Steve Magnante's 1001 Mustang Facts. Steve Magnante
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141 Love ’em or hate ’em, miniature-sized spare tires are a fact of life today on cars not otherwise equipped with run flat tires. But did you know the 1968 Mustang was the first Mustang to offer a collapsible spare tire? Optional on all three body types, a canister of compressed nitrogen was supplied to inflate the tire before use. At 16 inches in diameter, the collapsible spare tire was nearly a foot shorter (deflated) than the standard full-size spare. The reduced bulk added cargo capacity.
The Boss 429 was so hot that its battery was installed in the trunk. But what about 428 Cobra Jets? See Fact No. 142 for some cool details.
142 As cool as the mighty Boss 429 was, drivers and passengers did plenty of sweating on hot days. The engine bay was already so full, the battery had to be relocated to the trunk. Cramming the $379.57 SelectAire A/C system in there too was not an option. But what about the Mustang’s second most potent engine offering, the 428 Cobra Jet. Was A/C offered? Yes, but only when the automatic transmission was included, to tame rapid RPM spikes that could otherwise harm the belt-driven compressor. So 4-speed 428 drivers sweated it out. That said, Mustang VIN specialist Kevin Marti has verified the existence of 11 1970 4-speed 428 Mustangs with air conditioning. Assembled late in the 1970 model run, the handful of warranty-taunting mechanical combinations were all fitted to luxurious Mach 1s. All of them exist today in various states of preservation.
143 It is not difficult to imagine Carroll Shelby’s paranoia as Ford began to encroach onto his turf in 1969 with specialized Mustang performance models including the Mach 1, Boss 302 and Boss 429. That Shelby was impressed by the high-revving canted-valve Boss 302 was proven by the recent discovery of an aborted scheme to build 36 GT350s with Boss 302 power and suspension upgrades in place of the usual 351 Windsor engines and GT suspension settings. Research reveals that the cars were to have been painted yellow with black stripes, and offered a mid-point performance level between the mild 351 GT350 and brutal 428 CJ GT500.
144 The Boss 302/GT350 hybrid program never materialized, but a single prototype was built and it exists today. Based on an early production Acapulco Blue 1969 Boss 302, Shelby had the car shipped to Kar-Kraft, where the full GT350 body and interior conversion package was installed. No external reference to the car’s Boss 302 origin was retained and conventional GT350 graphics were applied. The prototype was the only 1969 Mustang built with both a Shelby and Boss 302 VIN sequence: 9F02G482244. Deciphering it, the “G” in the fifth spot designates the 290-hp Boss 302 and the “48” in the sixth and seventh spots identifies Shelby models. The car was tested at Kar-Kraft before it was purchased by a Ford engineer and used for personal transportation. Billy Jay Espich can be thanked for identifying and restoring the car. In the end, the Boss 302 GT350 was simply the wrong car at the wrong time. As Shelby production wound down, the program was abandoned.
145 If Shelby toyed with the idea of a Boss 302 GT350, it’s reasonable to imagine he also envisioned a Boss 429–motivated extra-duty GT500. Or did he? Although it’s a fascinating idea, there are no records to support the scheme. Remember, the Boss 429 Mustang existed for no reason other than to homologate the exotic twisted-hemi big-block for NASCAR super speedway competition, where it raced in fastback Torinos and Mercury Cyclones, not Mustangs. Despite its hefty $1,208 surcharge over the Mach 1, it is public record that Ford lost money on each of the 1,358 Boss 429 Mustangs it built (859 in 1969 and 499 in 1970). As for Shelby’s Mustang, he was stuck with 789 unsold units at the end of the 1969 model run, which had to be re-badged and reassigned 1970 VIN numbers. That Shelby and Ford ever considered combining the two unwieldy programs just doesn’t make sense. Let’s call this one a myth.
