1960’s Ford Factory Race Cars that were Street Legal!

[Music] hey everyone in this video we journey back to the automotive world of the 1960s we take a look at what the ford motor company was offering if somebody wanted to buy an incredibly special factory-built car that was ready to take to a drag strip or a stock car track to race and also happen to be completely street legal did ford actually make such unicorn cars that the general public could buy yes but with a caveat the cars were mostly limited in production numbers and were considered experimental or homologation compliant cars an explanation homologation cars were cars that the manufacturer was required to build in limited quantities and sell to the public that represented the version of the car that would compete in a racing event or series so buckle up and hang on while we put the hammer down and roar into the 1960s for this review of the street legal race cars that ford was offering if you were lucky enough to get one [Music] back in the late 1950s and early 1960s the youth of america had discovered an affinity for racing both in straight-line drag strip form and in oval track stock car form to qualify a car for nhra entry eligibility in the stock eliminator race class manufacturers were required to produce at least 200 copies of the same car that would race in the class this is how the 1963 and a half ford galaxy lightweight was born ford chrysler and gm had already stuffed their big block engines into their full-size and mid-size car bodies and couldn't increase displacement of the engines any larger than around 7 liters or 425 to 430 cubic inches so what did they do to make their cars more competitive they added lightness to the cars the ford galaxy was put on a crash diet for racing purposes and approximately 212 copies of this lightweight race car were created the heart beating beneath the fiberglass hood of this beast was the r-code 427 cubic inch motor this race-ready galaxy swapped out the stock steel fenders hood and trunk panels for fiberglass versions and replaced the heavy steel bumpers with aluminum ones they went even further and removed the heater and replaced the entire frame with a lighter version intended for the six cylinder equipped galaxy with these modifications the weight reduction removed around 420 pounds from the car most of the cars were purchased by four dealerships for their local race programs but a few were purchased by people that wanted to race their galaxies on the street and provide other racers with a nasty stop-light surprise by this completely normal and harmless looking forward [Music] ford would embark on another factory street legal race car development project that would produce the legendary 1964 ford fairlane thunderbolt this was another exercise in evolutionary light waiting but this time in ford's mid-sized car body the two-door post fairlane the usual techniques were applied where non-racing essential components were deleted and steel body panels were again swapped out for fiberglass or aluminum replicants the engine used was the 427 cubic inch v8 race engine with two four-barrel carburetors on a high-rise intake manifold and ram air intake facilitated through the openings left by deleting the inboard headlights the car also included a mean looking hood bulge to accommodate the additional engine height there were between 111 and 127 copies of the thunderbolt produced for the super stock drag racing class and put out about 650 horsepower in 1964 it set elapsed time and top speed records at 11.6 seconds and 124 miles an hour and took the super stock title and won the manufacturer's cup in 1966 the fifth generation fairlane debuted with ford once again working their factory race car toy box wizardry on the new model this was the 1966 fairlane 500 xl two-door hard top with the 427 cubic inch ercode engine installed along with more weight saving measures applied together with the factory rated 425 horsepower motor and four-speed manual transmission this version of the fairlane was made available to satisfy production quantity requirements for nhra race eligibility and was completely street legal ford produced only 57 of these incredibly rare and desirable cars and was available in any color as long as it was wimbledon white according to some ford history experts the production quantity was so low only because of exhaust manifold manufacturing difficulties and not because of a factory-imposed restriction the r-code engine option and other race goodies included in the package added about two thousand dollars to the cost of the car for a total cost of four thousand five hundred dollars back in 1966 these beautiful machines can fetch about two hundred thousand dollars to over three hundred thousand dollars at auction these days conceived not as a race car in its entirety this ford mustang was offered to the public in 1969 and 1970 to specifically homologate its engine for nascar use ford needed more go power for its fastback ford torino talladega and mercury cyclone twins in the nascar grand national series to compete against the hemi-powered dodge charger daytona and plymouth superbird aero body cars as the 1969 through 1970s sports roof mustang body and chassis was never engineered to accommodate the large motor modifications had to be made these were performed at carcraft ford's special vehicle engineering facility in brighton michigan the resulting car emerged as a front heavy beast with less than ideal handling attributes requiring the car battery to be relocated to the trunk area of the vehicle and a rear anti-sway bar added the car was produced for two years starting in 1969 with 1 359 boss 429s leaving the car craft facility interestingly those production numbers included two mercury cougars with the race engine installed for the lincoln mercury race division do you think you might like to snap one up and add it to your collection search deep within your sofa cushions for spare change as these will set you back between 125.000 and 450 000 at auction another option might be to commission a brand new fully ford licensed semi-replicate of this dream ride from a company called classic recreations how much it reportedly starts at around 209 000 and can go up from there depending on options [Music] the famous and beautiful ford gt was created in the 1960s as the centerpiece vehicle of ford's effort to combat ferrari's dominance of the 24 hours of le mans race event the rivalry between henry ford ii and enzo ferrari was cast over a failed bid by ford to purchase the ferrari company in the early 1960s this resulted in development of the ford gt race car and was based on the lola mk6 chassis and powered by a series of ford v8 engines ranging in displacement from 4.2 liters to 7 liters it was created as a race car but did you know that the ford gt was also offered in a street legal variant as well throughout the 1960s the gt was offered in street legal road configuration and included wire wheels ashtrays luggage space carpet and both left-hand drive or right-hand drive versions the road versions were created to satisfy homologation requirements for racing eligibility and included 31 of the mk-1 versions and only 7 of the mk-3 versions were built in the mid-2000s ford developed a new version of the gt there are now two generations of the ford gt with the first version sold between 2005 and 2006 and the latest version still on sale since 2017. the 1960s were a wild time for the ford motor company and saw them released some pretty cool cars that were rare and special even back then in the 50 plus years since then these historic and storied cars have only grown more legendary and desirable because as the saying goes they're not making any more of them as always we hope you enjoyed this video and please be sure to like and share to help keep this channel going thanks for watching

Channel: MagnaLume

Views: 77,802

Rating: 4.9266057 out of 5

Keywords: 1960s Ford Factory Race Cars that were Street Legal, magnalume, race cars, cars race, Ford GT40, ford fairlane thunderbolt, ford fairlane r-code, 63 ford galaxie lightweight 427 r-code, stock car racing, boss 429, boss 429 mustang, 1960s, NASCAR, lemans, Ford, Mustang, muscle car, classic cars, drag race, grand National, dodge daytona, Plymouth superbird

Id: cK0T8oNOGgQ

Length: 9min 23sec (563 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021