was the Mustang name that finally convinced Henry Ford II to take a chance on the car.

And, the rest, as they say, is history.  The Mustang was an instant best seller. People lined up to put down deposits.  In less than two years Ford had sold over 1 million Mustangs. Lido Iacocca was promoted to president of Ford. Except the story isn't nearly that simple (nothing at Ford is ever simple). The next 50 years would see the Mustang (and the world) go through a lot of changes, and if not for some amazing people and a lot of luck it might have gone the way of the original Thunderbird. But that's a story for another article, or maybe two.

Stay tuned!

Powered by Ford

Ford had long known that most car buyers want a little something extra under the hood.  When they offered the first mass production flathead V8 engine in the 1932 Ford the factories couldn't keep up with the demand, even though the country was in the middle of the Great Depression.  Ford not only raised the performance bar, they kicked off a horsepower war that is still going on today.

Despite being first to the V8 party, Ford was playing catch up going into the 60s.  In the 50s the Detroit automakers realized that Americans wanted bigger and more powerful cars, and they all designed new V8s to power them.  Most manufacturers had two different engines; a "small block" that in various displacements could power everything from compacts to full-size sedans, and a "big block" for trailer-towing and high performance applications.

Developing a new engine was a big, expensive job that would influence the maker's cars for years to come; getting it right was critical to the long term success of the brand.  However during this critical time, product decisions at Ford were being made by the "Whiz Kids" - a group of fresh from college statisticians and accountants who had made a name managing the Army Air Force during WWII, and had been hired by Henry Ford II to help him get control of the massive business he had inherited from his grandfather.  Unfortunately the Whiz Kids knew nothing about the auto business;  they focused on building practical, efficient cars that were also boring and that no one wanted to buy (think "Edsel").  Compared to the competition's new engines, Ford's V8s were physically smaller and had narrower cylinder heads with smaller valves and ports that limited power potential.

But as the saying goes, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".  Ford engineers pulled out every hot-rod trick in the book to squeeze every bit of horsepower possible from the basic engine designs they had to work with.  Solid lifter camshafts, big valve heads, tri-power and dual-quad carburetion, tunnel-port intakes, all made appearances in Ford showrooms.  And the ultra-compact small block had an unexpected silver-lining: it could be shoehorned under the hood of tiny English roadsters, turning otherwise agrarian little cars like the AC Ace and Sunbeam Alpine into Corvette-killers.

Above is a photo I took at a car show sometime back in the 80s showing the ultimate bit of Ford engine development, the 427 SOHC.  Originally developed to take on Chrysler's Hemi in NASCAR, the monstrous overhead-cam heads were bolted to Fords rugged 7 liter big block, yielding 700+ horsepower in race trim.  But Ford's success was short lived. The last thing Bill France wanted in NASCAR were exotic engines pushing up the cost of competitive racing; hearing carefully leaked rumors of Chrysler developing a DOHC Hemi to counter Ford, he would ban the SOHC motor before it ever raced.  Ford sold a few to drag racers and the few crazies who had to have the fastest Galaxie on their block no matter the price, and the ultimate Ford big block quietly faded into history.