Last weekend at Chicago's Route 66 Raceway, John Force Racing's Mike Neff beat Jeff Arend to win his third Funny Car Wally of the season and extend his championship points lead in the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series.
The win also marked the 200th NHRA Funny Car championship trophy for Ford Motor Company, most of which have come from teams running Mustang bodywork and most of those from Force or one of his team cars.
It took almost 35 years for Ford to reach this milestone, a journey started in 1967 when Tommy Grove drove his '66 Mustang to the ponycar's first victory at Bristol. If memory serves, Grove's car represented the last page of the Funny Car chapter that covered fuel-injected engines, altered wheelbases, swiss-cheesed chassis and acid-dipped stock bodies with doors that still opened.
Then came flop-top, one-piece bodies, purpose-built tube chassis and full subservience to the aero gods; an action that has now resulted in all the cars shaped basically the same with brand identity almost completely dependent upon decals.
No wonder nostalgia Funny Car racing is so popular now.
I wish I was a big wig at Ford or one of their advertising agencies with a carte blanche budget, tasked with putting together some kind of traveling road show and PR campaign to celebrate Ford's 200th NHRA win and promote the Blue Oval brand.
I'd start with an exhibit featuring the old A/FX cars like Hubert Platt's '64 Falcon and Bill Lawton's Tasca Ford Mustang. Then I'd hunt down (or replicate, because money is no object, remember?) Doug Nash's 'Bronco Buster' 289 V8-powered Funny Car, notable because it sported a pickup truck body and an aluminum frame -- both of which were promptly outlawed by the NHRA in 1967.
Also included: Paula Murphy's Miss STP '66 Mustang. Murphy is arguably the first female Funny Car driver to make a living in the sport, mostly from match racing, and while neither she nor her car ever won a national event, the same will apply to a lot of the Ford Funny Cars I remember so fondly; mainly because they were so different.
Like Larry Coleman's 1968 "Super Torino." If you don't remember the Torino, think of the mid-sixties Ford Fairlane with a thyroid problem. This was one of the biggest, widest Funny Cars of all time and it wasn't the only one; Phil Bonner and Ted DeTar also raced Ford 427 SOHC -powered Torino?s.
Gas Ronda was a popular So Cal A/FX racer who became famous behind the wheel of his Russ Davis Ford Mustangs. After switching to a flopper, he was seriously burned from an engine explosion during a practice run at the 1970 AHRA Winternationals at Beeline Dragway in Scottsdale, AZ. I was there that day and witnessed the disaster, having already run out of film for my trusty Bell & Howell Super 8 movie camera. I've never regretted that.
Hot rodding legend, Bonneville land speed record holder, and Indy car pioneer Mickey Thompson was the biggest name in racing when he tabbed Pat Foster to build two 1969 Ford Mustangs, one red and one blue, that essentially set the standard for Funny Car engineering and forever changed the state of the sport's art. Danny Ongais dominated in the blue car, Foster and others raced the red car, and later Thompson built and raced a titanium chassied Pinto, a Maverick and finally a monocoque Mustang.
Gary Burgin's Mustang II Funny Car was the only one to defeat Don Prudhomme in 1976 national events, Kenny Bernstein raced a Ford Tempo to a couple of championships starting in 1985 and Mark Oswald drove both Probes and Thunderbirds for Candies & Hughes and Motorcraft. Whit Bazemore won six trophies in his then politically acceptable Winston cigarettes -sponsored Mustang, Larry Fullerton and his Trojan Horse Mustang gave Ford its first World Championship in 1972.
Then there's the famous Blue Max Mustang, currently owned and occasionally campaigned by NHRA Top Fuel driver Del Worsham. The Blue Max started out as a Mustang but also wore Plymouth and Pontiac bodywork. Owned by Harry Schmidt and campaigned and driven by Raymond Beadle, the Blue Max was the most popular Funny Car in drag racing history during its heyday.
Mike Neff giving Ford its 200th win is plenty impressive, but no more so than the collection of all the cars, builders, tuners, drivers and stories that brought them there.
Sadly, I am not a big wig (or even a small rug) at Ford, so I won't be sending out those feelers to start hunting down old Ford Funny Cars or checking with the NHRA to see about getting this project together for 2012 -- when Ford might be celebrating its latest championship from one of the Force Mustangs.
As a passionate race fan I would love to see Ford's rich NHRA history celebrated and shared via an interactive tour, exhibition runs at NHRA events, dealer appearances, wall calendars, collectibles, coffee table books, posters, hats, t-shirts and other promotional goodies. You know, the way they did things back in the excessive mid-sixties, when Ford was actively involved in all things racing and loved spending money to advertise its success. Ah, those were the days.
As a realist, though, I know that kind of massive, multi-legged PR and marketing effort is now a budgetary pipe dream. Funding for such things went the way of three martini lunches and tobacco testimonials from doctors a long time ago.
So I'd just settle for a good website.
What do you think? Is 200 Funny Car wins worth a new Ford Racing website that documents each victory, each advance and more?
Read More of Bill Tybur at his website: https://fmfl.net
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