[Mr427]

Who is the king?

Many journalists are proclaiming the 427 as the king / queen of the racing engines of the sixties and beyond, precisely because of its adaptability and versatility. This is coming out in magazine articles now, almost forty years after the last one was installed in a car by Ford. It took an army of engineers almost seven years to bring this engine into existence. Remember, when CS brought the first ones over to the Nurburgring in Germany in 1965, he had to have the compression lowered to 10,5 because there was no gas available to run them on. Still they won in 1966 and all through 1970 with what was essentially a detuned NASCAR engine with aluminum heads.

Its track record on American and international race tracks is unblemished. It was the presence and force of this chunk of iron that forced the European motorsports elite to rewrite their rules all through in 1970. There, was just nothing anywhere on the horizon that looked like a threat to this monster for another ten years.

On the domestic scene I don´t hink Ford ever received any favors from Bill France. After all, he was the one who deemed the "sock" too much for NASCAR participation and then forced Ford to produce enough Boss engines in cars to homologate them for NASCAR participation. He was right, even if many of his decisions were made in rooms filled with cigar smoke. He, said he wanted real production stuff and after thirty years of knocking him about this, I have to say that he was basically right.

But if you want a real time indication of what the 427 was capable of doing, the truth is out there. It´s all in one man´s name: David Pearson. Study his career, his driving and the cars he drove. We all love King Richard, but once you know the truth about Pearson, you can not help but grin. It is like, when the journalist, in the movie "All the Right Stuff" asked Dennis Quaid playing Gordon Cooper, who was the greatest pilot he ever knew. He went silent for a moment, mumbling something about this guy he knew who would really hang out on the edge and push the envelope, before he flashed his famous grin and said: "Well, you´re lookin at him" He was talking about Chuck Yaeger, of course, and he had the X-1. Pearson had the 427, but he never went to the moon. Petty "did", so he claims all the glory.

......and guys, guess who we have to thank for the fabulous Boss cars? It tell you, it was all due to the persistence of three former GM bosses who moved over to Ford in a royal GM court shakeup in 1967-68; W. "Bunkie" Knudsen, the man behind Pontiac´s performance revolt that GM´s high brass killed in 1963, Pete Estes, the man who desigend and oversaw most of the GTO production and the brilliant Larry Shinoda, who designed and named the Boss cars, their stripe kits and a lot of other stuff.

The Boss 302 was their personal vendetta against GM´s Z-28, which was also their offspring. They stole the glory from GM and I am thankful for that.

On a more somber note, they also fought Fords´management, ending with the untimely departure by Knudsen in 1970. Mr. Ford himself never approved of anything they did except in a grudging sort of way and finally closed down the performance programs in september 1970.

It was done in a forceful and merciless manner. The engineers were told to put down their pencils, turn off the lathes, off with the lights and get out in the middle of whatever they were doing.

Ford´management had a history of killing off products that were exciting and hinted at social entrepreneurism, original thinking. It all goes back to Edsel Ford´s death in 1943. He was really the man who originated the American luxury sports coupe at Ford, with the Mark series V-12 Continentals in the late thirties and forties. We have him to thank for the fact that Ford actually stopped building Model T´s. Otherwise they would probably still be at it. Robert MacNamara killed the original concept for the Thunderbird in 1953-54 and ordered a shrunken version of the ´55 Victoria to be built.

So when GM unveiled the 265 in 1955, Ford was already in such a bad position to respond, that it took seven years until we saw an equal or close to equal product from Ford.

In 1962 Ford unveiled its next pre-production sports car; the Mustang I, a rear engined, two seat prototype that was in many circles regarded as a no nonsense car with a German-built V-4 engine and other equipment that could, with some degree of fine polishing, become a very successful production car. It would have outrun and outsold the Corvair and others like it in the sixties.

When Lee Iacocca saw the crowd that this car attracted he said Ford would not produce a car for the off beat crowd, the grease monkeys like us (you know, some of us grow up; I have three college degrees and three big block Fords and my family has nine other Fords) , so he and Bob MacNamara hastily ordered a reskinning of the Falcon with a long hood and short trunk, an idea they borrowed from Ferrari and other Italian designers. Then they put this little car on Steroids and started pumping it up, until in 1967 the only person who had transformed its performance image; Carroll Shelby, parted the program in disgust.

The clock swung round again in 1973 when America found itself embroiled in another foreign conflict, forcing a rethinking of all major domestic issues, including automobile production. You know, I still keep my Hot Rod Magazine from September 1973. On the cover there is a headline that reads: "Why GM will sell 10 million cars in 1974" Yeah Right! It was not to happen.

Ford had made one of its brilliant product decisions already so this time they were ready with a product as exciting as a can of Campell´s mushroom soup..... and they had the audacity to call one version of it .... Mustang.... So with a 98CID engine and rack and pinion manual steering and the 8-track blasting, we were ready to go.

I almost bought one of these animals a few days ago, but no one would help me put a big block engine in it. I mean, there were sighs from Florida to California. I still do not understand what was wrong.

Mr. Ford had his way as he had done on so many occasions before. If he had had his way completely, we would have had six 427s made, no Cobra jets, no Bosses, but lots of flying Pintos.

The blooming Cobra, Daytona and GT-40 replicaindustry shows further that the cancellation of the scheduled production of the XD Cobra in 1966 -68 was a flat out mistake. The market for these cars really was here all the time. Now, I just can not decide which of the three to build, but build on I will. It is a belated admission of fault that Ford is now finally, thirty five yars later going to build a GT(40) and has unveiled a Cobra prototype that should have been put into production in 1967-68, instead of the rip off of the Porsche 356 that the Cobra really was and still is.

What is he answer: Whatever you like, but I tell you that at the same time Ford kept its doors closed for the rest of us and a few racers had keyes, GM, especially the performance workshops of Chevrolet were wide open. Small block parts were being funnled through by the truckloads and kids driving the stuff kicked Fords north end on the street and on the tracks across America.

All these parts were designed by a man who had worked for Ford briefly in the early fifties. Anyone heard of ARDUN heads? No? Well they were full Hemi heads he had designed for the ageing flathead Ford. His name was Zora Arkus Duntov. He was born in Belgium and fled his native country under Nazi occupation. He was a brilliant engineer. The Corvette in its final form, the small block and a lot of technological breakthroughs were his.

Ford may claim the moniker, but Chevrolet had "the better idea" and actually let it ride. That´s all folks.