Читать книгу 1968 Shelby Mustang GT350, GT500 and GT500KR - Greg Kolasa - Страница 7
ОглавлениеUNDERSTANDING CARROLL SHELBY’S MUSTANGS
When the Mustang debuted in April 1964, it wasn’t an overnight success. It didn’t take anywhere near that long; it was instantaneous. The car was sleek, shapely, sexy, spiffy, snappy, snazzy, and certainly sporty, but it wasn’t a sports car, and that’s what Ford needed. Carroll Shelby soon fixed that. (Photo Courtesy Bill Hartmann)
To fully appreciate and understand the 1968 Shelby Mustangs, a brief history of the Mustang, the Ford Motor Company, and the state of automotive affairs in the United States in the late 1940s through the early 1960s is a prerequisite. When the 1965 Mustang debuted at the New York World’s Fair on April 17, 1964, to say that the car was an instant smash hit is an understatement of epic proportions.
The Mustang’s effect on not only Detroit, but on popular American culture, in general, was nothing short of profound. Compared to Ford’s then-current (and more than just a little bit stuffy and stodgy) stable, the pert little coupe was not only a styling coup, but it also begat an entirely new class of automobile: the not-coincidentally-named “pony car” class. While Ford basked very publicly in the glow of its recent achievement, privately it lamented the one nagging criticism of the Mustang. Despite the car’s drop-dead good looks, its unprecedented bang-for-the-buck value, its arm’s-length options list, and its sizzling performance, Ford couldn’t overcome the fact that although the Mustang was no doubt a sporty car, it wasn’t a sports car. Ford just didn’t want a sports car; it needed a sports car.
Ford had kicked off its decade-long “Total Performance” marketing program the year before Mustang’s debut. Chevrolet had had a sports car for almost 10 years. Ford’s performance program, identified by just two brief words, was itself the product of V-J Day. It was the beginning of the automotive performance movement in the United States.
Myriad options do not a sports car make. Adding every available performance extra to a base Mustang (High Performance 289, 4-speed transmission, disc brakes, GT suspension) put the car very close to, and in fact, even formed the basis for, a sports car, but it wasn’t quite there. Shelby American moved the ball across the goal line.
PEACE, PROSPERITY AND PERFORMANCE
It is not a stretch at all to say that the need for the Mustang to be recognized as a sports car really began at the end of World War II. With the end of hostilities, a massive influx of millions of ex-serviceman, many of them barely post-teenage, flooded back into the United States, and back into civilian life. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the hot rod movement went pedal-to-the-metal as ex-GIs sought to fulfill their need for speed. They formed the consumer base that purchased huge numbers of automobiles, and their offspring formed the heart of the American car-buying public for the next generation. Everything automotive in the post-war United States was centered on two important attributes: speed and performance. Buyers couldn’t get enough of either, and Detroit was only too happy to oblige. Cars became faster, more powerful, and more exciting with each model year. Everyone’s, that is, except Ford’s.
Ford had numerous reasons for needing its new Mustang to be recognized as a sports car. The company needed a sports car to fit into its new Total Performance marketing and motorsports campaign. It also needed to counter the Corvette, which, by the time Total Performance was up and running, had already marked a decade of as Chevrolet proudly proclaimed it, “America’s Sports Car.”
In 1960, Ford debuted the stodgy, lackluster, but altogether practical, Falcon. Ironically, that sedate little sedan led the way for Ford’s entry into motorsports. Powered by hand-built, high-performance 260s, the Holman-Moody–prepared Falcon Sprints didn’t win the 1963 Monte Carlo Rally outright, but it fired a warning shot across the bow of international motorsports and served notice that the Blue Oval was a force to be reckoned with.
In the midst of all this speed and performance, Ford was, automotively speaking, still in the dark ages. By the early 1950s, when General Motors had introduced the Corvette, Ford continued to hold onto the reputation of creating cars that would satisfy most new car buyers’ grandfathers. Ford’s product lineup was, very simply put, not very exciting, and that was no accident; it was by design. Under the leadership of Robert McNamara, Ford continued to develop and produce logical, sensible, fiscally responsible, but altogether unexciting automobiles.
That changed in 1960 when John F. Kennedy was elected president. That event in Washington had far-reaching implications for the future of the Ford Motor Company, all driven by the power vacuum created at the highest levels of Dearborn management by the President-elect. It started when he tapped McNamara to be his Secretary of Defense.
That left a hole at the top, which was filled by Henry Ford II. That, in turn, left various openings at levels just below him. One of them was the vacancy of president of the Ford Division. It was filled by someone considered by most insiders (and certainly those corporate ladder-climbers vying for occupancy of the president’s office) to be an unlikely candidate: Lee Iacocca. With leadership of the division and Henry II’s ear, Iacocca was one of the few Ford leaders who truly understood the effect the Baby Boom would have on car buying. He recognized that by the early 1960s, the United States had more young people than at any other time in the country’s history and that this equated to the country having more young car buyers than at any other time. And every one of them craved speed and performance.
