RACE READY!

WE TAKE A DIVE INTO OUR ARCHIVES AND SEE WHY FORD TURNED TO LEGENDARY TUNERS HOLMAN & MOODY TO DEVELOP A NASCAR WINNER

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The fog is so thick at Eastern Creek when we arrive for our early morning shoot of Mick's Ford Talladega, that we almost miss the turnoff to the track. Crawling through the whiteout, I know the pits are somewhere ahead but exactly where, I'm not sure.

Then, out of the mist like a naval destroyer through a smoke screen, the rear-end of the Talladega appears and my first thought is, "Christ, it's big!" My second impression is it looks like a stretched, steroid-fed '67 Mustang; Pony Car DNA is written all over this Detroit monster.

NASCAR domination

The Ford Torino Talladega - to give it its full name - was a low-volume NASCAR homologation special and only 754 were built to comply with NASCAR regulations.

Ford had won the 1968 NASCAR championship but needed a new car for '69 to head off the threat from the potent new Dodge Charger 500, and the Torino was it.

As history shows, the Talladega racer was hugely successful in 1969. David 'Silver Fox' Pearson, whose tally of poles and wins is only eclipsed by Richard 'The King' Petty, won his third NASCAR title in a Talladega in '69. Petty, who had been lured away from Dodge for the '69 season, scored his 100th win in a Talladega before going back to Dodge, and Leroy Yarborough won the Daytona 500 in the big Ford.

The Talladega pretty much sparked NASCAR's aero wars of the late '60s and early '70s. With a blank cheque from Ford in the bank, respected constructors Holman & Moody set about creating a Charger beater out of the Torino, which already had a slippery fastback shape.

Aerodynamics was a newfangled science in racing at this time and H&M used a wind tunnel to hone modifications to the Torino body. Even in the late '60s, NASCARs were lapping at 200mph and the more aerodynamic the car's shape, the faster and more fuel efficient it was.