I love those old '60s Nascar racecars and look forward to the article on this one. I'm personally a big fan of racecars that are based off of production line vehicles.
Yeah, me too! Its interesting to see how quickly stock car racing progressed during this period. For 1963, Ford supplied complete turn-key Q Code 4V 427 cars, which Holman-Moody then converted into race cars. For 1964, Ford supplied the cars without engine or transmission. But for 1965, Ford supplied bodies in white, and it was when these arrived in late 1964 H-M began applying their own VIN tags, because the supplied cars didn't have tags.
As some of the 1964 cars were still at the workshops when this process began, H-M attached VIN numbers to these cars too, including this one, which had spent the latter half of 1964 in the USAC stock car series, run by Mike Terrafino whose team rebuilt the car following a shunt at Atlanta.
This car was built as a 'guest car' by H-M. At the beginning of 1964, they had two main drivers in 'Fireball' Roberts and Fred Lorenzen, and a car was built for these two. Then a further two or three cars were also built and run at selected events with guest drivers, including this car, who had Cobra driver Skip Hudson at the wheel at Riverside, Bobby Marshman at Daytona, and Augie Pabst here at Sebring, as pictured.
This wasn't actually a Grand National race, rather a 250 kilometer (thats how it was described in period) FIA sedan race, which was a support race to the Sebring 12 Hour. Most of the cars entered were Group 2 cars, including a pair of Lotus Cortinas for Jim Clark and Dan Gurney. Walt Hansgen was also entered in a Falcon Sprint.
There was a Le Mans-style start in which the drivers had to run across the track, jump in their cars, and start racing. Because the door was bolted shut on the Galaxie, Augie had to climb through the window, hence his slow getaway. You can see him right down towards the rear. His was the only Galaxie in the race. But that didn't matter, he was leading by lap 2 and still in front at the end.