Slowly at first, then with the ever-in-creasing speed of a snowball down a mountain, the rest of Ford management began to grasp that they could use speed and performance to their advantage. Potential car buyers (even those not necessarily interested in speed and performance) concluded that because of Ford’s motorsports victories, its products must be superior to those of the other manufacturers.
In the spring of 1962, Ford officially withdrew from the 1958 Resolution on Speed and Advertising (the so-called, self-imposed “Performance Ban,” instituted by the automobile manufacturers themselves, ostensibly in the interest of safety). This stated that Ford (and not another organization, even one of which Ford was a member) should determine what course its company should follow in the context of automotive safety. When asked if withdrawal from the ban meant that Ford was once again going to dip its toe into the motorsports pool, new president Henry Ford II answered that they were not merely going to dip a toe, but that they were “going in with both feet.”
The summer of 1963 saw Ford launch the largest, most extensive, expansive (and likely expensive) motorsports program in the history of the American automobile.
The program was known as “Total Performance” and its scope was equaled only by its expenditures. Although the best-known aspect of Total Performance was the nearly decade-long motorsports program, Total Performance was actually an overarching marketing philosophy, in the context that car buyers, after examination of a Ford car’s total performance, decided that the Ford product was clearly superior. The objective of the motorsports program was elegantly (and also expensively) simple: to dominate all forms of motorsports, drag racing, stock car racing, sports car racing, IndyCar racing, or any other kind of racing. If it was racing, Ford wanted to dominate it, and cost didn’t matter.
The subtitle of Total Performance, “improving the breed through open competition,” was intended to thwart criticism that Ford’s reemergence into performance was anti-safety. Because of what it was intended to achieve and the way it was to do so, Total Performance became known as the “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” sales philosophy.
The overall objective of the Total Performance motorsports program is often misunderstood, however. Ford’s goal was to become the dominant force in motorsports, but that wasn’t the end. It was the means to the end. The real end, very much counterintuitively, was increased sales to American car buyers of beige sedans and wood-on-the-side station wagons.
Ford’s lack of a real sports car in its product lineup could be resolved very easily if the new Mustang were recognized as a true sports car. To achieve that goal, Ford approached the one organization with the credentials and credibility to make that proclamation: the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), which served as the sanctioning body for all amateur road racing in the United States. However, the company’s plan of simply applying pressure to the SCCA to receive the all-important sports car declaration for Mustang was, amazingly to Ford, met with staunch refusal. The SCCA was fiercely independent and beholden to no one, not even a massive and powerful entity such as the Ford Motor Company. Instead of pressing the SCCA even harder, Ford realized that it would be easier to catch flies with Texas honey than with Dearborn vinegar. Ford turned to Carroll Shelby.
FROM “SECRETARY’S CAR” TO SPORTS CAR
When Lee Iacocca approached Carroll Shelby about making the Mustang a sports car, Shelby was somewhat reluctant to take on the project, feeling that the project would be a major distraction from his racing programs. Because of Ford’s advertising that proclaimed the car’s low price and fuel economy made it affordable, even for a secretary, he derided the Mustang as “a secretary’s car.” Shelby retold the story numerous times. He was far less than enthusiastic about Ford’s “request,” but he also saw the writing on the wall. In the beginning, the Cobra was the only race car in Ford’s stable, and Shelby American was the benefactor of Ford’s seemingly infinite corporate bank accounts.
However, with the advent of the GT40 and other in-house efforts, Ford put less and less emphasis on (and money into) Shelby’s Cobras in favor of those other programs. Ford funding of Shelby’s Cobras wasn’t infinite; it definitely had an end, and Shelby knew that the end was approaching. In part because of that, and also because the request had come from his now good friend Lee Iacocca (who, more than anyone else at Ford, was responsible for securing Ford funding for his Cobra project), Shelby agreed to take on the “secretary’s car” project.
When the Ford GT40 appeared on the scene, Carroll Shelby knew that Ford’s funding of his “powered by Ford” Cobras was no longer an infinite deal. He saw the Mustang GT350 project as additional revenue for a few more years, even if he didn’t personally care to undertake the project. It turned out to be a fiscally wise decision and it made his good (and very powerful) Ford friend, Lee Iacocca, happy.
Shelby used Ford’s steamrolling approach as a blueprint of what not to do when he called on John Bishop, who was both the director of the SCCA and a friend. Bishop laid out what Shelby needed to do to produce a Mustang sports car. It would have to be eligible for competition in one of SCCA’s production sports car classes. These were delineated by the cars’ performance potential to ensure relatively equal car-to-car competition. The car had to shed two seats because sports cars were two-seaters, and 100 examples needed to be produced by January of the year in which the car was to compete (in this case, 1965). Given that it was now already late summer of 1964, time was not an abundant community.
