Lorenzen wasn't the only Ford driver to make headlines in 1963, however. Glenn "Fireball" Roberts left Pontiac and returned to the Blue Oval ranks early in the season, and punctuated his return with wins at Daytona in the Firecracker 400 and at Darlington in the Southern 500. Ned Jarrett, Marvin Panch, Jimmy Pardue, and Glenn Wood also scored '63 Ford wins. Darrel Dieringer notched a victory for Mercury to bring Ford a 23-win total (of 55 contested) during the '63 season.
1964Ford drivers had every reason to expect a repeat of their '63 dominance during the '64 season. But it became painfully clear during qualifying for the Daytona 500 in February of 1964 that Richard Petty, Chrysler powertrain engineers, and NASCAR's Bill France had a thing or two to say about that. That's when the racing world became acquainted with the word Hemi.
Stung by Ford and GM's domination of the Grand National series in the '63 season, Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge racers decided to make some high-horsepower noise of their own in 1964. Taking a page from their mid-'50s playbook, Chrysler engineers cooked up a new hemispherically-headed, 426ci big-block for racing use. There was just one little problem with that plan-the engine was a pure racing piece and not scheduled to be installed in showroom floor models. How then, you may ask, was the 426 Hemi legal for NASCAR competition? The answer: because Bill France said it was. The new Hemi-powered Plymouths and Dodges looked to be both more powerful and more aerodynamic than their Ford and Mercury counterparts.
Ford quite naturally screamed bloody murder over this disadvantage. But, beyond allowing Ford teams to run non-production High Riser head castings (which improved flow numbers and horsepower) atop their 427 engines, the powers that were at NASCAR turned a deaf ear. As a result, the '64 NASCAR Grand National season did not create many cherished memories for most Ford fans. In fact, the year was a bleak one, indeed, seeing as it did, the death of Little Joe Weatherly in a Bud Moore Mercury Marauder at Riverside in January, and Fireball Roberts' crash at Charlotte in the World 600, and his death six weeks later. Meanwhile, Richard Petty swept Daytona and the rest of the season with his slippery Hemi Plymouth. At season's end, Petty was the series champ. Still and all, Ford racers had managed to win 32 of 61 races contested, with Ned Jarrett as the top scorer for Ford that season with 15 wins.
1965While Ford racers were taking their licks from Chrysler's Hemi during the '64 Grand National season, Ford engineers were quietly burning tankers full of midnight oil developing a hemi of their own. Going Chrysler one better, Ford's pure race design featured a high-revving, single-overhead camshaft (SOHC) design that cranked out nearly 700 ponies in race trim. Ford execs presented the new design to NASCAR late in 1964 for its blessing. Chrysler threatened to counter with a double-overhead cam, big-block engine of its own that was capable of nearly 1,000 hp.
Confronted with a horsepower race that was spinning out of control, Bill France did the only thing he could (and often did). He changed the "official" rulebook. With the stroke of his pen, the 426 Hemi engine that had been legal in Chrysler intermediate bodies in 1964 was illegal unless raced in a full-size car. While he was at it, he also struck down Ford's use of the High Riser head castings that had found NASCAR favor twelve short months before.