Article By Tony Ray
On a couple of recent occasions, people have commented to me on the seeming lack of Fox Mustangs in NHRA Stock and Super/Stock competition. I’ve gotten the sense that this is viewed as a negative thing, that somehow the car’s legacy will be lessened by lack of participation in drag racing’s oldest sanctioning body. It isn’t something that had ever occurred to me before, but after thinking about it for a while, I realized they were right, there really aren’t many Foxes in NHRA competition. But why? NHRA was the birthplace of stock car drag racing, even though it seemed that management always pushed the fuel classes as the standard bearers of the sport (whether the fans agreed with that or not). So during what was a great revival of interest in drag racing new, assembly line production Detroit musclecars, one almost has to ask: Where was the NHRA?
The relative lack of late model performance cars in general in Stock-S/S has been mentioned in the auto media before, clear back in the 80s. One story in particular that appeared in one of the musclecar mags back then claimed that there simply weren’t enough late model cars being built to feed the system. Huh? In the first place, how many cars, exactly, are required to “feed the system”? In the second place, there were more than enough Fox Mustangs to support two sanctioning bodies, and an untold number (probably in the hundreds) of little regional shootout series from coast to coast.
Others claimed that they couldn’t be competitive under NHRA’s Stock rules, but that seems to be an exaggeration, as well. Even back in the early days of the movement, drivers like Lidio Iacobelli and Pete Misinski got their 5.0 Mustangs deep in the 12’s without cracking a valve cover, a testament to the potential of the package. As time went on, scienced-out 5.0s with nothing but external bolt-on’s, some judicious lightening, and aggressive driving were regularly dipping into the 11s. Today, in NMRA’s Factory Stock class, the fastest cars are running well into the 10-second bracket.
It seems to me that the most likely explanation lies with the NHRA itself. As discussed last time, by the time these cars came along, the Motorsport catalog and the aftermarket had stepped in to offer the parts and pieces that FoMoCo simply couldn’t install on an assembly line. Would these pieces have been accepted in stock with some effort on the part of Ford and the racers? Probably not. While there was a history of NHRA allowing some trick parts and questionable combos into stock that dated back to the 60’s, much of that had to do with which brand was in favor at the time. Even if Ford had been the current favorite, it’s unlikely NHRA would have allowed catalog parts into stock .
Over at the ADRA, an offshoot of the AHRA, the situation was a bit different. In the mid-80s Summit Ford in Kansas City was allowed to run a few of its heavily modded Stage III Dominator Mustangs in stock, since ADRA recognized dealer built combos available to the public as stock legal. Unfortunately, by the time the 5.0 movement was really rolling in the late 80s, the ADRA/AHRA was entering yet another of its many cycles of death and rebirth, and simply didn’t have the manpower or geographic reach to serve as a home to the growing number of hot rodded 5.0s that were coming to life in shops and garages from coast to coast. Which is where the NHRA could, and maybe should, have stepped up to fill the void.
It would have been simple enough; bring back a dead class designation such as Modified Production, or maybe Factory Experimental. Reserve the top class, such as A/FX for example, for power adder cars so the Turbo Buicks would have a place to play heads up with nitrous and supercharged Mustangs, and the lower classes for N/A late models. Make the rules loose: engine matches the body, stock suspension, any cylinder head/induction package so long as it’s available in the factory performance catalog and/or carries factory part #s. My guess is it wouldn’t have taken much arm twisting to get Ford Motorsport to assign pieces like the TFS Street Heat head a part # and include them in the catalog.
It was not to be, however. The racers did their own thing, formed their own sanctions and race series, and an entire subculture was born. Perhaps subculture isn’t even the right word. At the height of its popularity, the World Ford Challenge was putting close to 100,000 butts in the stands to watch a field comprised of 99% late model Mustangs. This proved that there was still a large group of people who wanted to watch real production cars, cars that they could relate to, doing battle on the drag strip, if only someone would give them a venue to do so. It should also be kept in mind that the WFC was just one of many players in the 5.0 Mustang world. The 5.0 Mustang movement was a rebirth of the grassroots style, heads-up, low buck, little guy drag racing that put Stock Eliminator on the map in the late 50s and early 60s. It’s just too bad that, this time, NHRA didn’t come along for the ride.
