That Challenger III has some incredible kick ass lines to it no doubt. It vaguely reminds of the off topic, 68 Mercury Cyclone I owned as a kid. Recent video from the Hershey 2023 car corral, showed an off topic 1969 Mercury Cyclone CJ with a 428, the car was flawless and high priced at 89 K. That car looked fast just sitting still !
Funny, I was just telling my dad about this car yesterday... I will send this to him - perfect timing!
I remember trying to build a 1/24 scale version of that from an AMT model kit of a Falcon Ranchero when I was a kid. It was an abject failure. A sectioned Falcon seems like a test mule for a Mustang. Is that why the program was canceled? Or was it part of the Mustang program all along?
Fairly sure those are Porsche 356 seats... I would love to see this thing parked next to a 356 just to get an idea of scale. All of the articles I've read make it seem as though the car feels tiny and it's hard to imagine a tiny scale Falcon for some reason...
The 1963 1/2 Ford Falcon was the closest thing to the body style offered o the general public and I had one in the late sixty's, but I sure would love to own one of the lujie body styled Falcons, that top is the cats arse! HRP
If you watch the above, be sure to pay attention to the interview with Jim Hall. He was a very close friend of my dad's and one of the main drivers behind my own failed racing career. The test track they show is the track I learned how to race on... Rattlesnake Raceway. First with my go-cart and shortly thereafter in open wheeled race cars. A couple of years ago, I was invited to COTA for a family film thing... Long story short, they were filming a bunch of old Chaparral cars being driven by a bunch of old drivers. I went to watch and they allowed me on the track a bit with my off topic car as well as a few others that friends of Jim brought out... Around that same time, I also got the opportunity to drive one of the GT40s used in the Ford Vs. Ferrari movie. This was all in a period of about 6 months and it has been haunting me ever since... Driving 60's and 70's era race cars casually is on a different level to anything I've ever done before. You know that special feeling you get when you drive an old hot rod? Imagine that same feeling backed by real performance - a car that stops, handles, and absolutely hauls ass without losing the tactile feel of a purely manual machine. I'm sort of ruined by it all... And these videos aren't helping.
The Challenger Falcons were never more than a sideshow in spite of Holman-Moody's enthusiasm. The still-secret Mustang was waiting in the wings and Ford's upcoming promotional efforts were aimed at that. There's ample proof of that by the speed with which Ford enlisted Shelby to take the Mustang racing after its introduction. Makes you wonder a bit if H-M got cut out of the loop by 'wildcatting' the Falcon platform, probably without 'official' Ford permission. Ford had re-entered the racing wars by 1960. After the AMA racing ban of '57, Ford was alone in closing down their racing programs. GM and Chrysler moved theirs into the 'police' or 'heavy duty' categories and 'back doored' the parts to their teams and Ford quickly figured out they had been hoodwinked. As a sop to their NASCAR teams, Ford did option the 430 MEL into the Thunderbird in late '58 without technically violating the ban, but by late '59 it was obvious that something needed to be done if Ford wanted to have a presence in the performance market. The first shot was the HiPo 352 of 1960, the very first production V8 out of Detroit that was purpose-built for racing. No longer a souped-up production motor, this was engineered from the block out as a performance platform. The seed had been planted, and in 1962 Henry Ford declared the corporate policy would be 'Total Performance' with the intention of competing and winning in all major forms of motorsports. Ford compiled an unmatched record of success... And I have to laugh at all the hooraw surrounding the C8 Corvette. Ford has built and/or marketed no less than four rear engine high performance cars since 1964. GM is 56 years late to the party....
Unmatched in the USA perhaps... On the international scene, Ford couldn't compete. No American manufacturer could. And it took a Lola chassis to get the GT40 jump started. What other mid-engined Fords are there? I'm unfamiliar... Or am I brain farting? As for the mid-engine Corvette, in large part it is based off a 458 Ferrari platform. It's not even fully developed yet and it won its class at Le Mans... I can't thumb my nose at it and would be willing to bet that it becomes the most successful American platform in international racing history.
The Pantera was designed and manufactured by Italians. Just Ford powered is all... And doah! Of course... I don't have a ton of passion for many modern cars... but holy hell are those things gorgeous. Nods to history without being cheesy or cliche. Anyway... Back to the Falcon. Here's a Falcon Sprint prepared by Holman & Moody and used as a rally car. I love just about everything about it... Leather hood straps are great... but I think that's a Talbot mirror? If you've never handled one of those, they are like jewelry... So well made and gorgeous.
