Author Topic: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang  (Read 6964 times)

98SVT - was 06GT

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #15 on: April 09, 2020, 08:15:11 PM »
Photos of the engine bay of the Mach2 should reveal if it's the same chassis just reskined.
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68countrysedan

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #16 on: April 09, 2020, 11:58:30 PM »
Quote
I'd guess that the problem with not many of those who still work at Ford knowing in-depth about their history is just that...not many of them are left.

Twenty years ago, there were still plenty of old timers wandering around the halls of Ford Dearborn's many buildings.  Not now.

Once the truly knowledgeable historians like John Clinard are totally out of the sphere of any influence with the company, those days of brain-trust knowledge are gone.
 

Agreed.

IMHO, there's a lot of current Ford employees who work there but never grew up immersed in automobiles and the people who created them. Today, they only know what they can find online or look up in company records, which are probably by no means complete.

Change my mind.

Coralsnake

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #17 on: April 10, 2020, 07:44:19 AM »
I have heard the archives are tightly controlled. There is no dewey decimal system and no indexing. Its temperature controlled (read cold) and takes a long time to sort through photos, many like this, without context.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2020, 09:01:50 AM by Coralsnake »

gt350shelb

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #18 on: April 10, 2020, 10:04:58 AM »
I read somewhere the car was crushed ...... and they only emptied 1 of fuel tanks and it  exploded in crusher.
Some where some one is driving their collector car for the last time but they don't know it . Drive your car every time like it could be the last memory of it .

csxsfm

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #19 on: April 10, 2020, 10:32:58 AM »
Part of the reason everything we have to buy for our cars is used or overseas aftermarket.

shelbydoug

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #20 on: April 10, 2020, 10:37:24 AM »
I remember the first time I went to Indy and the Black MKII was there. I got the impression that Ford didn't know it  was there.

Soon after that Convention Ford came and took it.

They have so many things worked on by so many people a complete car is maybe harder to find then a new 289hp block hidden in their secret stashes?


It's not so much that it can't be understood that they can't find anything or never  heard of something because of their size but their entire Corporate attitude that is characterized like that of Leo Bebe was in "Ford vs. Ferrari" gets really ugly, really fast?

Chances are both of the cars still exist, stashed away in some corner of some forgotten museum. Cars like this are hard to kill. They had too much inherent soul?



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98SVT - was 06GT

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #21 on: April 11, 2020, 08:17:52 PM »
In the old days a lot of stuff that was scheduled to be crushed slipped through the cracks. Engineering test cars that were taken home for evaluation. Cars that went on loan to museums. Cars that went to the press. Long term test cars. Movie loan cars (a lot of which were development mules so they were current when movie came out). Even flood and train wreck cars that they get back. In the past 10-15 years there is better tracking. A Ford exec goes to watch it being crushed. He's required to pull the VIN tag and sticker off the car and take pictures of it before and after crushing.
Previous owner 6S843 - GT350H & 68 GT500 Convert #135.
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Vernon Estes

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #22 on: April 11, 2020, 10:33:59 PM »
Frankly I think there is more history to the photo than the car simply being a "Mach II" but my suspicions have not been confirmed so Id rather not go too much further with the theory. I do believe that the car pictured (at that time in its life/development) was actually a planned product by/for Shelby American.

Just a theory but ive seen drawings of a car that is exactly like that car in an intra company, confidential product summary book which was owned by a Shelby American executive.  Im awaiting more pictures of the item from the owner.

Im not saying the car didnt eventually become the Mach II, more that it may have been intended to be something else at the start.

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Vern
Junk dealer and the oldest young guy you will ever know.

Special Ed

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #23 on: April 12, 2020, 09:07:27 AM »
Wonder why ford would have picked a California  smog engine to try and fit in a mid engine car dealing with all the clearance problems on front of engine added smog pump, brackets,canisters, pulleys,hoses,belts etc? Also note the bluedot tires.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2020, 09:11:09 AM by Special Ed »

shelbydoug

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #24 on: April 12, 2020, 12:49:32 PM »
It is an interesting car but to me it looks more like a road  marker of showing where thought was being given.

A successful Mustang production vehicle. The continuation of the GT40 as the Gulf. Still lingering sentiment about Ford owning an Italian car company, and the introduction of Detomaso and his Pantera into the equation?

Lots of wheels spinning at the same time. Someone needed to decide what was strictly a design exercise and why the company should go in one particular direction considering the looming EPA issues that needed to be complied with?

Ford does not have a good record on continuing with one particular design deviation.

You can list the "projects" they had been involved with going back into the '30s and culminating maybe even as far as the re-emergence of the GT, dangling it as a shiny object to the public, then bang, it was gone?

Some say a leopard can't change it's spots? I'd expect more of the same from them?

They continue to play hocus-pocus with moving names around on cars like the electric SUV "Mustang". They ain't going to change. They've always attempted to hedge their bets.

The Mach was just one of them. Lots of cars were reported to be crushed that weren't.

It will be the Phoenix, rising out of the ashes. Wait and see. Someone somewhere has it.
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papa scoops

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #25 on: April 13, 2020, 04:49:18 AM »
I'd call it the C-8. phred

TransamEd

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #26 on: April 14, 2020, 06:53:28 AM »
The Mach 2 street car (red one) engine bay looked like this. The white racing car was constructed in a different way at Kar Kraft.

shelbydoug

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #27 on: April 14, 2020, 08:07:38 AM »
That picture to me really illustrates how close the car could have been to production?

I think at the point it is comes the marketability study? More then anything, it didn't capture the interest of the public to a level that justified building them in profitable numbers but you know, it could have made it through one of those 3,500 car builds like the current GT?


Maybe the determining factor was "product loyalty"? I remember seeing info that even the Crown Vic had a loyalty following and Ford would reward those repeat buyers?


What sort of loyalty following would the Mach have? Maybe just introduce the name into the Mustang line? Hey, wait...!
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TransamEd

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #28 on: April 14, 2020, 08:19:44 AM »
The white Mach 2 race car version at KK - I think this was once posted by Tom T. (not sure)



Greg

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Re: Ford Asks For Help Identifying This Mid-Engine Ford Mustang
« Reply #29 on: April 14, 2020, 08:54:18 AM »
How would you like to have a time machine and be able to walk the halls of Ford and SA in the 60's.  I bet it was incredible.
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