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CHAPTER 1
1963 – 1968: FORD GOES RACING
Semon E. "Bunkie" Knudsen liked performance and racing. As Pontiac general manager between 1956 and 1961, Knudsen transformed the "old lady" division of General Motors into the third largest automotive division in America, behind Chevrolet and Ford. He began by scrapping Pontiac's traditional Indian head hood ornament and proceeded to add bigger engines and modern suspensions. He fired entrenched management personnel and hired two bright engineers, Pete Estes and John Z. DeLorean, who would later be instrumental in dropping a 389-cubic-inch engine into the midsize 1964 Tempest and calling it the GTO. That "Little GTO" created a new genre of American automobile that became known as the muscle car.
Pontiac's image change was backed by a massive GM effort in stock car racing. Knudsen's NASCAR charge led GM, and eventually Ford and Chrysler, out of a four-year-old Automobile Manufacturers Association racing ban, an agreement between the Big Three that prohibited any form of factory-backed racing or the advertisement of horsepower or engine displacement for the purpose of selling cars. It was Pontiac's success in stock car racing, including a NASCAR-record 30 wins in 1961, that kick-started Ford into a new "Total Performance" campaign.
In late 1960, Lee Iacocca ascended to general manager of Ford when Robert S. McNamara left to become President John F. Kennedy's secretary of defense. While the move led to Ford's assault on racing in the mid-1960s, Iacocca also pushed for a sporty Falcon-based car called the Mustang. Recognizing the emerging baby boom market, Iacocca realized that the way into youthful wallets was through sportier cars and racing. Under Iacocca, Ford's Total Performance program exceeded Pontiac's early efforts and would, within just a few years, propel Ford to the top of world-class racing.
After embarrassing NASCAR finishes in 1961 and 1962 (totaling just 13 wins for both years), Ford rebounded to win 23 races in 1963, a record-tying 30 in 1964, and an amazing 48 in 1965. In sports car racing, Iacocca's Total Performance budget spilled into California, where an ex–chicken farmer named Carroll Shelby had molded an orphaned AC Ace into the Ford-powered Cobra. In 1964 Cobras proved their racing worth by winning the United States Road Racing Club (USRRC) manufacturer's title and dominating the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) A Production class. With proven racing successes, Shelby eventually inherited Ford's struggling GT-40 program and turned it into back-to-back wins at Le Mans.
By the end of 1966, Ford-powered cars had captured the World Manufacturer's Championship, beaten Ferrari at Le Mans, won the Indianapolis 500, dominated Formula 3 racing, and captured the inaugural Trans-American Sedan Championship.
For the man on the street, Ford's racing achievements filtered down in the form of highper-formance equipment and engines. Shortly after Iacocca announced his Total Performance campaign, Ford introduced the 390 High Performance engine, a 375-horsepower version of the FE big-block that evolved into the legendary 427. At Shelby, the Cobra's success convinced Iacocca that Shelby American should handle the Mustang's first foray into sports car racing — and the Shelby GT350, the first of the pony-sized muscle cars, was born. It was the beginning of something big for Mustang.
Trans-Am Mania
On March 25, 1966, the SCCA staged its first Trans-American Sedan Championship race as a preliminary event to the 12 Hours of Sebring. Created as a manufacturer's championship to take advantage of the popularity of sedan road racing, not to mention the popularity of the new Mustang and Barracuda, the Trans-Am featured two classes: one for cars with engines under 2 liters and another for cars with up to 5liter (305-cubic-inch) engines. As a series based on production vehicles, one of the rules stated that eligible models had to be built in quantities of at least 1,000, a homologation requirement that would play a role in the future of Trans-Am and pony car performance.
Ford GT-40s won the 1966 12 Hours of Sebring in a one-two-three sweep, but the Mustang's debut at Trans-Am went sour due to heating and brake problems — and a feisty Dodge Dart driven to victory in the over 2-liter class by Bob Tullius.
That would be Dart's next-to-last victory in 1966 Trans-Am competition. Although both the Dart and Barracuda entries were financially backed by Chrysler, they found their hands full competing with the independent Mustang teams. With one race remaining in the eight-race season, Ford realized that Mustang had a chance to win the manufacturers' championship. For the final push, corporate weight was put behind a three-car team from Shelby American. Lead driver Jerry Titus won the finale at Riverside to earn the first Trans-Am championship for Ford.
