The Golden Age: Trans Am Racing 1968-1972

[Mach 1 Club]

   

Back in the mid-1960?s the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) formed the Trans-Am Racing Series that pitted production based vehicles against each other in head to head competition. Trans-Am Racing was unbelievably popular and is still considered by some to be one of the best series ever to have been put together. Picture full-on muscle cars like the Ford Mustang, Plymouth Barracuda, AMC Javelin, and Chevrolet Camaro racing head to head on some of the best circuits in United States. These were the days when racing was racing. There was no traction or stability control and no anti-lock brakes. Hell, these cars ran on leaf-springs and in doing so showed us that the old muscle cars of yesteryear truly could go around corners if properly set-up. I was visiting over at Pro-touring.com, a web site that is dedicated to making full-on corner carvers out of vintage American muscle, when I came upon a thread containing some wonderful old photographs of Trans Am racing in its heyday. These photos were taken by Dave Friedman and give us a little insight into how amazing this series really was.

                           

[vamach1]

Kinda sucks by 71 the manufacturers lost interest and gas prices were going up and muscle cars were being bashed by environmental and safety weenies. Nonetheless Warren Tope and some other lesser know drivers stil raced 71-73 Mustangs in the TransAm series. It's very hard to find photos and impossible to find any video - I guess just about everyone lost interest.

http://www.ponysite.de/transam_tope.htm