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