Trans Am Mustangs

Does anybody know if the 1971 thru 73 body style was run in the circuit? I know Ford pulled factory backing in 70,but did anyone run it independently? Any pictures on the net?

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I'm pretty sure that no 4th gen Mustangs were ever campaigned in the Trans Am. When Ford pulled out after the '70 season all the Bud Moore factory team cars were sold off to privateers. These cars, and other '69-'70's (iirc the "'70" Bud Moore cars were actually '69's with the '70 trim details swapped in) were the Mustangs that ran in '71 forward. Although I can't pull up a name from memory, at least one Bud Moore team driver campaigned one of these in '71, still wearing the "school bus yellow" Bud Moore paint job. The Ford privateers were no match for the Penske AMC Javelin team, though.

After the '71 or '72 season, the Trans Am rules changed and big block (427 and iirc 454 ci) Camaros and Corvettes were the only domestics that were competitive with the Porsche 911's. Although a 429 or 460 ci

4th gen Mustang would have fit nicely into that same niche, it didn't happen. So again I feel pretty confident without looking it up that no 4th gen Stangs ran in the historic Trans Am.

As far as Trans Am-ifying a '71-'73 coupe, I can only say it's about time. I've been daydreaming about this myself ever since I saw a lowered, fat-tired 4th gen coupe on the street a couple months ago. Unlike the '65-'70's, a 385 block is a simple drop-in (giving you relatively cheap crate motor options of 514 ci, 600+ hp), and 4th gen coupes look baaad lowered and with a set of wide rims and tires.

That's really all you have to do to get the Trans Am look, lower it and shoe it properly. The lowering is done with the springs. You can adjust the ride height in front by cutting coils, and in the rear with lowering blocks or -- my choice -- mounting a short leaf from your old springs upside down on your new ones.

In fact the '71-'73 responds to all the same handling mods as the earlier cars. Get some Koni or Bilstein or Edelbrock (in order of preference) shocks, some stiff lowering springs, a larger sway bar, and polygraphite or midolyne bushings. Some frame connectors. A 6-pt roll cage is nice too. An underhood brace. Do the Shelby drop. Rollerized spring perches. A good driver's seat and a 13" steering wheel. Brake upgrades -- Praise Dyno might have some linings you could try and see how they work, before jumping into the hyper expensive Baer or Wilwood or SSBC 4 wheel disc realm. A Fays2 Watts link would be nice in the rear. And some Dr. Gas side pipes would really top off the Trans Am look, provided that they fit in with the frame connectors and the lowering.

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I just remembered this web site for the latest 4th gen Ricky Racer stuff:

Dark Horse's own track car runs the full Total Control Products coil-over treatment -- which confirms my suspicion that all the '65-'70 tricks will cross over -- and apparently a fiberglass front clip, doors, and deck lid. The resulting weight loss would be a good countermeasure for that 700 lb 514 up front. : ) And of course running

550 lb-ft of torque through the rear wheels would help coping with any oversteer problems. : ) : ) : )

I know that a few independents were still racing mustangs into the late

70's. I believe that dick trickle of NASCAR fame actually won a championship on the short track series in 72, however I don't know what model car he was running .Dark horse racing campaigned a 71 fastback for a while a pic. There were a few others I'll do some more research in my archives.

p.s. I wouldn't recommend Koni shock on a 71-73. I've found that because of the slightly more nose heavy attitude that the shocks are just too stiff tried them on a 351c convertible and a 302 fastback. I like the gas shocks on the front of this model. a rear sway control device of some type is a must. as are a set of subframe connectors.

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(Quick short history)- Thanks to a spectacular accident in Ste Jovite during the '69 season, 3 of the 6 Ford corporate backed cars were totalled. Parnelli Jones' shift linkage jammed taking him out of the race early. But the worst happened in Lap 14. George Follmer's Boss blew an engine, throwing oil all over the track and he ended up in a guard rail. He had just gotten out of the car when a Mini nailed his Mustang. Due to the accident, Horst Kwech (from the Shelby team) slid into the fence pinning a race marshal, breaking his arm. Pete Revson (also the Shelby team) hit the mess at full speed, jumping one car and landing on the hood of a Firebird. The Mustangs weren't damaged that badly until the tow trucks got to them. One tow truck driver looped a steel cable around the roof of Kwech's Mustang to lift it over the guardrail. You can imagine what THAT did to the body. All three Mustangs were all but destroyed. They welded together 2 Bosses from the 3 destroyed ones. But they ran like crap after that. The Shelby effort was basically finished after that race. (history over)

The '70 Boss 302 team cars were indeed '69's, but not Boss's. They were originally plain jane Sportsroofs with 351 2V's sent to Kar Kraft for update to '70 skin and full suspension mods. One cool thing to come from the rules changes for '70 was that dual 4bbl carbs were no longer allowed, only single

4's. So Ford came up with the inline 4bbl carb, COOL!!