146 Did a casual lunch bet between Ford high-performance product boss Jacques Passino and plucky East Providence, Rhode Island, Ford retailer Bob Tasca result in the 1968 Mustang Cobra Jet? According to interviews published in CarTech Books’ The Tasca Ford Legacy, author Bob McClurg recounts how Tasca had built a 428 demonstration car called the KR-8 (for King of the Road with a 428). Based on a Medium Gold Metallic 1967 Mustang GTA hardtop, Tasca’s garage replaced the 390 with a 428 Police Interceptor topped with 427 medium-riser heads, hot cam, and a cowl-fed 8V induction setup. Ford’s Passino saw the car but was sure his Experimental Garage had built a better car in the form of a Candy Apple Red GTA fastback that packed an exotic 427 with LeMans origins. Even though Tasca’s car was beaten three straight during the quarter-mile shootout at Ford’s Dearborn Test Track, the use of an economical Thunderbird-sourced 428 proved to Passino that the engine had potential he hadn’t previously considered. The fruits of this showdown were unveiled in April 1968 as the Mustang Cobra Jet.
147 Tasca’s 1967 KR-8 Mustang was one of many freestyle engineering exercises that persuaded Ford to offer similar retail replicas. A 1962 collaboration with Andy Hotten’s Dearborn Steel Tubing (DST) resulted in a 6-barrel 406 big-block Fairlane 500 that ran well in NHRA A/Factory Experimental competition and planted the seed for the eventual 427 Fairlane Thunderbolts of 1964. Unlike the dragstrip-intended 406 Fairlane, Tasca’s KR-8 was meant to show Ford management how to remedy the Mustang 390 GT’s poor street credibility by showcasing the performance (and sales) potential of a 428 Mustang seasoned with a well-chosen gathering of components from Ford’s parts bins.
148 As one of the top-selling dealers in the nation, Tasca had a direct line to the decision makers at Ford, running right up to Henry Ford II himself. Tasca also enjoyed a healthy relationship with the automotive press. When Hot Rod flew feature editor Eric Dahlquist cross country to test Tasca’s Mustang KR-8, Dahlquist challenged Hot Rod readers to flood Ford’s mailbox with demands to offer the 428 in future showroom Mustangs. Although no actual ballot was presented in the November 1967 issue of Hot Rod, the story’s title page included Henry Ford II’s mailing address and a simple Yes/No vote box. According to a recent interview with Dahlquist, “Thousands of ballots turned up at Ford’s offices, most simply torn out of the magazine (page 58) with the ‘yes’ circled. Henry Ford II’s personal secretary Jim Cummings about went crazy.” Soon after, a Ford public relations man called Dahlquist to say, “Enough already, we’re going to build it.”
149 When Carroll Shelby transitioned from the use of Police Interceptor 428s to Cobra Jet 428s halfway through the 1968 GT500 production run, he added two letters to denote the extra-performance units; KR, and the GT500 KR was born. By all accounts the letters stood for King of the Road and were inspired by country music star Roger Miller’s 1964 number-1 single (in the Hot Country category) of the same name. Oddly, Tasca’s full-year-earlier use of the designation was lost in the shuffle and is rarely recognized today when the 1968 Shelby GT500 KR is discussed.
150 Tasca Ford used the KR-8 designation on not only the gold 1967 Mustang hardtop development mule car, but also a series of performance improvement packages that could be installed on brand-new Mustangs in Tasca’s service department. The gold coupe was lost one night when Bob Tasca Jr. crashed it into a utility pole.
151 During an April 1994 celebration of Mustang’s 30th anniversary, former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s 1967 Mustang convertible seemed more clunker than treasure. Before a gathered crowd of camera-toting spectators and various officials, but he grasped the door handle and pushed the latch button but the door remained shut. This forced him to reach inside and open the driver-side door using the inner latch. It seems that the rod linking the external door handle to the latch had become disengaged, a common problem on tired Mustangs.
152 Although this book is all about the Mustang’s many splendors, the new 1967 Mercury Cougar was actually a better place for rear-seat passengers to spend long hours on the road. That’s because when the Cougar’s designers added an extra 3 inches to the Mustang platform’s wheelbase (111 versus 108 inches) they didn’t squander it on cosmetics. They could have extended the cowl-to-front axle distance to get a longer, sleeker hood, similar to the approach taken when General Motors stretched the A-Body LeMans/Chevelle to get the 1969 Grand Prix and 1970 Monte Carlo. But function prevailed over form and the extra inches were placed beneath the passengers;