11-09-2013, 01:15 AM
This is something I wrote years ago about my 71 429 Mach 1...I must have been bored! It would be nice to have enough time to do something like this today.
It is very long, and full of wild hyperbole, but that was the intention. At any rate, here it is:
An automotive engineer’s guiding light is the purity of function, while the automotive designer’s singular objective is the beauty of form.
These two seemingly contradictory ideals have been pitting automotive engineers against automotive designers for decades, each trying to justify their own particular set of standards of excellence, and each to the detriment of his counterpart.
By nature, an engineer is tacitly concerned with the functional ability of the mechanical systems he is empowered to develop. For instance, increasing the size of a transmission bellhousing can house a larger torque converter, helping to ensure smoothness, so he may enlarge it.
Nice, dense air to the radiator is necessary for engine cooling, so let’s get all we can by opening up the grill enclosure, even though that smooth, pointed front end is the visual center piece of the whole car. Its ‘personality‘, so to speak.
And no compound curves on the window glass please, unless you want to live with annoying air leaks. No matter how sexy that curvy window looks.
On the other hand, an automotive stylist knows that humans are mostly visually-oriented creatures, and beauty sells the product first, engineering be damned.
A nice low dip in the beltline may tend to give a car a menacing, powerful stance, but alas…the engineers tell us that the current state-of-the-art in sheet metal stamping precludes that feature on a full production version.
Our friendly federal government also got in on the act: In its role as our benefactor, protecting us from ourselves, they mandated that massive, not to mention ugly, bumpers be attached to the otherwise smooth contours of the front and rear ends of our vehicles. Seemingly overnight these big and ugly bumpers appeared on our vehicles like dandelions during springtime. And did we mention that they were ugly?
Designers create visual beauty, with nary a concern that their fashionable creation may have no practical engineering possibility.
Likewise, engineers are single-minded in their demand for ability, functionality and durability, and in this particular neighborhood style has no purpose.
So there you have it. Two sides of the same automotive coin. Do you want a car that is mechanically advanced and superior, or would like your newest conveyance to be the most stylish vehicle to grace the boulevards, even if it is not necessarily the most dependable, practical or even comfortable?
That is the very paradox that our two opposing forces have been battling over since the first piece of tortured sheet metal met the first hinge too big to be stylishly held within its confines.
Somewhere along the battle lines, some open-minded engineers got together with some equally forward-thinking stylists, and through a new spirit of camaraderie, they created a symbiotic relationship between the two diametrically opposed ideals. No longer would the stylists put pen to paper only to produce beautiful yet impossible to manufacture designs. And likewise, no engineer would evermore create a mechanical device that interfered with the stylish and simple beauty of a curved fender here, or a lowered cowl there.
No, there would be an unheard-of cooperation amongst these two equally important yet diverse factions, and their unity would produce a styling and engineering axiom known heretofore as ‘form follows function’.
The wonderful simplicity of the name perfectly describes the wonderful simplicity of the idea: All styling cues, no matter how beautiful or impressive they may be, would only be utilized if they were the natural outgrowth of some form of true functionality designed into the vehicle.
No longer would there be miles of chrome strips along the car’s flanks, just for the sake of being there.
Huge aircraft-inspired fins spanning the length of the 'fuselage'? No thank you.
Simulated jet exhausts, waste gates, gun sights or other non-functional and out-of-place gee-gaws? Never!
Chrome-plated busts of history's most famous explorers as hood ornaments? Sacrilege!
By the same token, no visually functional aspect of the car would be incorporated unless it could be smoothly blended into the basic design, complementing the original cohesiveness of the designer’s intent.
A big 6.71 blower sticking out of the hood may help you wrinkle the pavement with barely a tickle of the accelerator pedal, and it is most definitely fully functional. But stylish? No sir…not even a little.
Ladder bars to help improve traction, A 'Sun' tach hose-clamped to the steering column so you can see just exactly what state of ‘thrash’ your engine is in at the moment, straight-thru exhaust pipes, sans mufflers, that dump out in front of the rear wheels. Loud and obnoxious? You bet they are. And also fully functional. Unfortunately, style is a stranger to these crude performance modifications, so they aren’t invited, and can't attend the party.
