[bcrumpley]

Well, in '65 regular Fords had black engines with gold or chrome valve covers. They went to the corporate dark blue for the '66 model year, so I would assume that somewhere around mid August of '65 that they made the color change. No clue how many black 427s were already in the pipeline, but I would guess that the run of the ~100 428 cars as well as the final 427 cars got blue engines. All speculation by me and I'm sure no one cared at the time. I will be painting mine blue with a black surge tank. I've seen a number of them with blue surge tanks, but just don't like the look.