Was there a car you saw on TV as a child and dreamed of driving one day? Maybe it was a C3 Corvette or a Ferrari F355. It’s totally possible to make that happen, but the odds are that you won’t get behind the wheel of the exact car you saw on screen. As we all know, Jay Leno can do things differently than the average car guy. He saw a Ford Mustang pacing the 1964 Indianapolis 500 on a black-and-white television as a child and now, decades later, he gets the chance to drive it in one of the latest Jay Leno’s Garage videos.
The catch is that Leno doesn’t own it. It belongs to Bill Ford, Executive Chairman of the company that bears his family name. Although FoMoCo cranked out droves of Mustangs back in the 1960s, it only prepared three Mustangs for the big race. According to Ford, one didn’t end up being ready in time. Another was given to the winning driver, A.J. Foyt, but met a tragic end.
The one shown here was made in the first hour of the first day of Mustang production, according to Ford. It was technically ready for the Indy 500, but it certainly wasn’t mechanically prepared. With its factory V8, it wasn’t able to hit the required 140 mph its special job required.
To get it there, Ford turned the car over to Holman Moody, which installed a GT40 289ci V8. That created its own problem: The engine was too powerful for the Mustang’s chassis, so it had to be detuned to 450 horsepower. Holman Moody paired that monster with what Ford calls an “experimental” BorgWarner four-speed manual gearbox. Other upgrades designed to handle the engine and track duties included bracing under the hood, Koni shocks, and a special exhaust system.
Unfortunately, Leno doesn’t get to take this piece of American racing history out on a track. Instead, he wheels it around the Hollywood Burbank Airport and some nearby public streets, occasionally opening up the V8 and letting outs its nasty snarl. The good news is that that’s enough pavement for him to realize Bill Ford’s Mustang pace car is a winner, even though it didn’t compete in the Indy 500. Leno says, “It drives better, it’s more comfortable than the real one.”