As no less a connoisseur of automotive excellence and fashion Enzo Ferrari once said, "If it can't be done with style...it shouldn't be done at all!"
All of which brings us right back to form follows function. Its time had definitely come. And nowhere in the automotive world is that paradigm more evident than in the beautiful 1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1, as perfect an example of ‘form follows function’ as there ever was.
The very shape of what Ford calls its ‘sports roof’, a clean, smooth-flowing, unbroken roof-line beginning at the windshield header, and continuing almost completely horizontally all the way to the rear-most lip of the stylishly short trunk lid, is most magnificent in its appearance. Stylish and attractive, yet totally based on the clearly superior functionality of the ‘Kamm-back’ design, and the aerodynamic principals of airflow management. Form follows function, indeed!
Dr. Wienebuld Kamm, a world leading aerodynamicist discovered that a short rear overhang, coupled with a high and severely chopped-off, concave rear section produced the least amount of rear-induced drag. In the design of this particular pony-car, it turns out that the phrase ‘shaped by the wind’ was more than mere advertising hyperbole.
And when it comes to air-flow management, all motor-heads know that the internal combustion engine loves prodigious amounts of cool, dense air to aid in its conversion of hydrocarbons and oxygen into carbon monoxide and big, black tire tracks. In their quest to get as much of this free, power-increasing fresh air as possible to the engine, the unified team of designer and stylist came up with the Mach 1’s fresh-air intake system.
Of course, just cutting a hole in the hood and mounting a big snorkel scoop would surely grab huge amounts of this free bounty, but that would hardly justify the parameters of the ‘form follows function’ credo, right? No, something that barbaric would never do.
Besides, aerodynamic engineers were well-versed with the detrimental effects of ‘laminar airflow’, basically a layer of stagnant, unmoving air ‘laminating’ the surface of a high-velocity vehicle.
All the rage during the hey-day of the ‘super-car’ era, hood scoops of just about any size and shape could be found perched atop the hood of any car of ‘sporting’ pretensions.
Unfortunately, it was discovered late in the game that most of them were almost completely ineffective.
Instead, the creative geniuses at Ford, most famous among them Larry Shinoda and Gale Halderman, utilized the latest in aircraft style air scoop technology: the ‘NACA’ scoop.
Originally pioneered by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics for use on super-sonic aircraft, the NACA scoop created a small, high pressure zone that collected and compressed air molecules, allowing them to go in a single direction only: In the scoop. The design of a NACA scoop widens as it flows, allowing the densely compacted air molecules to expand while they travel down the scoop, causing the air to increase in velocity. This turbulent, high-velocity air being 'rammed' directly into the thirsty 4-barrel gas-and-air mixer made gobs of high-density fuel, effectively creating more go-power!
So effective at ramming the air into the scoops was it, that Ford cleverly hung the moniker ‘Ram-Air’ on its system.
Demonstrating that advertising often has little to do with actual ‘truth’, Ford decided to refer to these awesomely functional and very stylish fresh-air intakes as ‘NASA’ scoops, considering that several years before and owing to the politically crazy days of the space race and the Apollo moon shot, NACA had changed it’s name to the more familiar National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Thus, Ford’s ‘NASA’ scoops were born. Along with a never-ending controversy over the ‘real’ name of the scoops.
With the windshield raked back farther than ever before, and the rear glass at an acute 14 degree angle, the slippery shape of the car’s appearance was assured. No matter that actually driving the car was tantamount to driving blind, owing to its horrendous blind spots. As some would say, “That’s the price you gotta’ pay if you want to be stylish.”
And no matter how much in agreement the boys in the drawing room were over their ‘form follows function’ methods, when the federal government mandates bumpers, they will be installed, stylish or not.
Clever folks that they are, the designers and engineers utilized urethane for the covering of Fords very first flexible, body colored front bumper.
Shaped to create the visual interpretation of an aerodynamic advantage, this urethane bumper’s function was twofold, obvious by Ford’s label as a ‘spoiler/bumper’.
