Andy DeNardi
1970 Trans-Am Mustang
Ford had several different teams competing in Trans-Am racing in the 60s and 70s. Carroll Shelby built the championship cars in 1966, the first year of the series. Bud Moore ran Mercury Cougars in 1967 while Shelby again built the championship Mustangs. Roger Penske's Camaros won the next two years but in 1970 Shelby was out and Moore picked up a championship for himself with Parnelli Jones running this Mustang.
Andy, Bud once told me a very funny story about this car and Parnelli's 1970 Trans-Am win at Kent, Washington. Following Parnelli's win, a protest had been lodged regarding the car's fuel capacity. As Bud told the story, it was always pretty easy to fool the SCCA officials compared to NASCAR officials. In this instance, Bud was ordered to drain the fuel tank, before the SCCA officials refilled it to check the capacity. As darkness had fallen, while he diverted the attention of the SCCA officials, Bud had a couple of Spartanburg boys "pass water" in the dirt under the car to make it appear as if the tank had been drained. When refilled, the tank capacity passed within specs and Parnelli's win was upheld. Bud said it was more expensive to run NASCAR than SCCA Trans-Am because cheating was expensive!
There's also the story of the acid-dipped roof on the Dodge Challenger. According to legend, the team offered the chief tech inspector a beer after tech had been completed at the 1st race at Laguna Seca. He rested his elbow on the roof of the car, which left a dent.I spoke to that guy in 1972 and he said that he would never accept "gifts" from competitors at any time, but that the story was otherwise true. Some of the mechanics were dispatched to the nearest Dodge dealer where they cut the roof from a car on the lot and welded it on before the race.Stories about acid-dipped cars are fairly common but I'd never heard that one about the Mustang's gas tank. The SCCA had factory involvement in several teams prior to Trans-Am but it was generally just a check sent from overseas to some guy building a production car in his garage. They didn't deal with REAL factory teams like Ferrari or Ford. Those guys took cheating seriously, and Bud Moore certainly knew most of the tricks. Carroll Shelby was a loudmouth and I'm sure that Bud was eager to prove that he could put up a team as good as those Shelby had won the championship with. It was a lot harder to win in 1970 than it had been in 1967, all the factories were full in and the races were getting a lot of publicity.American Motors took what it learned running the Javelin in Trans-Am and they and Penske entered NASCAR in 1973 with less than stellar results. Ford and Chrysler were out by then and it seemed like good timing. Unfortunately Chevy had returned and General Motors is very serious about winning in NASCAR. Serious enough that the mighty Penske wasn't able to beat them for 27 years.
Good story about the roof.
Andy, if you've never read the Brock Yartes book, SUNDAY DRIVER , by all means go to the library and check it out. Hilarious reading. This jumps around and is only a brief excerpt, but if you go to the link below and go back starting at page 185, you'll find some quotes from Bud describing cheating in Trans-Am and NASCAR: http://books.google.com/books?id=wo4a0PZBlpwC&pg=PA189&lpg=PA189&dq=sunday+driver+-+bud+moore+cheating&source=bl&ots=36UV7wHp3C&sig=PafG-bFf21iBnrVZ4-NUFEzfRrM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NwKpUYvoM-an0AHsm4DgCg&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=sunday%20driver%20-%20bud%20moore%20cheating&f=false