Fords 1970 replacement for torino talladega was a nose like a datsun 240 Z

[petercharger]

The year 1970 ford had an opportunity for them to go head to head with the daytona's and superbirds...On a special body Aero-variant called he King Cobra. Like the Talladega, the king cobras was to have been relatively stock from the A-pillars reward. From that point forward the car was fitted with a radically reconfigured beak that looked quite like the not yet introduced Datsun 240 Z's. Stretched fenders and a carrier deck sized hood were used to extend a king cobra's and it's planed Mercury counterpart's - nose to a point farther forward and lower than stock. A ribbon thin bumper was all that separated the hood from the gravel pan, and flush covers were used to smooth the headlight buckets that had been carved from each fenderline. The new design looked promising on paper, and the new nose created a significant amount of down force. Things were not so rosy at the stern, however, where the stock, concave Torinao backlight caused almost enough lift to pull the cars rear wheel off the pavement at racing speeds. The King Cobra design team had just about the solved the lift problem with a soaring wing when an in house shakeup at ford sealed both the King cobras fate and FoMoCo's racing. Lee Iaccoca became president of ford and first move was to slash the corporate racing budget by 75 percent and by 71 Iaccoca ha succeeded in killing off just about every last Penny of factory supprot for grand national racing.  found this story with one picture of the car in   The Anatomy & Developement of "Stock Car by  Dr. john craft...will try to post picture...

[petercharger]

here are some pictures of the car..would have been cool to see this also...

[pettyfan43]

There was one or two of those things at the Talladega meet in either 99 or 04, can't remember. But they are.....interesting to say the least, one of them (the one that had the 494 can am engine) is about an hour from me.

[petercharger]

would be interesting to have taken some pictures to git an idea of what fords version would really look like with the wing

[tan top]

ford grandnational weapon ! intresting car for sure      
think there is  only two  been built or surviving    but don't quote me on that  , trying to remember something i read years ago 
a white one & a yellow one ...... remember reading something about at superspeed way speed .. there was so much down force on the nose that the rear wheels would slip

[hemigeno]

There are three of them in the group/panoramic shot from the DSAC Talladega '04 Reunion - two red ones and a yellow car.  IIRC, two of them have official Ford pedigrees, and the third (don't remember which one) was assembled from parts.  Or, there is a fourth one being assembled from spare parts... something like that anyway, and I'm sure Doug Schellinger knows the whole story.

Dodge discovered the same thing about rear downforce.  Too much downforce on the nose will totally upset the handling of the car - and spinning the tires is a small thing compared to how evil the car would act in the turns.  It would take the term "loose" to a whole new level.

[A383Wing]

There was a yellow one at the reunion in 99 when we were there...I got some pretty good pics of the car...gotta find them now...

Bryan

[A383Wing]

Well, here is 3 that I had saved.....damn tree got in the way of one picture...I got more somewhere.

Bryan

[pettyfan43]

There is a FUNNY story about Buddy Baker making the mechanics take the wing off the test car that became the 88 car because he thought it was slowing him down.
After arguing for several minutes, the mechanics did what he said.

Baker went flat out into the first turn at the test track at speed and nearly crashed the car and came back around at about 50 MPH got out of the car and just said

"Why don't y'all just put that damn thing back on".

[Brock Samson]

i remember, (yup - i'm that old), the 'new torino, cyclone body was a dissapointment for fordmoco just like the '68 charger was for dodge, the ford/mercury teams had to go back to the previous yea'rs body style, but by then NASCAR had begun to put the brakes on the entire areocar wars anyhow...
I never cared for the fomoco cars, compared to the mopars they looked ugly. i remember a pickle green/blacksuper cobra jet torino, black int. bench seat car in the showroom in '68 later in the yr they got a dan gurney one in, wasn't much better. i only sat in the ones i liked, i didn't sit in either of those,.. i did sit in the MACH 1. though,.. i still seem to remember how they smelled...  really good.