Other functional, yet beautiful details of the Mach 1 included a quick-opening, racing type fuel filler to hasten fill-ups with hi-test during ‘competition’ events.
Likewise, twist-type quick release hood locks are just the ticket for getting the ‘bonnet’ open hurriedly during a 'pit-stop' to make some necessary adjustments to the drive-train with out jeopardizing one’s lead position in the pack.
A front chin spoiler, along with an adjustable rear wing-type spoiler are employed to further ‘trim’ the Mach 1’s aerodynamic handling prowess at ‘GT’ speeds.
Grill-mounted ‘sport lamps’ are reminiscent of a true GT car’s all-weather driving lights, just as the larger and wider chrome-plated ‘Magnum 500’ sport rims emulate the light weight magnesium wheels used on actual racers, allowing the Mach 1 to take advantage of the then-newest in high-performance street tire technology, the wide-track ’poly-glas’ GT.
While all this ‘form follows function’ blends together perfectly well when created by talented individuals, the blank skin of the car screams out for some stylish paint and color schemes to break up the big expanses. However, simply slapping some two-tone paint on would never compliment the efforts already applied, so the ‘form follows function’ rule must apply to the trim artist’s results also. And boy do they.
On a true GT car, the stripes were originally placed so that team managers, crewmen and flagmen could easily differentiate one race car from another while flashing by at triple-digit velocities. Many teams used similar cars and colors, so the striping was individual to each vehicle, making identification a simple task. Consequently, the Mach 1’s competition-inspired side stripes are right at home, as is the almost completely matte-black hood paint. Fully blacked out hoods were used by racers to minimize the effects of blinding and dangerous glare to the drivers, and the Mach 1’s non-glare racing black hood is authentic down to the very amount of gloss in the paint, which is not much!
The small '429 RAM AIR' call-outs adorning the sides of the ram-air scoops are but a single indulgence of the creator’s braggadocio, a not-so-sly reference to the powerfully-venomous 'snake' that lurks beneath, ready to strike at it‘s prey in an instant!
Underneath that blacked out ‘ram-air’ hood, the mechanical details of that snake, the 429 Cobra Jet engine, could be called stylish by some, but this is the area where the engineers had been given free reign to ‘build the beast’, style be damned!
With a compression ratio of 11.3/1, the 429 Cobra Jet is one of the highest compression factory-produced big-blocks ever made. Compression of course, produces torque, which the 429 CJ has in spades. 450 lbs of it, in fact. Those familiar with driving a Mach 1 thusly equipped fondly call it the ‘stump-puller’.
And just in case the unfortunate soul in the next lane didn’t notice the engine ID on the hood, there is a third and last ‘429 RAM AIR’ emblazoned across the trunk stripe to taunt and tease the unlucky challenger, demonstrating the foolishness of his poor choice of combatant. He has but a fleeting chance to see the identity of his tormenter one last time as he is left in the wake of the big snake’s spent hydrocarbons.
The pilot of this magnificent land-based incarnation of a modern jet-powered aircraft is often left with a big smile and a sense of wonderment, while passengers are simply left wide-eyed and terrified. Go figure.
A list of the 429 Cobra Jet’s features reads like a race engine-builder’s dream come true: 4-bolt mains, nodular iron crankshaft, hi-lift cam, 2.19 intake valves, known as the ‘trash can’ valves due to the large size, canted-valve easy breathing heads, free-flowing exhaust manifolds feeding into true low restriction dual exhausts, competition valve springs…and the arm-length list of ‘go-faster’ goodies continues.
It all adds up to an absurdly under-rated 375 horsepower, the most powerfully-astounding engine ever installed in a factory-produced vintage Mustang Mach 1.
Hooked up to either a virtually indestructible Ford ‘top-loader’ 4-speed transmission, complete with the ubiquitous ‘Hurst’ shifter, or the optional and almost bullet-proof ‘C-6X’ heavy-duty automatic transmission, this power pack would motivate this car through the ¼ mile in only 13.2 seconds at over 103 mph, making it the absolute quickest ‘original’ Mustang ever produced.
Impressive indeed, but lots of muscle-cars could go fast in a straight line. Most of them were not nearly as fast as this one, but they could go fast nonetheless.
