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1970 King Cobra Color Charts

The following information was provide by our friend and guru, Rick Ochs.

After our articIe on the King Cobra Stationwagon, Rick he could not find any info on it but did come across some other data we might like to see. One thing he did find interesting is a 1970 Ford factory paint chip sheet. It states that for the “1970 Fairlane Talladega” will be available only in the following colors : Code D: Bright Yellow;

Code N: Platinum;

Code I: Calypso Coral;

Code J: Grabber Blue;

Code U: Grabber Orange; and,

Code Z: Grabber Green.

Could it be that before Ford gave NASCAR racing the axe for 1970 they planned for the Talladega to  be in the 1970 line up with the King Cobra to be a mid-year model as the Talladega’s and Spoiler II’s were in 1969? 

If so, what would the 1970 Talladega have looked like? Would they have continued production of the 1969 body up until December 31, 1969 like Chevrolet did with the 1969 Camaro? Or would it have been some other configuration on the new 1970 Torino body? Possibly the 1970 Talladega could have been just another high performance Torino with little content like a Plymouth Road Runner?

Rick states that John Craft states has a lot of Ford paper on the King Cobra and possibly he can provide some insight. How about it John what do you know about the 1970 Talladega that might have been?

 

1970 Ford Paint Chip Chart

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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2 Comments

  1. Pretty sure that was going to mean the King Cobra. Lots of stuff was still up in the air about the KC programs at the time Ford shut it down. Ford had not settled on the final nose configuration or even name for the proposed (but never built) Mercury version of the KC by the time the whole program was axed in July of 1969. It is likely that the “Talladega” reference was made before the King Cobra name was settled on. I have nver seen a reference in my internal Fomoco docs to a 1970 Talladega. If you know where to look, there are random references to the propsed long nosed 1970 Fords in bits and pieces of Ford related literature. My favorite is the line drawing of a KC in an early 1970 high performance Ford power parts type brochure. Sadly, the cars never reached production.

  2. To answer some off site questions as to why the paint chip sheet for 1970 calls the Talladega a “Fairlane”. Ford in many of the factory sheets of paper work we have would call a model in the car line up by the line the car was built on.
    This is backed up on the Talladega build sheets. If you have a build sheet for your Talladega look at the top line and you will see a box calling out “Car Line” in the box below you see F…the F was the code for Fairlane thus many Torino’s as well as Talladega’s were some times called a Fairlane .
    As to the comment the “but never built” Mercury version of the King Cobra I did see the story in “Muscle Car Review” showing one the best Ford restorers of “The Going Thing ” years and the owner of the Mercury King Cobra going over the paper work ! But I have never seen any Ford Paper work that states the car was never built. Would love to see that if it is really out there ! I recall posting a add from a late 1969 race track program that showed the 1970 Going thing line up,it showed a 1970 Torino Cobra with the number’s 43 and in King Richard’s Blue color .. but before the the program went to print the 43 and so on was air brushed over but you could still see the lettering and numbers. I posted this on the early TorinoCobra.com web site I will have to dig it up and send it to Richard to post here. It was very interesting because the 70 Torino in the add had no T or K C front end.

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