Inside Ford's 1969 Torino Talladega

so the last time we were here at richard's place we did a walkthrough of his 69 daytona interesting car right now we got into all of the little details you know what makes a daytona we actually got into its pants you know what makes a daytona daytona and uh did i pretend i action magazine oh anyway put a put a link to the video of this here cat okay so he's got some collection and one by one we're gonna work our way through we're going to focus on the aerocarts right now we're not even going to look at before 227. don't look at the battery so also in the daytona video some of you guys like what about the talladega in the driveway you got to be patient we get to everything here's the talladega that was in the driveway so this is a unique car i mean a really neat car and it's something that like i'm not nearly as well versed in as the daytona so i'm going to leave it to richard to give us a tour front to back of what makes these things unique and we'll start at the front bumper which is like itself the unique piece and we'll go all the way to the back bumper okay ready for this yeah let me start by saying uh i do the talladega registry for the talladega the spoiler tubes and the spoilers it's simply talladega spoilerregistry.com and you can learn a lot about these cars plus all the known cars that are still in existence are in the registry by number now how many were built and how many still exist they built 750 we've documented uh around 150 or so it tends to change and we've got some that shows that they've been scrapped and then it gives all the rest of them by condition and who owns them uh and all that sort of thing so it's really good information so how many are unaccounted for probably i can't tell you because it changes every few months and i only do the update once a year i'd say [Music] we know about 150 of them so that leaves 600 gone okay and of this 150 maybe 10 percent of those are documented as being scrapped or so when you say gone though i bet you they stole a bunch of these things sitting in grandpa's barn yeah there because every once in a while want to show up one showed up in uh sweden and you know they show up in australia and new zealand they're they're not just in the states but a lot of oddball cars struggling like sweden like one of the four door hemi cars 67 belvedere showed up in sweden wow but anyway so okay so they built 750 of them yeah and this was like a one option car yeah there were no options if you bought a talladega the only choice you had was whether it was going to be white maroon or blue okay that was it that's it this car uh happened to be the first production car off the assembly line it is wimbledon white came with they all came with white walls and hubcaps with the styling trim rings so this is actually number one they went from prototype to this they yeah they have prototype pilot cars production cars and this is a pilot car this is a production car okay pilot cars there was a couple of them that maybe got sold but uh some of them got crash tested and other ways got destroyed okay but this is the first real production car okay all right so now in the in the scheme of the arrow wars right where does this car fit in which was which was the first manufacturer to well it depends on whether you're talking to a mopar guy or a ford guy if you read my shirt these are for sale at uncle tony garage.com by the way we we like we love the aerocart so we got no prejudice towards uh mopars or fords or mercs oh i love them all right yeah the story goes and the history goes that ford came out with the torino in like this body style tree on 68 and it was a fastback design and that fastback design uh was way faster on the super speedways okay so dodge says our hemi just isn't making it we we we've got to step it up so we need to get smoother air feed the fastback roof by taking the tunnel out and mounting this so they did the 500. okay they did the dodge charger 500 which is basically a daytona without the wing and the front nose they had a special flat nose grille a 68 car grill garnet that they just mounted flush to mimic the torinos so so dodge made the mistake of bragging about it before they did it and ford got wind of it and secretly went back and said okay we're going to make a what turns out to be the talladega working with holmen moody uh they built an aerodynamic front end on it did a couple other things we'll get to and they both showed up at talladega okay they're showing up at the same time as a 500 yeah okay no yeah and they were running um 427s in these cars at that time so 500 they the dodge 500 showed up with their hemi the talladega showed up with the 427 teleport but it was more aerodynamic than the 500 so it won the daytona race okay that blew the mopar folks up so that's when all the stops were pulled to build the daytona interesting fact is a talladega never won a race of talladega and the daytona never won a race of daytona all right so let's let's start at the front bumper which is its own unique animal and we'll work our way back actually i want to get under the hood too there's a lot of stuff okay we'll come back to the hood the front fenders we've got it before we get anything else the factory trino fenders were cut this part was cut off okay and then this three piece new fender was created the old fender would have stopped about here so this is an extension this panel does not exist on a torino that's talladega only the grill is a stock ford traino cobra drill but it has the rubber seal gasket all around it close the gap between the hood and the fenders to make it more aerodynamic that's another thing you can't get a rock auto either yeah you can't get that at rock auto there i believe there's somebody reproducing now but for a long time their work the turn signals were taken off of the fender trino will have the unfairly we'll have the turn signal there these are you can't barely see them back there uh or off a forward van behind the grill okay we can turn those on later now the bumper is really tricky and when we get to the back of the car you'll have to take a good look at the back bumper because this bumper is fabricated from a rear bumper all right so this is a it again it began life is the same as the back bumper yeah the back it began life as a back bumper it was cut here here and here okay it was narrowed you can see how well and how tight it tucked in perfect right here and then the back bumper is straight it had to be v to fit the front so they cut it here put a v in it cut it here and here and brush it in okay so and then they say that this flat panel tends to act like a spoiler i can see it because it's almost vertical yeah it's almost vertical the hood uh there's no way you can tell there's no way you can get to it so it has an inside hood release i know you want to open it now yeah let's open it now [Music] it has an inside hood release which is from a i believe a 67 lincoln continental now what's interesting before we open the hood on the car and i wanted to point this out there's no when you're going to open a hood on this car you go to here let's put it shut it yeah put it right there you