Holman and Moody Shelbys

http://www.holmanmoody.com/drag_gal.html

Their web page shows A/FX Mustangs w/427's built for drag racing, but I've never heard or seen any Shelby Mustangs that they might have built. H&M was of course, very important to the success of the GT40 program in the 1960's, and the SAAC registry has them listed for 16 GT40 road cars either built or in production. Bud Moore did a lot of work with the Shelby Notchback racers. I guess you could email H&M for the definitive answer.

 

What a time to pull out the digital camera! There was a guy on Club Cobra a couple days back claiming to have a Factory prepped for Drag Racing 68 GT500 with 9500 miles. I never heard of one. I thought Ford in 68 was in to promoting the Cobra Jet Drag cars.

 

Sound like clones, to be honest, especially at that price. McMichael Motorsports in Braselton, GA is making 65/66 GT350 clones out of Mustangs, and has had some serial plates made up for the front fender to reflect the number order of making them, MMM001, etc.... Let us know if you hear anything.

 

I have never run into one in the SAAC registry under the Shelby Mustangs.
Think about it, the last Shelbys were built by Owens Corning. Why would they ship 13 to H/M?
I would agree that maybe, H/M supplied some Nascar big Blocks for the Ford GT program.

 

Did holman and moody do any work on the few boss 429 quarter horses they
made with 69 shelby front ends?

 

I wonder what ever happened to the fastback falcon that Holman and Moody
had a picture on there web site. That was the first time i ever saw that picture before.

Mike

 

The Thoroughbreds were a Ford Styling Studio exercise. I think it was Kar Kraft that built them (same people who did the Boss 429). One was a Boss 429, the other a CJ car.

That Fastback Falcon is somewhere in North or South Carolina last I heard in Mustangs & Fords Magazine.

 

About three decades plus ago our searches for Shelby cars (Cobras, GT350s, GT500s, Cobra 427s) led us to a strange car a doctor in Hartselle Alabama owned. He called a 427 Shelby but it was strange in lots of ways. We thought we were chasing a Cobra 427. I don't recall everything but I believe it was a 1969 Mustang chassis with fiberglass front and rear Shelby style pieces, but I don't think the hood had holes in the vent features. There was a 427 tunnel port engine installed in the car and lots of unShelby like details all over the car inside and out. The only VIN we could find started off HMxxxx something so we decided we weren't interested. The doctor claimed, to the best of memory, the car was assembled at Holman-Moody as a racer but got converted to street. I saw the car on and off at local shows for maybe ten years and then it must have left the area.

Dan

 

Gary,
Yes it was black. Alabama was not a title state before 1974 or 1975 sometime and didn't and still doesn't have an vehicle inspection program so we ran across all kinds of "street" cars that would have been very unlikely elsewhere. Between 1973 and 1976 we chased a lot of dead ends looking for Shelby's and Cobras. 1973 Mustang convertible on a early Bronco chassis. 1967 Mustang drag (street and track - would lift the front wheels off the ground with street tires at launch) racer with a collection of 1967 and 1968 Shelby fiberglass and trim and a 1968 Shelby VIN plate (sorry never wrote the number down). 1967 GT500 somebody attempted to road race and they used sections of rail road track (honest) to tie the front sub frame to the rear of the chassis. 1963 Ranchero with a bored and stroked 428 CJ engine. Mid 1950s AC Ace that had a Ford 302 engine crammed in, chicken wire and plastic filler flares, and a differential and rear suspension scattered into a lot of bent and broken pieces (the small differentials and axles the Aces used just couldn't take a V8s torque). A very late 1967 GT500 that had been butchered and drag raced with a 427 SOHC engine. One salavage yard with the remains of two 1969 Shelby's that were very mangled but the guy wouldn't sell, he was letting them rot into the dirt but wouldn't sell. 1966 GT350 that was half original car and half donor car with a butt welded seam under the front seats and just closing the doors made the car shimmy, it went down the road at a slight angle. 1969 Boss 429 the original owner put a 302 2-V engine in and drum brakes on, kept the engine sold the car, only to buy the car back and reunite the two years later. He bought the car just for the engine and transmission for his Tornio NASCAR Grand National car. So on and so forth.

Dan

 

Gary,
You might have been disappointed in the Boss 429, many people were when they were less than ten years old. I had a late production 1970 Boss 429. The original owner traded in his red 1966 GT350 for it. He ordered a red 1969 Boss 429 and what showed up was a Grabber Orange 1970. The dealer told him to take it or leave it. He took it. He said he drove the car tenderly for the first 1,000 miles at which time the dealer serviced it for him. He immediately went to the local street racing venue to test it out. He was very disappointed. It was a slug and now the pistons on one bank slapped badly on a car with just over 1,000 miles on it. Under great protest he said the dealer rebuilt the engine and he babied for another 1,000 miles. He told me the first time he tried to run somebody the engine was clattering from piston damage again on the same four cylinders. At this point he says he managed to get FoMoCo involved through his racing connections. He claims somebody from “the factory” came to the local dealer and supervised the next build. He was given the car again and told if it happens again “we’ll install a new engine”. He was pretty upset by this point, i.e. ordered a red 1969 and got an orange 1970, two major engine problems in just 2,000 miles, and the car was at the dealer’s almost as much as his garage. The good news the engine held from then on. The bad news is car pool sedans could out run him light to light. Enter Holman-Moody. The owner was involved with the local racing world and several racers around here were employed or sponsored by Ford. He made contact with Holman-Moody and with their assistance came up with a set of modifications to unlock the power in the car. From memory, they retarded the camshaft timing, came up with massive JR headers, a large after-market Holley, and recurved the distributor advance curve. The car was then a beast with more torque than it could get to the ground. It also used tremendous amounts of fuel. In an attempt to get more torque to the ground in his spirited street driving he had the dealer install 3.00:1 differential gears with large diameter tires. That is the configuration he drove the car to work in. He would tell stories of giving people rides at nearly 160 mph on the back roads of the military base here. He eventually sold the car and the second owner tried to drag race it at the local strip with poor success. He had a speed shop install 4.11:1 Zoom® differential gears and strip the stock mufflers and tail pipes off. He drove the car like every day was the end of the world. By the time I bought the car it was sitting under the trees on nearly flat tires because his insurance had gotten so high he could not afford to drive it. The way he had it set up the fuel mileage was about 3.5 mpg and the head to deck interfaces leaked oil and coolant so fast about ten miles was about as far as you could go before refills. I put the car up on jack stands in my Dad’s shop and cleaned and scrubbed the car everyplace I could reach. I then pulled the engine and transmission to clean some more. I went through and inspected and repaired all the mechanicals and with advice from the original owner got it back to the configuration he used except I left the 4.11:1 gears in. I never ran it down a drag strip, couldn't afford to risk breaking anything as finding Boss 429 parts then was much harder and costly (relatively speaking) than they are today. I did play though and it was the only car I have ever had that you could start a wide open throttle power drift in fourth gear at any road speed with. For a while a man in Birmingham had his bone stock 1970 Boss 429 at my house for some minor tuning. The difference in my car and the stock one was very dramatic. The stock one didn’t feel as powerful as a completely stock 1969 GT350. I had countless former Boss 429 owners tell me what slugs the cars were in stock form.

I traded the 1970 Boss 429 in toward my black 1964 Cobra. We drove the Boss 9 out to Oklahoma and drove the Cobra back in December 1983. All in all probably the best road trip I ever had.

 

Gary,

The cars I eliminated to pay for the Cobra are probably (collectively of course) worth twice or more of what the Cobra is now. Getting the Cobra was the passion and the other cars just the means.