Horse Power   Graham Smith - 1998   Used by permission of Graham Smith – as appeared in Unique Cars May 1998       It exploded into view like a brilliant red starburst and roared past in a blur of colour and noise. It was like nothing ever seen before and along with its driver would rock Australian motor sport to its very foundations in the years to come.       The time was April 1969, the place Sandown and the car was a 1969 Trans Am Mustang, the most advanced touring car to race in Australia up that point. At the wheel was Allan Moffat, the first truly professional racing driver to compete here, and on its flanks were Coca-Cola stickers suggesting he had the million dollar backing of the world’s largest soft drink manufacturer.       Rival racers feared the potent Mustang, they feared the determined Moffat, and they feared the Coke money. Their fears were well founded for Moffat and the Mustang would recast the mould of Australian motor racing.       The Sandown meeting was a relatively minor affair, but it pitted the tin-top heroes of the day against each other in a series of three 10-lap sprint races. Against the best Australia could offer, Moffat won all three races in what was a perfect start for a car that would go on to win 101 of its 151 race starts. Sandown was also the world debut of the ’69 Trans Am, and Moffat’s was its first win. Moffat’s rivals were shocked by the ease of the wins and struggled to come to grips with the reality of the car’s potential.       “Pete (Geoghegan) knew what he was up against, Bob (Jane) thought he could beat it by out spending us, and Norm (Beechey) didn’t know what he was looking at,” Allan reflected.       Unlike the cars raced by Geoghegan, Jane and Beechey which were all home-grown specials using experience built-up over years of hotting-up cars without factory assistance, Moffat’s Mustang was purpose-built by the Ford factory to win the Trans Am championship in America. Based on the production Mustang the Trans Am race cars were built by Kar Kraft, Ford’s American racing division and then sent to Ford’s factory-backed race teams for final race preparation.       Trans Am rules limited engine capacity to five litres so Ford powered the Mustang with a newly developed small block 302 cubic inch V8 they called the Boss 302. It had a single four barrel Holley carburettor but local rules allowed Moffat to switch to four Weber downdraft carburettors. Moffat says he regularly revved it to 7500 rpm and the best power he got out of it was about 490 horsepower (366kW). With a steel crank, forged rods and pistons it was virtually bullet-proof, although its Achilles heel was valve springs and they accounted for most of its race retirements, Moffat remembers.       “In those days valve springs were a problem for everyone, the technology hadn’t yet reached the stage where you could put them in and know they would last 500 miles,” he said. “You could take all the care you wanted, replace them as often as you wanted but there was no guarantee they would last. And when they went you prayed the block wouldn’t be damaged because there was no spare.”       In America the cars could be stripped of all interior trim but under local rules Moffat had to refit much of it including the back seat.       On this side of the Pacific, touring car racing hadn’t yet reached the level of professionalism that the Mustang represented and its arrival here created a ruction seldom seen here before. Such was the fear it inspired that a push was made to allow10-inch wide wheels in place of the eight-inch rims then allowed. It was all in vain, however, as Moffat simply dialled Detroit and had 10-inch Minilite wheels designed to replace the original American Racing wheels.       Moffat himself also caused some consternation among his rivals for where they were all businessmen who raced, albeit successfully, on weekends Moffat devoted himself to racing and fine tuning his car. Consequently when they arrived at the track to begin practice Moffat was dialled-in and ready to go and it forced many to rethink their approach to racing.       “There was some resentment towards me,” he said, “because I was doing it professionally where Bob (Jane) and Norm (Beechey) were running their businesses and there was no way they had the same amount of energy at the end of the busy business week to put into their racing.”       Even today Moffat’s Mustang remains the most recognised racing car in Australia, an icon that shines as brightly today as it did at Sandown almost 30 years ago. Sadly Moffat doesn’t own his beloved Mustang any more, he sold it three years ago to Queenslander David Bowden, but he is thankful that Bowden treasures it as much as he does.       The Mustang was the turning point in Moffat’s early career, coming at a time when he was working for Bob Jane with little prospect of racing. In 1967 Moffat raced Mercury Cougars in the Trans Am championship, and a year was hired by Kar Kraft as its development driver. In that role he was heavily involved in the development of the ’68 Trans Am Mustang, which he also raced with the Shelby team whenever the opportunity arose.       But the chances of a regular ride were slim, so at the end of 1968 he returned to Australia on the promise of a deal to race one of bob Jane’s Mustangs. Moffat had helped Jane acquire an ex-Shelby team ’68 Trans Am Mustang, and had proposed that he should drive Jane’s older Mustang while Jane drove the new car.       