In terms of racing excitement, the first Trans-Am season proved successful, although track promoters weren't overwhelmed with paying spectators. Pony car competition was keen, only three models competed — Mustang, Dart, and Barracuda — and they were sometimes outclassed by the little foreign cars in the under 2-liter class. That was to about to change.
Seemingly content with Mustang's two-year head start in pony car sales, Ford did not plan to campaign a Mustang in the 1967 Trans-Am. Instead, the majority of the racing budget was allocated to Lincoln-Mercury for a Cougar effort. Like the Camaro, the Mercury Cougar was a latecomer to the pony car wars, and Ford felt the added exposure would help solidify the car's sporting image. Ford proved it was serious about the Cougar program by enlisting NASCAR stalwart Bud Moore as the car builder, with top-level drivers Parnelli Jones and Dan Gurney.
However, Ford's Shelby American connection, Ray Geddes, had other ideas about Mustang. Shelby's Lew Spencer explained, "Ford Division didn't allocate the dollars to field a competitive Mustang, but by hook and crook Ray found some funds in his Sports and GT budget to field two competitive Mustangs." Thus Shelby American joined the Trans-Am fray with rerouted funds from Ford.
Disguised as the Terlingua Racing Team so no one would connect the Mustang effort with Ford backing, Shelby American hit the 1967 Trans-Am trail with two 1967 Mustang hardtops and drivers Jerry Titus and Dick Thompson, both seasoned veterans, although underrated when compared to the competition: Jones and Gurney for Cougar and Mark Donohue for Camaro. The big-name drivers, plus the addition of two new manufacturers — Mercury and Chevrolet — gave the Trans-Am series a much-needed shot in the arm.
Bob Tullius and his Chrysler-supported Dart once again won the 1967 season opener. And once again it would be Chrysler's last win of the season, for beginning at the next race, Sebring, the Ford teams embarked on a five-race win streak that led to Ford products winning 8 of the final 11 races. Although Mustang and Cougar ended the season with four wins each, Mustang's higher finishes overall earned Ford a second consecutive Trans-Am manufacturer's championship. Camaro won only three races in its rookie year, including the final two. Evidently, Chevrolet was learning the Trans-Am game.
Enter Z28
In the January 1967 issue of Sports Car Graphic, a footnote announced Chevrolet's intention to produce a special Z28 version of the new Camaro, both to meet the SCCA's 1,000-minimum homologation rule and to bolster the Camaro's street performance image. Although first-year sales of the Z28 failed to reach the 1,000 mark (only 602 were built), Chevrolet met the rules by homologating the 350 Camaro with the Z28 option.
Chevrolet engineer Vince Piggins was responsible for the Z28 and indirectly for the continuation of the Trans-Am race series. The exciting 1966 competition had not been witnessed by many paying fans, leading the SCCA to consider dropping the series. Realizing the potential for Camaro promotion, Piggins assured SCCA oicials that Chevrolet would lend its support in 1967. Piggins explained, "We needed to develop a performance image for the Camaro that would be superior to the Mustang."
Piggins took charge of the Z28 project and received permission to build the first prototype. Because Chevrolet's production 327 small-block didn't fit within the 5-liter limit, the prototype was equipped with Chevy's older 283 small-block. During a test for Chevrolet general manager Pete Estes, Piggins suggested using the current 327 block in conjunction with the 283 crankshaft, a combination that provided a 4-inch bore and a 3-inch stroke for a convenient 302.4 cubic inches. Thus the Z28's 302 engine was born, providing Chevrolet with a 13-cubic-inch advantage over Ford's 289 on the Trans-Am tracks.
The cubic-inch advantage had not been enough for Camaro to overtake Mustang in the 1967 Trans-Am. Although the Chevy race 302 produced considerably more power than Ford's 289 (more than 25 horsepower in some estimates), the Chevrolet entries were not able to out-handle the more experienced Mustang teams. But with the experience gathered during the 1967 season, Camaro appeared ready to vie for its share of Trans-Am glory.
