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A brief history of
the limited edition Twister Special
Late into the 1969 production year Ford Motor Corporation was
contacted by American Raceways Inc. about the production of some pace
cars for the race tracks in their organization. Ford jumped in with both
feet and went to work designing a unique 1970 Mach 1 Mustang that
 had
been color coordinated to match ARI's different tracks. Disaster hit
ARI and they went bankrupt, Ford's hand was forced, and could not
deliver the cars. For the time being, they would sit at the plant in Dearborn,
Michigan.
(The five tracks that were going to
use this pony for a pace car - Michigan International Speedway, Atlanta
International, Texas International Speedway, Eastern International
Speedway and Riverside International Speedway.)
At the same time, Ford had been approached by their district sales
office in Kansas City to create some special edition cars to be sold in
the region. Ford seized the moment to unload cars that had been slated
for ARI and shipped them to KC. 96 Mach 1 Mustangs, 90 Torino Cobras
and 4 Rancheros arrived at the Kansas City Assembly Plant to be stripped of their ARI
logos and have them replaced with the Mach 1 logo, Ford script, and the
Twister Special logo. The Logo symbolized the regions famous weather
anomaly, the tornado, also know as a twister.
The morning of the show, few knew what ford had planned for that late
afternoon. The dealers were taking in the seminars and displays of the
new performance parts that would soon would be made available to them
for sale. Later in the afternoon Ford marched the dealers to lot holding
the 90 Vermilion Torino Cobras and 96 Grabber Orange Mach 1's(All the
Twister Mustangs were Grabber Orange) past the
dealers at the Kansas City International Raceway. The Twister Special
had stolen the show. The dealers could drive them home or have them
delivered to the dealership lots. 48 of the Twister Mach 1's came
equipped with 428 Super Cobra Jet engines, while the remaining 48 units
had a 351 Cleveland power plants.
More information on the Twister Special Mustang, including the
Twister II's produced in the 1985 and the 2008 version now produced by Ford, please check out
Terry Fritts website,
Twister Special Registry.
Terry has been dubbed "Mr. Twister"
by Mustang Monthly magazine and The Worlds Foremost Twister Special
Authority" by automotive photo journalist Tom Shaw. I thank Terry
for allowing me to borrow some of the information from his site to help
people understand the tradition and history behind the specialty
Mustang. Please take a moment and visit his site, GOOD STUFF!
Contributing sources and for further info on the Twister Special pleace
check out the links below.
1982-1993 Mustang GT Registry - 1985 Twister II
Mustangs
Mustang Monthly
R & A Motorsports
Twister Special Registry
Ford Motor Company |
