Mustangs don't come much hotter than this one
The famous 1968 Ford Mustang Cobra Jet was not the work of the clever marketing people in Dearborn, but of a private individual, Bob Tasca. However, Bob was not just any American, but an influential dealer in Rhode Island. He used standard Ford components to assemble a vehicle that was capable of driving everything Ford had to offer in the Mustang range into the ground.
The birth of the legendary Ford Mustang KR-8 was even due to a coincidence. When Tasca mechanic Billy Loomis took his boss's Mustang for a spin one evening, he obviously forgot that it was a manual version. He thought he was in the automatic "D" position and stepped on the gas, simply forgetting to change gear until the valves tried to find a way out of the engine housing. Bob Tasca was not at all pleased about the mishap, but seized the opportunity and installed a "428 Police Interceptor Short Block" unit instead of the previous engine, refined with a few more parts from the Ford spare parts warehouse.
The result was well over 400 hp, which Tasca then demonstrated to the Ford people a few days later, because he was of the opinion that Ford no longer had anything to offer on a par with the increasingly powerful competitor products in quarter-mile and road races.
The Ford managers were impressed (and had the engine taken apart because they couldn't understand why the car was better than their own products), but the spark had not yet been ignited.
It wasn't until Tasca used its relationship with the motoring press and 'Hot Rod' ran a feature on the Tasca Mustang, inviting interested readers to write a letter to Ford if they were interested in such a vehicle, that the tide turned. Many Ford customers responded to the call and the American manufacturer configured 50 lightweight Mustangs and equipped them with the 428 Cobra big-block engine. 11 of them went to Ford dealer Tasca.
The auction house Mecum will now be auctioning off one of these 11 Tasca Mustangs at Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee (Florida) on Saturday, January 26, 2013. You won't get a rare Mustang cheaply there, however, as the estimated price has been set at USD 275,000 to 325,000, well within Shelby Mustang territory or even higher. Perhaps not too much for a car that heralded the beginning of an impressive Mustang dominance on the "drag strip".
P.S. "Lightweight" in the case of the '68 Mustang meant neither exotic materials (aluminum, plastic) nor lighter chassis construction. In fact, a few things - radio, automatic transmission, etc. - were simply left out. - were simply omitted.
P.S.2 And what became of the original KR-8? Tasca Junior wrapped it around a telephone booth six weeks after getting his driver's license.