The production quantity minimum initially caused some consternation. Shelby American’s experience with sales of the competition Cobras indicated that the requirement of 100 racers was nearly twice as many cars as there were potential customers. Thankfully, there was also relief in the regulations: all production cars were allowed a series of general deviations from the production version of the vehicle for the sake of performance, as well as for safety. In addition to these general modifications, the SCCA allowed a specific set of modifications, more limited in scope and number that had to be submitted and accepted beforehand by the SCCA in a process known as “homologation.” Specific modifications for racing went further still and were made over and above the general spec.
You didn’t have to lay out big bucks for a turnkey GT350 competition version to go racing. The similarity of the street version to its full-race brethren meant that, with minimal modifications (and hence, cash outlay), any street GT350 could be made into a race car. This approach had been undertaken by several owners who campaigned their (former) street machines very successfully on the strip as well as the track.
Although it may sound confusing, in the simplest of terms, there could effectively be two versions of Shelby’s sports car version of the Mustang, the GT350: one for racing and one for street use. Both counted toward the 100-car production total.
Development of the Mustang into a race car was the primary emphasis of the new GT350 program, but there was also the secondary task to produce a street version, slightly detuned and only minimally more refined to satisfy production quantity minimums. The car took a somewhat convoluted route to become a sports car that was a bit different from that of other sports cars participating in SCCA competition.
Objective achieved, with honors; the acceptance of the Mustang GT350 for competition in SCCA’s B-Production racing class earned the Mustang the title of “sports car.” Grabbing the national title three years in a row was the icing on that cake.
Normally, production sports cars were developed to satisfy a consumer demand for such a vehicle; in other words, to sell cars to the public for use on the street. After the cars had landed on the showroom floors, the nationwide performance craze of 1960s America almost demanded that there be a performance and ultimately a competition version of those cars. Therefore, efforts were undertaken to turn the street cars into race cars. The process for the Mustang GT350 was somewhat different.
When it was decided that a sports car version of the Mustang was needed, work began on a model that could be used on the track, which allowed the Mustang to legitimately lay claim to the title of “sports car.” This was followed by the creation of a street brother. The unique GT350 process entailed a three-step process: street car (Ford Mustang) to race car (Shelby Ford Mustang GT350 competition model), then into another street car (Shelby Ford Mustang GT350 street version).
When Bishop and the SCCA visited Shelby American early in 1965 for their inspection, they found that the 100-car-production requirement was a bit short of fulfillment: only two race cars and a dozen or so street cars were complete. But the back lot behind Shelby’s facility was filled to overflowing with more than 100 white Mustang fastbacks in various stages of transformation into GT350s. That indicated that Shelby was serious about meeting his production commitment.
Seeing Shelby’s efforts, the Mustang GT350 was accepted for competition in SCCA’s B-Production racing class for 1965. Ford’s Mustang, or at least, one version of it, was now officially a sports car.
The newly minted race car showed what kind of sports car it was less than a month later when the GT350 won its first B-Production competition event. That winning trend continued for the remainder of the year. It culminated with Shelby American’s Mustang GT350 being crowned as the 1965 SCCA B-Production National Champion sports car, a feat that it repeated in 1966 and 1967.
Shelby’s people were not the first to put a Mustang on a racetrack. As soon as the Mustang was available for sale (in fact, even a little before), the little notchbacks hit all kinds of tracks in all levels of amateur and professional preparation where they quickly established themselves as worthy competitors. But they did so as sedan racers, not sports cars.
Mustangs hit the racetracks in the United States, Europe, and Australia almost as soon as the car was available for sale. The little notchbacks quickly established themselves as worthy adversaries. Although they were winners, they won as sedans and that didn’t allow Ford to lay claim to the Mustang as a sports car.
Shelby American changed that in a development process that began in late summer of 1964, when Ken Miles and Phil Remington began testing a pair of notchback Mustangs supplied by Ford. The fastback version of the Mustang, on which the GT350 was ultimately based, was still a couple of months away. They determined the exact modifications needed to improve the newborn pony’s performance, based on testing and development performed by Ford engineers well before the cars arrived at Shelby American.
From these tests, plus what was learned from earlier Mustang race cars, came features that have become synonymous with the GT350: the lowered front suspension upper A-arms, the cross-engine-compartment Monte Carlo Bar, the Fairlane station wagon’s large rear brake drums, and the aluminum high-rise intake topped with a Holley 715 cfm carburetor, to name a few. Simultaneously, Ford and Shelby American, along with the San Jose assembly plant, began discussing what could be added to and left off the Mustangs as they made their way down the assembly line, bound for Shelby American, and transformation into sports cars.
