writer: Dr. John Craft
photographer: Dr. John Craft
As much as we romanticize Ford's racing history, Ford got off to a slow start in NASCAR Grand National (Nextel Cup) competition. Jim Roper had won the inaugural NASCAR "strictly stock" race at Charlotte in June 1949 (after driving his "race car" all night from Great Bend to make the grid on race day!), but the folks in Dearborn's Glass House didn't really take notice of the series until 1956 when they hired Indy 500 winner Pete De Palo to organize a factory-backed stock car team.
By 1957, Ford was fully engaged in battle with General Motors and Chrysler for Grand National supremacy. De Palo had stepped down in favor of New England hot shoe Ralph Moody and a fellow named John Holman, from California, who had driven Bill Stroppe's parts truck during the fabled Carrera Pan Americana road races. Once Holman/Moody was formed, the Competition Proven concern hired the best drivers of the day (Moody himself, Fireball Roberts, Curtis Turner, Joe Weatherly, and Marvin Panch), the best mechanical minds (including a crusty cuss named Henry "Smokey" Yunick), and set about the task of dominating Bill France's new stock car racing series.
By 1957, Team Ford was on the cusp of achieving great things with the help of a fleet of factory supercharged, 300-horse, 312-inch '57 Fairlanes. Unfortunately, Ford's juggernaut was derailed at midseason when Ford boss, Robert McNamara, got snookered by GM president Harlow "Red" Curtice and the Automobile Manufacturer's Association (AMA) into dumping all factory-backed racing efforts.
It wasn't until four long years later, when McNamara was JFK's Defense Secretary, that Ford would once again field a factory-backed stock car effort. And what an effort it was.
1961While Ford teams were honoring the AMA ban on factory-backed racing, GM teams were out there racing. The string of victories they racked up got the attention of Ford marketing genius Lee Iacocca in 1961. He decided Sunday victories by Ford automobiles would put some life back in sales floor traffic.
It was about that same time that Iacocca got wind of a potential deal between struggling Holman/Moody, Chrysler-Plymouth, and spark plug maker Autolite (not then a part of the Blue Oval) that would have made Holman/Moody a Chrysler racing contractor. Holman/Moody had soldiered on after 1957 with what surplus parts they could scrounge up from Ford's scrap pile, but by 1961 they needed an infusion of factory cash if they were to carry on with Ford. Iacocca talked Henry Ford II into disavowing the AMA band, and Ford was literally off to the races.
One of the first steps taken by Ralph Moody after the doors to the corporate coffers swung open was to put in a call to a young Chicago man who was quite a driver, but had failed at an attempt to break into the NASCAR ranks in 1960. That young man was Fred Lorenzen. Moody's summons brought Fast Freddie back to Charlotte and an all-new, white-and-blue No. 28 Starliner stock car. Cincinnati native and former WWII tank driver, Nelson Stacy, was also signed as a Holman/Moody driver.
Ford helped the team's motivation by boring and stroking the tried and true 352ci FE engine to a more robust 390 ci. The additional displacement pushed final power output to at least 300 ponies. When coupled with the super slippery '61 Ford Starliner fastback body, the new 390 was a formidable weapon.
Lorenzen scored his first Holman/Moody win at Martinsville in the Virginia 500, then backed that triumph with victories at Darlington in the Rebel 300, where he started from the pole, and later at Atlanta. Nelson Stacy put the newly revitalized team on the map when he drove his No. 29 Starliner into Victory Lane at the Southern 500 at Darlington on Labor Day 1961. Stacy's triumph there signaled Holman/Moody and Ford were a force to be reckoned with.