Had to be either Parnelli or Follmer. Parnelli's car was sold after the '70 season to Tony DeLorenzo. He raced the car in '71, but in black and white, not orange. And I doubt Parnelli drove much after that since he was concentrating on his Indy car ownerships (he owned the cars that won the '70 and '71 Indy 500 With AJ Foyt driving) and he was getting deep in business with Firestone distributorships by then too. Not much time for driving. AFAIK, he never got back into a Trans Am car again until he started doing vintage racing. He liked playing with his trucks.

This leaves us George Follmer. He drove a Javelin for AMC in '71, so it wasn't him. Besides, Follmer's car was sold to Warren Tope at the end of the

1970 season. Tope won the 1971 A-Sedan Championship and raced it until 1973. Tope then stripped the drive train and installed the parts on a new 1973 Mustang fastback (NOOOOOOO, say it isn't SO!!!!).

Yes they did. The very '73 I talked about above. Owned by Warren Tope. Look RIGHT HERE--->

As long as we all remember that LOOKING Trans-Am and BEING Trans-Am are two very distinctly different things. The Boss's were sent to Kar Kraft for them to work their magic. Most of which was NOT found on ANY stock Boss 302. Just lowering and shodding will NOT give performance.

Small world: that Dark Horse page mentions that Bill Maier owned and raced the '73 Warren Tope Mustang. That's Maier as in Maier Racing, where I have left behind quite a few dollars over the years. I'll have to ask him about it next time I see him.

I did a Google on bill maier warren tope and got these pages:

So now Dean has three pages with pix of a 4th Gen racer.

I don't remember when the rules changes happened that allowed ponycars to run big blocks, but my guess would be prior to the '73 model year. So I doubt that the Topes car was a small block.

Maybe lowering and fat tires alone will not "give performance" -- I disagree -- but I'll run for pinks against any Kar Kraft Trans Am Stang vs. a 4th gen with 514ci/600+ hp, 17" rims and the biggest tires that'll fit, bucks up shocks, lowering springs, a larger sway bar, poly bushings, frame connectors, roll cage, underhood brace, Shelby drop, rollerized spring perches, a good driver's seat, a 13" steering wheel, Baer 4 wheel discs, and a Fays2. I'll even leave the airconditioner on.

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Or BOTH! As recounted by Rich Taylor in the May/June 1996 issue of Vintage Motorsport:

"There was no Ford factory team in the 1971 Trans-Am, but there were literally a dozen factory-built Mustangs in the series -- leftover Shelby and Bud Moore works racers that had pased into private hands. In fact, two of those private hands were Bud Moore's. When it was obvious at the end of the 1970 season that Ford wouldn't be coming back, Moore had his guys build two brand-new Mustang race cars from unused 1970 parts and salt them away in preparation for '71. Eventually he was able to put together enough race-by-race sponsorship to run a 2-car team for Parnelli Jones and Peter Gregg, though Parnelli retired after one race and was replaced by George Follmer. All things considered, Follmer and Gregg did surprisingly well with this shoestring operation, winning some races outright, often placing on the podium, and helping Ford earn 61 points to Penske's 72 for AMC. With truly limited resources, the Bud Moore cars were nearly as competitive as the Ford factory effort had been in previous years. Very impressive.

"Moore sold two of his used 1970 race-cars to Troy Promotions -- a new name for Tony DeLorenzo and Jerry Thompson. Despite their strong GM connections (Thompson was a GM engineer and DeLorenzo's father a GM vice president), the two ran a Mustang team sponsored by Marathon Oil. Their highest finish was DeLorenzo's second at Lime Rock, but between them they earned seven top-5 finishes and added enough points to Ford's total to keep things interesting.

"Ford's 1970 Boss 302 was the best Trans-Am race car built during the series' Golden Era -- certainly a better machine than Donohue's Javelin. It was fast and reliable even in the hands of amateurs, and even better, it was so strongly built it could survive and prosper even when given the minimal maintenance that underfunded teams could afford. With just a few dollars more, Bud Moore Engineering and Troy Promotions might have stolen the Trans-Am from Roger and Mark in 1971. This was mostly because the Mustangs were amazingly , but also because Bud Moore Engineering proved itself to be far better than many people expected."