In October 1964, Charles “Chuck” Cantwell left General Motors when he heard of a small automobile manufacturer in Los Angeles who was building race cars. Cantwell’s first assignment with Shelby American was as the GT350’s new project engineer and his first order of business was to learn the new pony car inside and out. For two weeks, he worked with (and at) Ford in Dearborn. He laid out long, detailed, hand-written spreadsheets of components and their functions, planning ways to improve the Mustang’s performance.
Cantwell then toured the San Jose assembly line, picking out parts from the Ford production parts lineup to fulfill the Miles-Remington-Ford objectives. These items could be added relatively easily to, and deleted just as easily from, the Mustangs as they made their way down the San Jose line. That planning ensured that the Mustangs bound for Shelby American were built in the closest configuration as possible to the final product.
There was no “default” configuration to which Ford built Mustangs in the absence of a special order. Every pony (and in fact, every Ford product) was specifically designed in the configuration in which it was built. From a basic, no-option 6-cylinder coupe to a fully optioned HiPo GT convertible (and everything in between), every Mustang was a special order. Cars of similar characteristics, within a given sales district, formed a District Sales Order (DSO) that could be for a single car or several hundred identically equipped cars.
It has been a long-held belief that Ford churned out Mustangs by the train-carload, and every so often, one of them that met Shelby American’s requirements for transformation into a GT350 was hastily spirited away by Shelby’s fabricators. However, Shelby’s Mustangs were actually carefully and precisely built for just that purpose based on a very specific set of predetermined requirements.
There was nothing random about the configuration of the Mustangs shipped to Shelby American for conversion to GT350s. And Ford did not randomly churn out regular production Mustangs by the thousands to be shipped to its dealers. Every Mustang and, in fact, every automobile that rolled out of a Ford assembly plant, was specially ordered the way it was eventually built.
The term “special order” almost always brings to mind exotic combinations of wild, high-performance options. In reality, every car was a special order, whether it was a four-door bench-seat sedan or one of the Blue Oval’s latest and hottest Total Performance offerings. Every car scheduled for production was ordered by someone (an individual or a dealer) and no car was built unless there was a predetermined customer who specified how that car should be built. Likewise, there was no default configuration to which cars were built in the absence of a firm order; every car was a special order.
To keep track of its vehicle production, Ford divided the country into a series of about 40 areas, called districts. As each individual order for a car was placed by a dealer within a given district, the cars were grouped for production, by characteristics, in a District Special Order (DSO). The number of cars built within a single DSO was determined by the mechanical commonality of the car(s) requested. If no other vehicle with like qualities was ordered within that same district, that car was built under its own unique DSO. (Somewhat confusingly, “DSO” refers to both the special order for the car as well as the actual batch of cars built with carbon-copy attributes.)
If, however, multiple cars with identical traits (such as hundreds of kindred Mustangs, all destined for Shelby American) were ordered, that DSO contained multiple cars. Shelby submitted DSOs for cars to be built to a very specific configuration. These were processed and filled by Ford, just as for any Ford dealer in any district across the United States.
Shelby Mustangs were like no other muscle or performance car of the period. That’s not a subjective evaluation based on the cars’ relative “coolness” (or perhaps, in terms of performance, “hotness”). It’s an objective assessment based on the car’s unique construction method, designed from the beginning with very specific features for the conversion from production sporty cars for the many to specialty sports cars for the few.
The GT350 also contributed to another almost revolutionary aspect of the Mustang. Just as the Model T defined an entirely new class of automobile (affordable, basic transportation for everyone), the Mustang was the first of a new category of car. Before long, cars including Chevrolet’s Camaro, Plymouth’s re-designed Barracuda, and Pontiac’s Firebird (pony cars all) were developed in response to the new market created by Ford’s Mustang.
Although the Ford Mustang defined a new class of automobile, in Shelby form, it also redefined the muscle car. Prior to the arrival of the GT350, muscle cars were large cars, such as the Chevrolet Impala and Pontiac GTO, powered by large engines. The Mustang GT350 took a pony car and gave it true performance potential; it made the pony car Mustang a contender in the muscle car arena. The two different classes of automobile, the pony car and the muscle car, converged in one package. From that point on, muscle cars were never the same again.
Whether production occurred in Southern California or Michigan, prior to each year’s production, Ford determined the configuration of the platform Mustangs to be shipped to Shelby. Receiving those Mustangs in multiple DSOs, or batches, allowed for subtle “tweaks” to be incorporated into each successive group of cars and also relieved Shelby from having to purchase and find storage space for an entire year’s worth of Mustangs at one time. Mustangs destined for GT350/GT500 conversion were so annotated on their individual build sheets. (Photo Courtesy Jack Redeker)