Remember, the Pantera was actually sold through Lincoln Mercury Dealers. And was designed by an American. Something I find cool as hell.
Ford F3L. Cosworth DFVpowered. Built in England. Ended up not a racing success, but looks and sounds fantastic.
Really? Ford or Ford-powered vehicles have won races in NHRA, NASCAR, ARCA, USAC, SCCA, Off road, FIA, Formula 1, Rally, and British and Australian Touring car classes. There is even a Formula Ford class. Name even one other manufacturer who can say that. Admittedly, Ford doesn't have the historic depth that the European manufacturers do and did move their focus around, but when they showed up they were taken seriously after clobbering Ferrari at LeMans.
Not a Ford man at all, but will give them their credit - they did win the only two HAMB-era (1963 and 1964) touring car races at The Mountain (Bathurst, Mount Panorama) in a Ford Cortina MkI GT. Those were Bri-ish cars though. Cheers, Harv
Yes. Really. It's just history. There's a difference between designing, engineering, and building a race car and just sponsoring an endeavor. Ford in F1 for example... Their success is mostly banked on the DFV motor. It's called the Ford DFV... which is fine, because they financed it... but it was designed and engineered by Cosworth for Team Lotus. Ford was just the sponsor. As for Formula Ford, again... that's a sponsorship. Ford didn't engineer those cars, the teams did... Webb and Clarke named the series "Formula Ford" in hopes of getting Ford to help financially back the series. It worked too... Ford sold them 50 Cortina GT motors for 25% off retail to pay for the naming rights. The teams, however, were allowed to run any chassis and motor combination that were in spec. Most chassis' were designed by Lotus, but Lola, Cooper, Reynard, and others had entries. I think these days its pretty much Honda dominated, but I don't follow it... My point isn't that Ford sucks. Far from it. My point is that historically, Ford couldn't compete on the international GP set because they never applied themselves. When they did give it serious effort, they produced the second best sports car of all time. They needed Lola to do it, but still... I'd argue Lola couldn't have done it by themselves even if they did have Ford financial backing. I only wish they took real racing as seriously as other international players like Porsche, Ferrari, etc... Because if they did, they would kill it. The Cortina story is so rad... Essentially, it was designed by Roy Brown Jr. after he was banished from Ford Detroit and sent to Dagenham after his Edsel design failed so miserably. The Cortina was essentially his first project working with British engineers. The Cortina went on to become the best selling car in Europe. Add Lotus to the mix and it became a damned fine saloon car too...
You were apart of FIA or otherwise international racing teams in the 1960's? Were factory backed teams using third party sourced parts and pieces? As far as I know, factory teams from Porsche, Ferrari, Jag, Lotus, etc... were not doing that. In fact, after 1955 that would have been against FIA rules for constructor championships. I think there's a mis-conception that I am bagging on Ford for being shitty at racing. I'm not... AT ALL. I'm saying if they had approached GP racing like some of the European teams did, they would have been every bit as successful.... if not more so as they had more money to spend. The one time they did focus on GP racing, they killed everyone for five years with a single platform and hardly any development. Afterwards, they took their cars and went home. Ford didn't focus on Grand Prix racing. Instead, they chose to fart around with what Americans were more interested in - NASCAR. And through NASCAR, they could highlight the big and heavy cars that weren't ideal for GP racing but great for more American forms of racing and even better for sales on Monday. This was the smart play too... In 1970, guys like Enzo Ferrari and Ernst Fuhrmann were largely focused on winning races to sell sports cars. Meanwhile, Henry Ford II was focused on selling higher margin cars to families. As a result, Ford had more capital than any other car company in the world... and by a huge margin. It's this very dynamic that created guys like Briggs Cunningham, Carroll Shelby, and Jim Hall. Briggs was dominant in a Porsche, but wanted an American based team, tried with Chevrolet, and failed. Shelby wanted the same thing and decided a hybrid car was the best way... And Jim decided building his own car was the way... America's success in GP racing is almost entirely through independent innovation... Hot Rodders hot rodding... and not through factory engineered and designed endeavors.
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