If that was the only function of this car, the Mach 1’s creators could relax with the satisfaction that it was already one of the best and most desirable of the 'pony-car' breed. However, instead of resting on their laurels, the designers had more in mind…much more.
Not content with having built one of the quickest ¼ mile cars ever, they fully intended the Mach 1 to excel in other areas too: Like turning and stopping.
The deep dark secret of most classic muscle-cars is that they may all run like ‘Stink on Saturday Night’, but when the straightness of the drag strip is supplanted by the ‘twisty bits’, they become almost uncontrollable. The driver can quickly be transformed into nothing so much as just another passenger, heading straight for imminent disaster.
And at the extra-legal speeds these cars were well capable of, the stopping distances were sometimes measured not in feet, but seemingly in minutes...minutes of sheer terror. Clamping on the binders in an emergency situation often produced nothing but white knuckles, flat-spotted tires, crinkled fenders, and higher insurance premiums.
Of course, none of this would suffice for the Mach 1, so it is equipped with a solidly engineered competition suspension consisting of higher rate springs and shocks, with the rear shocks being mounted ‘staggered’ to reduce wheel hop under hard acceleration.
Thick anti-sway bars were mounted front and rear to give the Mach 1 a nice, flat and controllable ride in the corners.
And the brakes were big power assisted discs up front with the largest drum brakes that could be fitted out back.
The real beauty of the Mach 1 was not in the exotic nature of its high performance parts. In fact, the parts used in the creation of the Mach 1 were in reality derived from the much more mundane, everyday components used in any number of 4-door sedans that salesmen drove around in, and station wagons for mom's delivery of the kids to soccer practice.
It was the careful combination of these parts used in a different fashion that delivered outstanding performance from their use.
Some ‘modernists’ like to claim that all this big-block ability, agility and performance is massive overkill, and an inefficient waste of resources. Kinda’ like using a hammer to crack eggs.
Well, 40+ years later, a case could be made arguing that the technology used in the 1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1 is archaic indeed.
However, if you take just one spirited drive in this most-classic of muscle cars, you won’t be so sure.
And besides…hammers crack the hell out of eggs!
It is very long, and full of wild hyperbole, but that was the intention. At any rate, here it is:
An automotive engineer’s guiding light is the purity of function, while the automotive designer’s singular objective is the beauty of form.
These two seemingly contradictory ideals have been pitting automotive engineers against automotive designers for decades, each trying to justify their own particular set of standards of excellence, and each to the detriment of his counterpart.
By nature, an engineer is tacitly concerned with the functional ability of the mechanical systems he is empowered to develop. For instance, increasing the size of a transmission bellhousing can house a larger torque converter, helping to ensure smoothness, so he may enlarge it.
Nice, dense air to the radiator is necessary for engine cooling, so let’s get all we can by opening up the grill enclosure, even though that smooth, pointed front end is the visual center piece of the whole car. Its ‘personality‘, so to speak.
And no compound curves on the window glass please, unless you want to live with annoying air leaks. No matter how sexy that curvy window looks.
On the other hand, an automotive stylist knows that humans are mostly visually-oriented creatures, and beauty sells the product first, engineering be damned.
A nice low dip in the beltline may tend to give a car a menacing, powerful stance, but alas…the engineers tell us that the current state-of-the-art in sheet metal stamping precludes that feature on a full production version.
Our friendly federal government also got in on the act: In its role as our benefactor, protecting us from ourselves, they mandated that massive, not to mention ugly, bumpers be attached to the otherwise smooth contours of the front and rear ends of our vehicles. Seemingly overnight these big and ugly bumpers appeared on our vehicles like dandelions during springtime. And did we mention that they were ugly?
Designers create visual beauty, with nary a concern that their fashionable creation may have no practical engineering possibility.
Likewise, engineers are single-minded in their demand for ability, functionality and durability, and in this particular neighborhood style has no purpose.
So there you have it. Two sides of the same automotive coin. Do you want a car that is mechanically advanced and superior, or would like your newest conveyance to be the most stylish vehicle to grace the boulevards, even if it is not necessarily the most dependable, practical or even comfortable?
