{"id":202,"date":"2018-05-13T19:09:49","date_gmt":"2018-05-13T19:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/?p=202"},"modified":"2018-05-14T01:17:18","modified_gmt":"2018-05-14T01:17:18","slug":"f-i-a-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/2018\/05\/13\/f-i-a-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"F.I.A. III"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear car friends:<\/p>\n

We just shipped our first European order.\u00a0 The car had to meet Federation International Automobile (F. I. A.) specifications, which are a little different than we are used to.\u00a0 The Federation International Automobile is the authority that supposedly regulates all automobile racing in the civilized world.\u00a0 I suppose that includes Southern California.<\/p>\n

Actually it makes some sense historically.\u00a0 In 1965 Alan Mann Racing out of London raced modified Mustangs coupes before Lee Iacocca asked Shelby to turn the new Mustang fastback into a race car. \u00a0Ol\u2019 Shel\u00a0 took advantage of some of that groundwork, and of course Holman & Moody built some killer Falcons that won their class in the Monte Carlo Rally (remember Grace Kelly & Prince Rainer ?) before Mustangs even were.\u00a0 \u00a0The Mustang, of course, was built on the Falcon platform.\u00a0 There\u2019s a gnome in Switzerland with documents and photos that we had to satisfy before our customer could race his car in Europe\u2026took a little doing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

JEREMY HALL -LEFT\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 JIM MARIETTA -RIGHT\u00a0\u00a0 Signature wall behind<\/p>\n

Jim Marietta & I went to dinner with Jeremy Hall his last night in town at the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach. \u00a0Jeremy is based out of London, and is the F.I.A. inspector for the U.S.\u00a0 The Portofino was the finish line for the Cannonball Run, a no holds barred race organized a few years back by the late Brock Yates, publisher of Car & Driver magazine.\u00a0 The plan was to see who could get from the Red Ball Garage in N.Y.C. to the Portofino in the shortest time, by any route, driving your choice of vehicle.\u00a0 There were several movies made about it, including one staring Bert Reynolds.\u00a0 Google \u201cCannonball Run.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0 Designer and fellow O.V.C. member Peter Brock, ran the first race with a couple of friends all dressed up as priests, while driving a tricked out Mercedes sedan.\u00a0\u00a0 Bibles and religious statues were strewn on the dash, sort of like ticket repellent.<\/p>\n

Brock Yates and co-driver Dan Gurney won that race driving a Ferrari Daytona.\u00a0 Dan said they drove responsibly, \u201cNever went over 170.\u201d\u00a0 Coincidentally, that was as fast as the car would go.\u00a0 \u00a0I think Brock Yates would approve of the car we built.\u00a0 The motor makes about 455 ponies out of 289 cubic inches.\u00a0 Our \u201cnormal\u201d car makes 440 horse power out of 330 cubes.\u00a0 I guess that proves the old saying \u201cNothing beats cubic inches…except cubic money.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We took the F.I.A. car to \u00a0Willow Springs race track 3 times to get everything working right.\u00a0\u00a0 Our test driver Rick Titus (son of original Team Shelby driver Jerry Titus) tested it against the I.R.S. prototype car.\u00a0\u00a0 He said the I.R.S. car is more nimble and predictable in the corners, but the F.I.A. car could \u201cRun off and hide on the straights.\u201d\u00a0 As you may recall, when we finished the I.R.S. car we took it to the Shelby & Ford Nationals in Tulsa where it won its first race, so it\u2019s no slouch.\u00a0 \u00a0I\u2019m looking forward to the F.I.A. car setting the tracks in Europe on fire.\u00a0 455 horses in a 2,800 pound car\u2026like killing flies with a sledge hammer.<\/p>\n

It occurred to me that after we get all 36 of the Continuation Competition Models finished, some of us may be joining Mr. Shelby at that sports bar in the sky, or the sports bar in that other place. \u00a0Either way it\u2019s been a hell of an adventure.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

My son Michael taking a farewell shot as our offspring leaves for battle in Europe.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear car friends: We just shipped our first European order.\u00a0 The car had to meet Federation International Automobile (F. I. A.) specifications, which are a little different than we are used to.\u00a0 The Federation International Automobile is the authority that supposedly regulates all automobile racing in the civilized world.\u00a0 I suppose that includes Southern California. … Continue reading “F.I.A. III”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8gW0j-3g","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214,"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions\/214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}