[Mr427]

Pat and Mr. Fixit:

I will give you the source of the rip-off statement on Monday, i don´t have the book with me, but the AC Motorcars Ltd management made absolutely no effort to hide the fact that the AC Ace body is more than loosely based on a Porsche design from 1949. Their own words, not mine.

Knudsen, Estes and Shinoda own the major credit for the Boss cars. They had the motivation to put them into production. They already knew the situation at GM with the rising popularity of Trans American Sedan racing.

Ford had a lot of success in the early years of this style of racing, but even the mighty R GT-350 Mustang was having a hard time holding its own in this sport. That is why Ford unveiled the 302 Tunnel Port engine in 1968. In the following year they built the real thing; the Cleveland - Boss 302, which in its utmost racing form put out more than 80 horses more than any form of the 289-302 Windsor.

After that Ford had the upper hand in Trans Am racing, so much so that when its popularity waned, I guess you could say it was because of Ford´s domination.

As for the vendetta against the typical managmenent shakeup at Gm, in which the three gentlemen above were sidelined, they succeeded fully in denying GM its planned glory for the racing Z-28. Just ask Roger Penske, Bud Moore and others who ran the Bosses on the race track.

Those who have heard the Boss at full 8500 rpms on a race track say it is the loudest racing engine they have ever heard.

When the 1969 Boss 302 was ready to go into production, Ford hired people like Mickey Thompson and Ak Miller to race it and put it into endurance testing. They cleaned out several pages in the record books at race tracks across America, including endurance tests at Bonneville.

The sad story of the Boss is that in production form it was a dog. Ford did that on purpose. They installed rev - limiters on it and a docile solid lifter cam and a valve train that effectively barred the engine from going over 6.000 rpms and around 300 horses.

The press called the Eliminator Cougar with this engine (G-code, if you have one rotting in the yard) a fat cat.

Ford won most of its titles with the B-302 in 1969 and 1970 and on and off throughout its career, which I think ended in 1975.

I will face the fact with the rest of you that without the Boss, GM would have swept the field clean all years. The only real threat came from the late great Mark Donohue, who raced Javelins.

To be continued ..........