you can't there's no plate like you go to grab the car and grab the hood and look for the secondary latch but you can't it's hollowed right here so you can actually go from the sides then you reach down get the safety latch and open it up the latch is special to a talladega it's made from two factory trino latches this hook needs to be extended and this pole is extended and bent this cable then goes through the hood back into the interior where the right down there where the uh down here where the latch mechanism is it's powered by a 428 cj 335 horses as rated by the factory every the chrome valve covers and the chrome air cleaner topper factory yes the chrome valve covers are on early production cars later in february the car started being built early february in later february uh the factory ran out of the chrome covers and switched over on the rest of the cars to aluminum valve covers so now up here we got a lot of action all of this sheet metal reinforcement and arrow pans inside are to help support the extended nose and clean up the air on it has an oil cooler pan down on the bottom these structural elements and then there's pans here and here uh to fill the some of the voids now is this the same as the super cobra jet oil cooler i believe so yes uh then there's a power steering cooler that's added down here in front of the power steering pump and these bumpers are ah they're they're unique to the talladega basically for the reason you saw when you opened the hood it's down so low when you pull that pull the the cable up some place the springs push the hood up so you can get your fingers under the edge of the door the fender very end of though i think the original has a spring over here yeah that would push it up yep or say the original i mean i mean just the stock [Music] so that's i think that's it for the front of it right can we leave anything out no you want to look at the interior as we go around yeah what's that oh the seam you're going oh okay yeah the cap is shooting the seam bumper you can see where it's cut and reformed see that's why i pay her the big bucks because she remembers these things yeah she's a valuable part of this team so before he works before we even get oh yeah let's start with the downside okay this is great this is great if you imagine a rocker panel how they're cupped when they go down like this ford was a little bit sneaky they took and just on the talladega it's a talladega only uh in ford they took that rocker panel and then pinched it at the bottom and then re-bent the lip that comes down this lips about twice as long as it was on a regular torino the purpose for that was that nascar measured the race car height from the ground to the bottom of the rocker panel but not to the seam not to the seam so if you bend the rocker panel up an inch the car on the racetrack could sit an inch lower go lower what happens lower center of gravity less air resistance more speed now you can see if you look at the front fender right here you can see where this is its normal height where would start to come down and then they actually bent the fender up to meet the raised rocker and you can see right this whole section right here is where the rocker on a standard torino would come down this is the pinch weld area so they actually just bent this thing up and left the whole pinch weld seam exposed exposed you can tell the talladega when you walk up to the door it's got a big t on it nowhere on the car does it say talladega other than on the door panels and over there you can see that's the only place on the whole car that will actually say talladega um if you look at the plate on the inside of the door it's also unique to uh other cars where it will say special performance vehicle so it's a very special door tag that you'll see only on the on the ford on you'll see it on the talladega the interior is a real taxi cab arrangement they did the cheapest cloth they could find no bucket seats column shift transmission uh oh all automatics for column shift all automatics no consoles no bucket seats there were no options on this car you bought it the way it was but you could get a four-speed load no oh no really there was no option these all the talladegas were exactly alike except for the color interesting okay solid sounding door you know people were people were yelling at me because they slammed yeah big t on the fake gas cap this isn't unique to talladegas but the gas cap is actually behind the bumper nut on the on the tail like a bee body mopar yeah everybody tries to no it doesn't come off there's something about that that reminds me of the maverick for some reason uh the talladega automatic is the only car that came automatic that came with staggered shocks and to hide those and we'll show you underneath where the shocks are and where they're staggered but they include this steel box in the trunk and access plate to mount the shock on the driver's side which is actually matter so this right here is the access plate for the top of the shock and this is like from the from the super cobra jet drag pack right correct but they adapted here's the only automatic transmission application for that staggered rear shock instead of the spare tire being mounted uh over the axle it's mounted on the passenger side inside of the trunk with the jack now you probably want to take a look at this bumper and say how in the room can that be the front bumper it's straight yeah wider see how it sticks out from the fender instead of being tucked underneath right up tight who did the modification on the on the bumper is that a home in the moody uh holman moody's built the fenders for the first hundred cars uh actually they weren't acceptable so they changed suppliers at that point i'm not i think they may have done the bumpers but my brain's going blank on that right now it's a beautiful car man thank you it's a dream to drive they really do the faster you drive the better they drive sure i can imagine that arrow really comes into play and you feel it settle in all right so that's the talladego what's next well you want to give me a teaser for the next we've got a 69 mercury cyclone spoiler 428 ram air car and we have which is like the most beautiful thing you'll ever see it's a tail yarborough car and then we're going to compare that you know that this is a tease we're gonna compare it to its sister which is also a sister to the talladega it's a 69 mercury cyclone spoiler too it's the dan gurney version they made two versions of each car one that's got to be the rarest this is this is one of one oh there you go the spoiler twos we don't say no no no stop stop stop don't talk anymore and don't don't look at the vet or or anything else brother man thank you so much absolutely well uh absolutely glad to do it this is fun another two weeks i've talked about two weeks of mercury so i'm gonna do something with that okay great i love this stuff see you tomorrow yeah see you all i absolutely you're supposed to say all right see you tomorrow

Channel: Uncle Tony's Garage

Views: 97,088

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Id: -id4gXm-XLQ

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020