Other guys Supercars?

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------Did Tasca Ford ever build any upgraded supercars.They did so much performance oriented stuff it would seem like a natural.............Bill S

[tom406]

Tasca did appear to be in that business, with their KR-8 Mustang package featured in HOT ROD. This was a 390GT Mustang fitted with a 428 Short block and a variety of 427 Low Riser and Medium Riser bits to make it a mover. It was a pretty well thought out package, which makes me think they did a few other Mustang and Fairlanes in a similar fashion. Like Yenko, they preferred to let the factory do the dirty work if at all possible, and the KR-8 feature spurred a write-in letter campaign to Ford that pushed them to do the exceptional 428CJ engine program. That's the legend anyway.

Mopar never seemed deny their dealers the biggest engines for their intermediates, so a rule bending, engine swapping dealership wasn't necessary. (Knowledgable mechanics to tune those finicky Hemis running strong were highly sought after, however.)

I think Pontiac dealers were probably in the closest position to emulate the Chevy guys, with similar cars (Firebirds and GTO's)and similar short-block swap options. Where Chevy guys upgraded their 396 bottom ends with 427's, 389 and 400 Pontiacs were easily upgraded with 428 (or prior to that,421's). Royal Pontiac did this for several Pontiac magazine test cars, and I'm sure for paying customers as well. Myrtle Motors in Maspeth, NY offered supercar upgrades to their customers. I have a road test of a Myrtle Motors prepared '68 428/TH400 Firebird. It had a Ram Air top end and a host of supertuning options. It ran 13.90's on F70-14 thin whitewalls and a 12.55sec @ 110MPH on M&H cheater slicks. Total price of the new 'Bird with its tuned 428 was $5149.74. Base price of a Firebird that year was a click under $2800.

The Firebird article was reprinted in a '84-era MuscleCars magazine. I had to smile when one of the articles in there said a Hemi Challenger can "bring as much as $7500 in today's marketplace". (Of course, I was in 10th grade at the time, and that was all the money in the world to me and then some [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img])