FeaturedFord TalladegaHistorical Paperwork and Memos

What were the tooling costs for the Talladega?

When ever Talladega owners get together someone will always mention the high cost of building the cars and how Ford lost money on every one of them. I have never before actually seen an estimate but this document begins to provide an answer. Even in 1968 dollars this estimate is way less than most have speculated. However, note the first sentence, “Estimated Program Costs Based on 200 Vehicle Build”.

Richard

Some of my first and strongest memories from my childhood relate to cars. I still remember when things happened based on what car I was driving at the time. I grew up and lived in Iowa for nearly 40 years before moving to Southern California and now live in Tennessee. I was a Corvette fanatic for years but then re-discovered vintage American Muscle. My wife, Katrina, and I decided we wanted to focus on unique and rare muscle cars. After a lot of research we fell in love with the Ford Blue Oval Aero Cars. These were only built in 1969 and and aerodynamics became an important part of winning races. The only purpose of these limited production cars was to win NASCAR races using the Boss 429 and 427 power plants complimented with a special, wind cheating, aerodynamic body. The Ford Talladega and Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II are terrific and historic cars. This site is devoted to these car and their owners past and present. We provide an Online Registry for recording the long term history and ownership of every remaining Talladega, Spoiler and Spoiler II.

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One Comment

  1. Richard & Marty,

    Very interesting, and I suspect very optimistic, estimates. (It is also interesting to see it titled: “Fairlane NASCAR Program” as virtually all labeling of the car during races called it either a Torino, or a Cobra.

    I also have to ask why the “200” unit run estimate, as they would have known that NASCAR was officially requiring a minimum run of 500, and supposedly, Ford built about 750…

    These appear to be projections by someone who was trying to convince management to fund the project. I wonder what the real numbers were…

    Great stuff! Please keep it coming.

    Thanks,

    Carl.

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