That is the very paradox that our two opposing forces have been battling over since the first piece of tortured sheet metal met the first hinge too big to be stylishly held within its confines.
Somewhere along the battle lines, some open-minded engineers got together with some equally forward-thinking stylists, and through a new spirit of camaraderie, they created a symbiotic relationship between the two diametrically opposed ideals. No longer would the stylists put pen to paper only to produce beautiful yet impossible to manufacture designs. And likewise, no engineer would evermore create a mechanical device that interfered with the stylish and simple beauty of a curved fender here, or a lowered cowl there.
No, there would be an unheard-of cooperation amongst these two equally important yet diverse factions, and their unity would produce a styling and engineering axiom known heretofore as ‘form follows function’.
The wonderful simplicity of the name perfectly describes the wonderful simplicity of the idea: All styling cues, no matter how beautiful or impressive they may be, would only be utilized if they were the natural outgrowth of some form of true functionality designed into the vehicle.
No longer would there be miles of chrome strips along the car’s flanks, just for the sake of being there.
Huge aircraft-inspired fins spanning the length of the 'fuselage'? No thank you.
Simulated jet exhausts, waste gates, gun sights or other non-functional and out-of-place gee-gaws? Never!
Chrome-plated busts of history's most famous explorers as hood ornaments? Sacrilege!
By the same token, no visually functional aspect of the car would be incorporated unless it could be smoothly blended into the basic design, complementing the original cohesiveness of the designer’s intent.
A big 6.71 blower sticking out of the hood may help you wrinkle the pavement with barely a tickle of the accelerator pedal, and it is most definitely fully functional. But stylish? No sir…not even a little.
Ladder bars to help improve traction, A 'Sun' tach hose-clamped to the steering column so you can see just exactly what state of ‘thrash’ your engine is in at the moment, straight-thru exhaust pipes, sans mufflers, that dump out in front of the rear wheels. Loud and obnoxious? You bet they are. And also fully functional. Unfortunately, style is a stranger to these crude performance modifications, so they aren’t invited, and can't attend the party.
As no less a connoisseur of automotive excellence and fashion Enzo Ferrari once said, "If it can't be done with style...it shouldn't be done at all!"
All of which brings us right back to form follows function. Its time had definitely come. And nowhere in the automotive world is that paradigm more evident than in the beautiful 1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1, as perfect an example of ‘form follows function’ as there ever was.
The very shape of what Ford calls its ‘sports roof’, a clean, smooth-flowing, unbroken roof-line beginning at the windshield header, and continuing almost completely horizontally all the way to the rear-most lip of the stylishly short trunk lid, is most magnificent in its appearance. Stylish and attractive, yet totally based on the clearly superior functionality of the ‘Kamm-back’ design, and the aerodynamic principals of airflow management. Form follows function, indeed!
Dr. Wienebuld Kamm, a world leading aerodynamicist discovered that a short rear overhang, coupled with a high and severely chopped-off, concave rear section produced the least amount of rear-induced drag. In the design of this particular pony-car, it turns out that the phrase ‘shaped by the wind’ was more than mere advertising hyperbole.
And when it comes to air-flow management, all motor-heads know that the internal combustion engine loves prodigious amounts of cool, dense air to aid in its conversion of hydrocarbons and oxygen into carbon monoxide and big, black tire tracks. In their quest to get as much of this free, power-increasing fresh air as possible to the engine, the unified team of designer and stylist came up with the Mach 1’s fresh-air intake system.
Of course, just cutting a hole in the hood and mounting a big snorkel scoop would surely grab huge amounts of this free bounty, but that would hardly justify the parameters of the ‘form follows function’ credo, right? No, something that barbaric would never do.
Besides, aerodynamic engineers were well-versed with the detrimental effects of ‘laminar airflow’, basically a layer of stagnant, unmoving air ‘laminating’ the surface of a high-velocity vehicle.
All the rage during the hey-day of the ‘super-car’ era, hood scoops of just about any size and shape could be found perched atop the hood of any car of ‘sporting’ pretensions.
Unfortunately, it was discovered late in the game that most of them were almost completely ineffective.
