Best Boss That Never Made It
One quarter Shelby, one quarter Boss 429, one quarter Mustang, and one quarter Cougar, the Quarter Horse Mustang was a quarter horse in more ways than one. Kar Kraft built this big-block Mustang as a proposed replacement for both the Shelby and Boss 429. Interestingly, Ford's proposal for the car came in September 1969, around the same time Henry Ford II fired Bunkie Knudsen, the Ford president who supported the Boss 429 program. Prior to Bunkie's firing, there had been talk about a possible '71 Boss 429.
Even though Knudsen was gone, Ford continued with the horsepower theme to sell Mustangs, so the Quarter Horse was explored because the Shelby was soon dropped (November) along with the Boss 429 (January).
Officially, the Quarter Horse was known as the "Composite Mustang" because it used parts and pieces from cars already in the Ford lineup. The formula was simple: take a chassis from a Boss 429 and mix it with a dash of Cougar XR-7, the fiberglass fenders and hood from the '69-'70 Shelby, and the fastback body and interior of a Mustang. To make it different from the Shelby, the Ford production studio, still headed by Larry Shinoda, placed a large Mustang running horse in the center of the grille and filled in the Shelby hoodscoops.
Two prototypes were built, the Grabber Blue Quarter Horse seen here and a Candyapple Red version.
Best Boss Clone
When is a Boss not a Boss? When it doesn't have a real Boss engine, right? Well, maybe not. Who would have told Larry Shinoda, the man who created the Boss name and graphics, that his Boss 302 prototype, with a 428 Cobra Jet engine, wasn't a Boss?
While coming up with the Boss 302 striping, spoilers, and rear-window louvers, Shinoda used a '69 CJ Mach 1 as his working prototype. It received early painted-on C-stripes (without the "Boss 302" on the fenders), blacked-out headlight and rear-panel treatment, front and rear spoilers, and the wild rear louvers. About the louvers, Shinoda told us in a 1981 interview, "When the Ford people first saw them, they about seized up!"
Shinoda used the Bossed-up Mach 1 as his everyday transportation, as evidenced by the driveway photo with his daughters, Karen and Lisa. When Shinoda left Ford in 1969, he purchased the car and took it with him. He later sold it to a tailor in Brighton, Michigan. No one knows what happened to it from there.
So, was the boss's Boss really a Boss?
Last Boss 302
The last Boss 302 built was a Trans-Am body-in-white, completed by Bud Moore Engineering and first raced by George Follmer in the St. Jovite '71 Trans-Am on August 1, 1971. According to owner Brian Ferrin, "See, the rumor was true--there is a '71 Boss 302. It's now in my garage."