1968: Tunnel-Port Debacle
The 1967 season secured the future of the Trans-Am series. The competition had been furious, especially between Mustang and Cougar, while Camaro improved steadily. The point lead seesawed throughout much of the late going, and Mustang entered the final race at Kent with only a one-point advantage. The crowd that witnessed Mustang's 1967 championship performance at Kent numbered 17,000, a Trans-Am record.
Concerned about Camaro's horsepower advantage, Ford initiated a 1968 Trans-Am engine program based on the new 302 Windsor small-block. Assigned to Ford's Engine and Foundry Division, the project started at the top by revamping the Ford small-block's weakest link — the inline valve cylinder heads with their restrictive ports. Borrowing a trick from its 427 NASCAR heads, Ford engineers developed a completely new head. Instead of twisting the intake ports around the pushrods as usual, the huge, round intake ports formed a straight shot to the cylinders, with pushrod tubes inserted through the intake ports. The intake valves measured 2.12 inches (compared to 1.77 for the 289), and the exhaust valves grew to 1.54 (versus 1.44). The new heads, called TunnelPort, appeared to be Ford's key to winning its third consecutive Trans-Am title.
A street version of the new engine was planned for homologation purposes. According to a Ford press release, the "Street Version 1968 1/2 302-8V Engine" would come with a pair of four- barrel carburetors on an aluminum dual-plane intake, a four-bolt main bearing block, cast-iron headers, hydraulic lifters, and cast-iron cylinder heads with "tubes pressed through the intake ports for pushrod passage." Output was listed at 240 horsepower at 5,000 rpm.
For 1968 Shelby dropped its Terlingua camouflage when Ford supplied full factory support to the Shelby Racing Company, which planned to field two Mustangs, one driven by Jerry Titus and the other by a host of drivers, including Parnelli Jones, David Pearson, and Horst Kwech. In another development, Cougar switched from the SCCA Trans-Am to builder Bud Moore's more familiar NASCAR GT series, so there would be no Mustang-versus-Cougar confrontation in 1967.
The first two Trans-Am events of 1968 were endurance races — the Daytona 24 Hours and the Sebring 12 Hours. Unlike the previous seasons, when the Trans-Am ran as preliminary races, the 1968 Trans-Am was incorporated into the main events. At Daytona, Mustangs dominated the Trans-Am class, finishing the race 64 laps ahead of the second-place Penske/Donohue Camaro. In fact, Mustang's Jerry Titus/Ronnie Bucknum driving combination finished fourth overall behind three Porsche 907 prototypes — with Titus maneuvering his Mustang into Porsche's orchestrated checkered flag photo. It was an impressive showing, not only for Mustang but for the Trans-Am series as well. Sports Car Graphic reported, "If the SCCA had not wisely decided to include Trans-Am cars in the 24-Hour, the race would have been a complete farce."
After the Daytona success, Mustang efforts soured. At Sebring, the Mustangs were thoroughly outclassed by Donohue's Camaro. At the first regular-season Trans-Am, a 250-mile race at War Bonnet Raceway in Oklahoma, Parnelli Jones chased pacesetter Donohue and even led briefly before succumbing to electrical difficulties. Titus, in the number 1 Mustang, found himself parked with a blown engine. At Lime Rock, Titus finished second; fill-in driver David Pearson retired with oiling ailments. At Bridgehampton, suspension problems plagued Titus and a blown engine sidelined Kwech, one of several drivers who eventually piloted the number 2 Mustang. At Meadowdale, the season's seventh race, Titus was hampered by suspension problems and Kwech was crippled by rear-end trouble.
By the season's ninth race, at Bryar, all hopes for Ford's third Trans-Am championship had been squashed. Donohue's Camaro breezed through eight straight events, winning every one after the poor start at Daytona. The win at Bryar locked up Camaro's first Trans-Am championship, 105 points to Ford's 63.
Shelby American blamed the poor showing on Ford's insistence that the team use Ford-built Tunnel-Port engines. Lew Spencer explained, "In 1967, we built our own engines and had no failures. In 1968, Ford wouldn't let us build our engines; they wanted their engine department to build them. It was a complete disaster."
Oiling problems abounded within the Tunnel-Port's high-rpm power band; by season's end, numerous Tunnel-Ports had disintegrated. At one point during the season, Shelby asked Ford for permission to switch back to the more reliable 289. Ford denied the request.