As for Follmer working for Penske in '71:

"Roger Penske had the only factory deal left, but given AMC's level of expertise, this wasn't as great a coup as it seemed. Like any private team, Penske Racing still had to develop its own cars from scratch. Roger scaled the efffort back to a single caare for Mark Donohue, with David Hobbs available if needed. . . .

". . . Penske Racing built two new Javelins for Mark, a race car and a spare. . . .

". . . Mark won seven of ten Trans-Ams, was second at Mid-Ohio with locking brakes, had a carburetor linkage fai at Bryar while leading, and didn't even come to Riverside for the last race of the season. In

1971, Penske Racing was the class of the series. . . .

Regarding the Riverside race, October 3, 1971 (whose immediate predecessor was Michigan International on September 6):

"Riverside, California is a long drive from Spartanburg, South Carolina

-- particularly to race in a championship you've already lost -- so Bud Moore and his Mustangs sat this one out. . . . George Follmer, already looking ahead to the next season, agreed to replace Milt Minter in the second Roy Woods Javelin. Roger Penske had to send a car to fulfill his contract with AMC, so he hired Swede Savage to drive the Javelin while Mark raced at Trenton, New Jersey in a postponed USAC event."

So that expla "Autoweek's Decmeber 9, 1972 . . . story reported that at the November

19 annual meeting, the SCCA Board of Governors agreed to convert the Trans-Am to 'full European FIA rules, Groups 1 through 4.'

"The important change was that the outlandish Special Grand Touring cars from FIA Group 4 could now run in the Trans-Am. . . . Races would be longer, too -- miimum of 310 miles (500K), which was more in the spirit of the SCCA's original concept, since the Trans-Am had initially been intended as an endurance-racing series."

The reason for these changes was to compete with the new sanctioning organization, IMSA, and its Camel GT series, which followed the FIA "Group" rules.

"Where did that leave the Trans-Am? In large part, it left it as a place to run your IMSA car on off-weekends."

Even with the rule change, SCCA ran just six Trans Ams in '73 and three in '74. So that Warren Tope '73 Mustang ran a max of eight races.

"The FIA rules allowed . . . teams . . . to take their cheap, leftover Trans-Am Camaros and stuff 7-liter, 600-bhp, all-aluminum big-blocks into them. With their increasingly sticky tires wrapped around

10x15-inch Minilites, these ground-shaking hotrods had a lot more grip, a lot more midrange, and a lot more top end than their 302-carrying predecessors. These cars were legal not just for Trans-Ams but for IMSA and FIA GT races, too. Gene Felton even won some IMSA GTs outright with his big-block 1969 Camaro.

"Externally, the Camaros got really cobby at this point, with hammered-out fenders, bolt-on airdams, and huge hood bulges to keep their 427s out of the sun. thanks to the wider tires, much greater horsepower, and no increaase in weight, however, they were demonstrably faster than their 5-liter progenitors. The big-block conversion made for a much more capable racing car than before, if not a very pleasant aesthetic statement."

As for the "Leftovers" of the '73-'74 Trans Ams:

"Particularly at the begining of the '73 Trans-Am season, any number of leftover cars from 1972 and earlier went out to try their luck. . . . Jerry Thompson tried the trusty old Herb Adams Firebird; and Tony DeLorenzo still had his heart set on the venerable old Bud Moore-prepped Boss Mustang. By mid-season, however, it was obvious that the world had changed: The hot setup was a Porsche Carrera, followed (at a considerable distance) by either a big-block Camaro or Corvette. In 1973 and 1974, nothing else was even worth towing to the track."

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Maybe I should've clarified what I said better. A few expensive mods do not a factory backed Trans Am Racer make. If Kar Kraft had the benefit of modern technology and factory backing 35 years ago, they would clean any shade tree enthusiasts clock every time with that same technology. Again, IMHO, a '69 race prepped Boss 302 with modern suspension, steering, brakes, wheel/tire tech (as you describe above) but with a small block, will automatically be WAY more nimble than the huge 71-73 boatstangs. Parnelli Jones piloted a '69 Boss 302 to a few ticks over 12 secs in a lazily shifted quarter mile pass for a car rag of the time. This wasn't a drag car!! It wasn't set up for drag racing, but for road racing, and it still slaughtered most anything else made at the time. Now put that on a road course with modern advantages and factory backing? I say the small block wins, easily. :)