ADVANCED MUSTANGOLOGY
>>>>
THEMARTI
REPORT
’79 PACE CAR — CAN I TURBOCHARGE THAT FOR YOU?
F
unny thing about the '70s —
they weren’t very funny,
except Saturday Night Live
(yeah, that show used to be funny!).
So much was in disarray, and the
auto industry was no exception.
The oil crisis of 1973 had messed
up the comfort zone of the Big Four
(the carnage was going to reduce
that to the Big Three and eventually
make even that term irrelevant).
One solution Ford was getting
ready to try was turbocharging. Used
for over a decade at the Indianapolis
500 by the Offenhauser team, Ford
decided to debut it on its new Foxbody Mustang for 1979 using the
Lima 2.3L four-cylinder. Nearly reaching the magic 1 hp per cubic inch hotrod standard of the day, it was only
8 hp shy of the V-8 engine at less than
half the displacement.
An AiResearch T-3 unit would
become the choice turbocharger for
the Fox Mustangs. By “choice,” I don’t
mean it was a good one. It was expensive to replace, typically over a thousand dollars for a rebuilt unit (in ’80s
dollars), and it seemed it had to be
replaced often. Like the Boss 302
motor from a decade earlier, it suffered
from an inadequate oiling system.
But the 63rd Indy 500 would be
paced by ’79 Mustangs with Jack
Roush–prepped 5.0L engines and
Jackie Stewart at the wheel. And for
good reason — reliability would haunt
the four-banger motor as long as
there was a carburetor on top.
Still, the public was ready for this
new way to power their rides. So
ready, in fact, that nearly 33,000
Mustangs were sold with the W-code
turbo-four. That represented nearly 10
percent of Mustang sales for the ’79
model year. With the Pace Car
Mustangs, well over half were
ordered with the turbo. Only available
with a manual transmission, a handful
were produced with the four-speed
Overdrive transmission. A couple of
these were sold overseas, and 16 of
them were sold in the United States.
Mustang seats were never conducive to long trips, but the addition of
the Recaro bucket seats in the Pace
Cars drove up the comfort factor substantially. America