The Tunnel-Port 302 quietly disappeared after the 1968 Trans-Am. In fact, the street version never materialized, even though it appeared in early 1968 Mustang sales brochures as the "302 High-Performance." The only example known to exist was a prototype built by Ford's contract performance company Kar Kraft for a July 1968 Car & Driver comparison test against a Chevy- prepped Camaro Z28. C&D described them as "by far the best performing street cars ever."
Ford was often criticized in the press for whetting the performance enthusiast's appetite with racing 302s and 427s, then not offering them for sale to the public.
In early 1968, Ford's Engine and Foundry Division was working on a new 351 engine for the 1970 model year. It had a staggered valve arrangement and huge intake ports. Someone at Engine Engineering realized that, with minor modifications, the new 351 heads would bolt onto the Windsor-based 302. A pair was cobbled onto a 302 racing block.
CHAPTER 2
BUILDING THE BOSS
Even before the ill-fated 1968 Trans-Am Mustangs hit the track, Ford was taking criticism in the automotive press for its lack of performance cars for the street. During a visit to Rhode Island's Tasca Ford dealership, Hot Rod magazine's Eric Dahlquist took notes from his conversation with owner Bob Tasca, who was not pleased with Ford's 1968 performance offerings compared to those from GM and Chrysler. Tasca also demonstrated his KR-8 ("King of the Road 1968") Mustang, a 390-powered 1967 GT hardtop that Tasca Ford had modified with off-the-shelf Ford performance parts.
Dahlquist's article in the November 1967 Hot Rod reached the top of Ford World Headquarters. On October 2, 1967, executive vice president Lee Iacocca issued a memo; he wanted to know, "What are we going to do about the performance image problem?"
On November 3, VP Don Frey responded in an executive communication. He stated that there were three pieces to the problem: "The first is sheer performance — I believe we are now on the road to recovery in this area. The second involves image models to dramaticize the power. We are working on this with [design chief] Gene Bordinat. The third is advertising, promotion, and public relations. The tone of this article, and others like it, suggest we will have a tough rebuilding job in this area once we get the product fixed."
Frey went on to say that street performance needed to become a priority at Ford, just like "big-time racing" had been. He also recommended that racing focus on production vehicles and engines, not the exotic "funny car."
Frey's recommendations instigated a new performance urgency at Ford, one that would result in the mid-1968 428 Cobra Jet engine, a 1969 Mach 1 "image" model, youth-oriented advertising, a muscle parts program, and a pair of unique "production-based" race engines, a 429 for NASCAR and a 302 for Trans-Am.
Knudsen Knocks Noggins
On February 6, 1968, just three months after Frey's letter to Iacocca, Henry Ford II shocked the automotive industry by hiring Bunkie Knudsen away from General Motors. As the company's new president, Knudsen wasted little time in stirring up personnel. He practically moved into the Styling Center to make accelerated changes to the soon-to-be-released 1969 models and scheduled styling shows for 7:30 in the morning. He even set up his own personal studio to work out the kinks in the 1971 Mustang.
Knudsen recognized the need for a Trans-Am-inspired Mustang. At GM, he had watched Camaro Z28 sales rise from 602 in 1967 to 7,199 in 1968. Those sales, along with the exposure of Trans-Am racing, added positive appeal to the rest of the Camaro line. Knudsen explained the Mustang's position: "The Mustang was certainly a good-looking automobile. But there were people who wanted good-looking automobiles with performance."
Over in Engine Engineering
Before Knudsen had arrived, Ford's engine engineers had already begun work on a new 351 powerplant for 1970. Designed as Ford's mainstay engine for the upcoming decade, the mid-displacement 351 Cleveland (so known because it was built at Ford's Cleveland Engine Foundry and to differentiate it from the older 351 Windsor design) borrowed features from the Chevrolet big-block to add performance and durability. The cylinder heads utilized canted valves, which allowed larger intake ports. Angling the valves also provided space for larger valves; in fact, the valves in the four-barrel version of the production-based 351 Cleveland were larger than those used in the 302 Tunnel-Port racing heads.
Someone in Engine Engineering realized the Cleveland head's potential. As an experiment, the engineers modified the water outlets so the heads would work on a 302 Tunnel-Port race block. The first dynamometer tests were encouraging.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Boss Mustang 50 Years"
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