Instead, the creative geniuses at Ford, most famous among them Larry Shinoda and Gale Halderman, utilized the latest in aircraft style air scoop technology: the ‘NACA’ scoop.
Originally pioneered by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics for use on super-sonic aircraft, the NACA scoop created a small, high pressure zone that collected and compressed air molecules, allowing them to go in a single direction only: In the scoop. The design of a NACA scoop widens as it flows, allowing the densely compacted air molecules to expand while they travel down the scoop, causing the air to increase in velocity. This turbulent, high-velocity air being 'rammed' directly into the thirsty 4-barrel gas-and-air mixer made gobs of high-density fuel, effectively creating more go-power!
So effective at ramming the air into the scoops was it, that Ford cleverly hung the moniker ‘Ram-Air’ on its system.
Demonstrating that advertising often has little to do with actual ‘truth’, Ford decided to refer to these awesomely functional and very stylish fresh-air intakes as ‘NASA’ scoops, considering that several years before and owing to the politically crazy days of the space race and the Apollo moon shot, NACA had changed it’s name to the more familiar National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Thus, Ford’s ‘NASA’ scoops were born. Along with a never-ending controversy over the ‘real’ name of the scoops.
With the windshield raked back farther than ever before, and the rear glass at an acute 14 degree angle, the slippery shape of the car’s appearance was assured. No matter that actually driving the car was tantamount to driving blind, owing to its horrendous blind spots. As some would say, “That’s the price you gotta’ pay if you want to be stylish.”
And no matter how much in agreement the boys in the drawing room were over their ‘form follows function’ methods, when the federal government mandates bumpers, they will be installed, stylish or not.
Clever folks that they are, the designers and engineers utilized urethane for the covering of Fords very first flexible, body colored front bumper.
Shaped to create the visual interpretation of an aerodynamic advantage, this urethane bumper’s function was twofold, obvious by Ford’s label as a ‘spoiler/bumper’.
Other functional, yet beautiful details of the Mach 1 included a quick-opening, racing type fuel filler to hasten fill-ups with hi-test during ‘competition’ events.
Likewise, twist-type quick release hood locks are just the ticket for getting the ‘bonnet’ open hurriedly during a 'pit-stop' to make some necessary adjustments to the drive-train with out jeopardizing one’s lead position in the pack.
A front chin spoiler, along with an adjustable rear wing-type spoiler are employed to further ‘trim’ the Mach 1’s aerodynamic handling prowess at ‘GT’ speeds.
Grill-mounted ‘sport lamps’ are reminiscent of a true GT car’s all-weather driving lights, just as the larger and wider chrome-plated ‘Magnum 500’ sport rims emulate the light weight magnesium wheels used on actual racers, allowing the Mach 1 to take advantage of the then-newest in high-performance street tire technology, the wide-track ’poly-glas’ GT.
While all this ‘form follows function’ blends together perfectly well when created by talented individuals, the blank skin of the car screams out for some stylish paint and color schemes to break up the big expanses. However, simply slapping some two-tone paint on would never compliment the efforts already applied, so the ‘form follows function’ rule must apply to the trim artist’s results also. And boy do they.
On a true GT car, the stripes were originally placed so that team managers, crewmen and flagmen could easily differentiate one race car from another while flashing by at triple-digit velocities. Many teams used similar cars and colors, so the striping was individual to each vehicle, making identification a simple task. Consequently, the Mach 1’s competition-inspired side stripes are right at home, as is the almost completely matte-black hood paint. Fully blacked out hoods were used by racers to minimize the effects of blinding and dangerous glare to the drivers, and the Mach 1’s non-glare racing black hood is authentic down to the very amount of gloss in the paint, which is not much!
The small '429 RAM AIR' call-outs adorning the sides of the ram-air scoops are but a single indulgence of the creator’s braggadocio, a not-so-sly reference to the powerfully-venomous 'snake' that lurks beneath, ready to strike at it‘s prey in an instant!
Underneath that blacked out ‘ram-air’ hood, the mechanical details of that snake, the 429 Cobra Jet engine, could be called stylish by some, but this is the area where the engineers had been given free reign to ‘build the beast’, style be damned!