Moffat says Jane at first agreed but then later reneged leaving him without a drive and an irate Moffat returned to America to lobby his former employers for a Trans Am Mustang to race under his own team banner in Australia in 1969. At best Moffat hoped to get a discarded ’68 car, like Jane’s, but instead was given a brand new car, one of just seven fully race-prepared ’69 Trans Am Mustangs built by Ford that year.       “I sat in a motel room in northern Detroit for four days waiting for the phone to ring to tell me yes or no,” Moffat related. “Then I got the call to go to Bud Moore’s to pick up the car. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me as I was virtually penniless at the time. I had a return ticket in my pocket and enough to keep me going for a couple of weeks but that was it.”       Of the seven cars, three were given to the Shelby team to be run in the Trans Am championship, three were given to Bud Moore Engineering to run in the series and an additional car was given to Moffat to race Down Under. Moffat and the Mustang came to Australia on the same Qantas jet, Moffat upstairs his Mustang downstairs in the cargo hold.       Money came from Coca-Cola and long-time sponsors BP, but Coca-Cola’s help wasn’t anything like as much as his rivals thought, in fact a meagre $9000 for the first year. The support didn’t come from Coca-Cola in America as some people thought but was made up of contributions from each of the Coca-Cola state bottlers with the enthusiastic help of the Victorian state manager.       The deal was in danger of failing almost from the start when the Mustang broke a valve spring on its first appearance at Mallala near Adelaide in front of the South Australian state manager. Not a fan of motor sport, he was all for pulling out of the deal.       “Sandown was extremely important to me because it was the kick-off with Coca-Cola,” he said. “I say that with tongue in cheek because everyone thought we were getting a cheque from New York every month when in fact it was the Melbourne bottler who took the punt on us.”       With no business to support his racing it was necessary to race for appearance and prize money to make ends meet and Moffat and the Mustang could be found at a race track almost every weekend. At one point he recalls racing 17 weeks in a row to get the money to keep going.       Moffat raced the Mustang through to the end of the Improved Production Touring car era at the end of 1972 when the rules were changed to Series Production. He then ran it as a Sports Sedan for the next two years until it became clear that to remain competitive it would have to be radically modified. He chose not to and retired the car in January 1975.       “Rather than cannibalise it to be competitive with the mid-engined cars that were racing as Sports Sedans I decided to park it,” he said. “It virtually never turned a wheel again.”       Although he won plenty of races in the Mustang it saddens him to think that he never won a touring car title in it, his first championship came in a Falcon GT HO in 1973. The closest Moffat came to winning the championship in the Mustang years was in 1971 when he went to Oran Park round needing to win against Jane’s Camaro.       From pole Moffat led for 16 laps until a rushed downshift from third to second under pressure from Jane caused the gear-shift to jam with the ‘box stuck in second. It wasn’t an unknown problem with Ford’s top-loader four-speed so Moffat slowed to a virtual stop while he sorted it out. With the linkage freed he set off in furious chase of Jane and was right on the Camaro’s bumper at the chequered flag but it was all in vain as Jane claimed the title.       Perhaps the best remembered race was at Bathurst in 1972 when Moffat battled his great rival Pete Geoghegan with big Pete in his Super Falcon. Lap after lap the Mustang trailed the falcon’s rear bumper, with Geoghegan’s car spraying oil over the Mustang’s windscreen. For some unknown reason Moffat made the mistake of switching on the wipers which simply smeared the oil across the screen and made matters even worse.       “The only way I could see was to look out the side window and the only way to see out the side window was to undo the seat belts,” he remembered. “I didn’t believe I’d ever do the things I did that day.”       For lap after lap he raced the Falcon, centimetres from its rear bumper the whole while before Geoghegan won the final drag to the finish.       The Mustang was always disadvantaged by its 302 engine when most of its rivals ran larger capacity and could outgun it down the straights. At the Calder championship round in 1972 Moffat tried a fuel-injected 351 cu.in. (5.8-litre) engine, but reverted to the 302 when he found the heavier engine upset the Mustang’s fine handling balance.       After the Mustang was parked it sat in Moffat’s workshop for many years until the high prices being paid in the late ‘80s by American collectors for genuine race cars with a history persuaded him to send the car to America in the hope of realising a high price.       By the time it arrived in the early ‘90s it was too late, the bubble had burst and it sat there until David Bowden bought it. Bowden owns an extensive collection of historic Australian racing cars, including the Moffat’s Lotus-Cortina, his Bathurst winning Falcon GT HO and Mazda RX7, Norm Beechey’s Holden Monaro GTS 350 and many other well-known cars. In time he plans to establish a museum in Queensland to house his collection, with Moffat’s Trans Am Mustang taking centre stage once again.