Factory Specials & Production Fiction
Detroit Actually Built That?
There was a time when winning races sold cars.
Detroit noticed.
That was when the definition of a production automobile started getting interesting.
Pick Your Factory Special: Mickey Thompson’s 421 Pontiac | Chevrolet Z11 | Ford Thunderbolt | Altered Wheelbases | Swiss Cheese Pontiacs | Lightweight Galaxies | Cobra Jet Ambush
A normal customer could walk into a dealership and buy a Galaxie, Fairlane, Catalina, Impala or Mustang. Somewhere else in the same company, engineers were figuring out how much steel could disappear, which engine could be squeezed between the fenders and how few cars had to exist before everybody could call the thing production.
Aluminum replaced steel. Sound deadener vanished. Frames acquired holes. Engines appeared that were conspicuously absent from most dealer lots.
Then Chrysler started moving the axles.
These weren’t racers sneaking around behind Detroit’s back. Detroit was frequently holding the flashlight.
The cars were real. The factory involvement was real. The production-car connection sometimes required a considerably longer explanation.
Mickey Thompson and Hayden Proffitt were supposed to be racing production Pontiacs. Pontiac’s engineering department had some very generous ideas about what production could mean.
The Impala was a perfectly respectable full-size Chevrolet until the racing department started asking how much of a full-size Chevrolet really needed to come along for the quarter-mile.
Ford looked at the Fairlane, looked at its 427 and decided the fact those two things had not been designed for each other was somebody else’s problem.
Chrysler had already attacked horsepower and weight. Then somebody looked at where the axles were located and decided even that apparently wasn’t sacred.
Pontiac engineers looked underneath a full-size Catalina and decided some of that perfectly good frame was apparently just unnecessary luggage.
Ford’s big Galaxie had plenty of engine. The remaining question was how much Galaxie the engine really needed to drag down the strip with it.
Ford could have introduced the 428 Cobra Jet with advertisements and dealer brochures. Instead, it unloaded a collection of factory-prepared Mustangs at Pomona.
Bottom Line
The muscle-car wars were not fought entirely in showrooms.
A great deal of the serious work happened in engineering departments, race shops and quiet factory programs where the normal rules of automobile manufacturing became considerably more flexible.
Pontiac drilled frames.
Chevrolet built lightweight 427 Impalas.
Ford stuffed 427s into Fairlanes and sent Cobra Jets straight to Pomona.
Chrysler looked at the wheelbase and decided even the location of the wheels was negotiable.
Detroit really did build these things.
Calling all of them ordinary production cars required a little imagination.
That was part of the fun.
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