Ford's Racing Programs: A Matter of Priority

[Cal Metal]

This is taken from Leo Levine's book and deals with the non Cobra/GT-40 programs and the dilemna Ford found itself in around the early 60's.

"......and the West Coast speed equipment manufacturers were naturally concentrating on making goodies for the GM and Chrysler cars. It was turning into a vicious cycle, and by the time Ford got back into it the performance field in 1960 and 1961, the picture was a dark one, punctuated by only a few spots of light.

One of these was veteran West Coast rodder Lee Ritchey, a man so devoted to Ford he even had a cat named Fairlane. Like so many others a product of the lakes, Ritchey was in charge of all high performance tuning work at the racing-minded Ford dealership in Torrance, California, and for a while was chief mechanic on Parnelii Jones' stock car. By 1961 Ritchey had gone on his own , establishing Performance Associates in the LA suburb of Covina, and soon he became the oracle for many of the Ford equipped drag racers in the area. Ritchey and a few others like him were the only ones keeping the company anywhere near the business in those times, and when the program became a regular one in '62 his realtionship with Dearborn turned into something more formal; he spent a month helping prepare cars for the NHRA Nationals on Labor Day at Indy Raceway Park and things began to roll....."

".......When the first Ford Division attempt was made at the NHRA National in '63 it was a hurried affair, with Ritchey and personnel from the experimental garage managing to prepare 10 lightweight Galaxies equipped with 406 cid engines. Most of them were put into the hands of performance dealers and the venture was unsuccessful. Perhaps the most depressing thing is that the cars did run well. They were quicker off the line than the opposition but ran out of revs at the far end of the strip, where the stronger GM and Chrysler vehicles would go right past them. But at least it was a start, and it was also the time when the division began a working relatlionship with many of the drivers who would become the defacto factory team for the next few years. Ritchey and Gaspar (Gas) Rhonda were two of them, and among the others who took part in the '62 Nationals under Ford aegis were Dick Brannan and Phil Bonner...."

".......With more money available for the '63 season, the division scheduled a production run of 50 lightweight Galaxies at the Atlanta assembly plant, these being the first equipped with the hi-po 427 cid engine and sold to private individuals. In that season sales of the Galaxie 427 package went well, not only in the lightweight version, but also in the steel-bodied configuration...."

".....Chrysler was not going to revive the Hemi until the following year, Chevrolet was still using the nondescript 409 engine, and none of the high powered compacts had yet made their appearance. The only competition for the Ford came from the Pontiacs, which were 421 cid in the full size version and 389 inches when packaged in the GTO......"

".....For the moment, ford has as good a basic product out there as did the next manufacturer, and when Frank Zimmerman came in to reorganize the special vehicles activity in the summer of that year, things looked even better. Zimmerman recognized the value of the drag racing program, and his first step was to initiate the construction of the Thunderbolt, an ultra light, ultra fast exhibition car which still looked something like a stock vehicle, and to relate this to dealers. This latter project involved the formation of the Ford Drag Council, and eight man group composed of some of the better drivers in the country...."

".......But the 1963 season, plus the introduction of the Thunderbolt, was to prove the last high water mark of this end of the program. There were several reasons: Drag racing was moved down the list from being number two in priority (behind stock car racing) to below the Indy effort, below the Le Mans effort, below the continning stock car campaign and perhaps even behind the international rally activity........."Such event such as Le Mans or the Indy "500" were glamorous and received wide spread press coverage and were also pleasant places at which to personally represent the corporation. The dragstrips were mainly in out of the way locations, and the venture rapidly fell into the death and taxes category. The relegation to a minor role, plus the emergence of truly hot machines from competitors, were that slowed the program after it had made a good start. The various Chrysler Hemis, the Chevelles 396 and the others were much too strong for the 390 cid Fairlanes and Comets, and it would have taken a top management decision to either install the 427 (a financially bad proposition, as the engine was produced in limited quantities) or accelerate development of the new series V8 which was introduced to the public in the fall of '67 in the T-Bird....."