With a compression ratio of 11.3/1, the 429 Cobra Jet is one of the highest compression factory-produced big-blocks ever made. Compression of course, produces torque, which the 429 CJ has in spades. 450 lbs of it, in fact. Those familiar with driving a Mach 1 thusly equipped fondly call it the ‘stump-puller’.
And just in case the unfortunate soul in the next lane didn’t notice the engine ID on the hood, there is a third and last ‘429 RAM AIR’ emblazoned across the trunk stripe to taunt and tease the unlucky challenger, demonstrating the foolishness of his poor choice of combatant. He has but a fleeting chance to see the identity of his tormenter one last time as he is left in the wake of the big snake’s spent hydrocarbons.
The pilot of this magnificent land-based incarnation of a modern jet-powered aircraft is often left with a big smile and a sense of wonderment, while passengers are simply left wide-eyed and terrified. Go figure.
A list of the 429 Cobra Jet’s features reads like a race engine-builder’s dream come true: 4-bolt mains, nodular iron crankshaft, hi-lift cam, 2.19 intake valves, known as the ‘trash can’ valves due to the large size, canted-valve easy breathing heads, free-flowing exhaust manifolds feeding into true low restriction dual exhausts, competition valve springs…and the arm-length list of ‘go-faster’ goodies continues.
It all adds up to an absurdly under-rated 375 horsepower, the most powerfully-astounding engine ever installed in a factory-produced vintage Mustang Mach 1.
Hooked up to either a virtually indestructible Ford ‘top-loader’ 4-speed transmission, complete with the ubiquitous ‘Hurst’ shifter, or the optional and almost bullet-proof ‘C-6X’ heavy-duty automatic transmission, this power pack would motivate this car through the ¼ mile in only 13.2 seconds at over 103 mph, making it the absolute quickest ‘original’ Mustang ever produced.
Impressive indeed, but lots of muscle-cars could go fast in a straight line. Most of them were not nearly as fast as this one, but they could go fast nonetheless.
If that was the only function of this car, the Mach 1’s creators could relax with the satisfaction that it was already one of the best and most desirable of the 'pony-car' breed. However, instead of resting on their laurels, the designers had more in mind…much more.
Not content with having built one of the quickest ¼ mile cars ever, they fully intended the Mach 1 to excel in other areas too: Like turning and stopping.
The deep dark secret of most classic muscle-cars is that they may all run like ‘Stink on Saturday Night’, but when the straightness of the drag strip is supplanted by the ‘twisty bits’, they become almost uncontrollable. The driver can quickly be transformed into nothing so much as just another passenger, heading straight for imminent disaster.
And at the extra-legal speeds these cars were well capable of, the stopping distances were sometimes measured not in feet, but seemingly in minutes...minutes of sheer terror. Clamping on the binders in an emergency situation often produced nothing but white knuckles, flat-spotted tires, crinkled fenders, and higher insurance premiums.
Of course, none of this would suffice for the Mach 1, so it is equipped with a solidly engineered competition suspension consisting of higher rate springs and shocks, with the rear shocks being mounted ‘staggered’ to reduce wheel hop under hard acceleration.
Thick anti-sway bars were mounted front and rear to give the Mach 1 a nice, flat and controllable ride in the corners.
And the brakes were big power assisted discs up front with the largest drum brakes that could be fitted out back.
The real beauty of the Mach 1 was not in the exotic nature of its high performance parts. In fact, the parts used in the creation of the Mach 1 were in reality derived from the much more mundane, everyday components used in any number of 4-door sedans that salesmen drove around in, and station wagons for mom's delivery of the kids to soccer practice.
It was the careful combination of these parts used in a different fashion that delivered outstanding performance from their use.
Some ‘modernists’ like to claim that all this big-block ability, agility and performance is massive overkill, and an inefficient waste of resources. Kinda’ like using a hammer to crack eggs.
Well, 40+ years later, a case could be made arguing that the technology used in the 1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1 is archaic indeed.
However, if you take just one spirited drive in this most-classic of muscle cars, you won’t be so sure.
And besides…hammers crack the hell out of eggs!
