The 1971 Torino GT and the decline and fall of NASCAR

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  • @Longhorn-s7z
    @Longhorn-s7z 10 месяцев назад +2

    Purchased my 71 Torino GT in the Summer of 1983 for $1250.00 cash. Green with 3m stripes, 351, C6 , 2 BBL. Swapped it out with a 429 in 1986, Great memories!

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  10 месяцев назад

      I bet it was a lot more fun with that 429! The 70-71 Torinos were seriously great looking cars.

  • @LeftyLucyRightyTyty
    @LeftyLucyRightyTyty Год назад +5

    Nascar is nothing but a kit car based spec series now. However, I beg to differ with you on a few points. The Torino (# 17) that you hold up as a shining example of a "Stock" car...was in itself a highly modified race car that started life as a 1966 Fairlane. The "twisted monstrosities" you put down were in fact examples of inovation and engineering prowess on the point of the crews that created them. As unconventional as they appeared, they passed Technical inspection. The First COT car was the beginning of the end, as far as I'm concerned. The current car is part of sweeping up the ashes. Every nut and bolt is spec'd and has a part number and a specified vendor. Gone are the days of inovation (there is nothing stock about a stockcar). Inovation is what drew me to this sport...and it is gone.

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  Год назад +4

      You are right about number 17, but it does use factory sheet metal even if it’s a half tube chassis purpose built race car that started life as a production chassis. None of the twisted monstrosities do. So the modern ones lose their connection with the common man and the cars they are supposed to represent. Yes I do admire spec race car engineering of the modern Nascar’s, but I think they’ve lost the plot. And I wish they’d return to some form of homologated series but I doubt I’ll ever see it.

  • @user-vx1wo3fs7v
    @user-vx1wo3fs7v Год назад +1

    Beautiful collection of cars.
    some of the cars that I owned.
    I had a silver/grey 1971 Mach I, 351 4 v Cleveland, C-6 automatic.
    A white 1969 Boss 302 Couger Eliminator.
    A maroon 1967 Fairlane GTA, 390 4v and the A stands for automatic.
    A 1966 Galaxie 500, 390 4v.
    A 1963 Galaxie 500, with a 390 Thunderbird engine.
    A 1968 GTO 400, 4 speed.
    A 1969 Roadrunner 383, 4 speed
    A 1970 AMC Javelan 390, 4 speed with 4:10 Detroit locker rear end.
    A 1974 TransAm with a 455 SD motor, automatic.
    My present week-end car is a 2017 Mustang GT convertible, 5.0, automatic, Ruby Red with Black trim.

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  Год назад

      Wow, you’ve had a lot of nice cars! It would have been hard for me to let some of those go!

  • @billymania11
    @billymania11 Год назад +5

    I think the speeds were getting so high that tire technology couldn't keep up and terrible accidents would begin to happen on the high-speed tracks. That was probably was a big factor in France's decision to ban the wing cars. It's sad because it seemed like a step back for most of us. I hate to say it but that probably saved lives. Of course we'll never know. I'll be honest and say that going to spec cars was not a good move.

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  Год назад +1

      Yeah the Dodge Daytona was way ahead of its time and definitely the tire technology of that era. I wish they would have advanced alongside the GT IMSA class cars but I guess they had other plans. The one good thing I can say about modern NASCAR is that it helps continue the advancement of pushrod V8 technology for both GM and especially Ford which discontinued pushrods from their production line up.

    • @jamesmedina2062
      @jamesmedina2062 6 месяцев назад

      @@scottsvt9104 is this sarcasm or do you really admire the "technology" of the pushrod engine?

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  6 месяцев назад

      @@jamesmedina2062 I still build the old pushrod engines. The only good thing I like about NASCAR is that it keeps Ford producing aftermarket pushrod parts which allow me to keep building the old engines. The new head technology is impressive. I can slap on a set of modern aluminum heads on a basic stock 302 short block with a matching intake and camshaft which will net me 500 horsepower at the flywheel… which is a huge jump from the stock 215 horsepower. You couldn’t do that 40 years ago without exotic race parts. Of course my pushrod 302 is a 331, so hopefully it’s laying down close to 500hp to the wheels. Which would mean my old Mustang is capable of mid 10 second quarter mile times at its weight. All I want to do is trap around 130mph in the quarter mile. That tells me all I need to know without a dyno. No doubt my DOHC V8’s are more efficient at making power. I’ve got no disagreement with you there.

    • @jamesmedina2062
      @jamesmedina2062 6 месяцев назад

      @@scottsvt9104 Oh no we all need to be dubious about ascribing anything to people we have never met. I purposely did not say very much when I asked. And I keep an open mind. I by no means think that head cams solve everything. There is so much I don't know. For whatever reason there is no perfect engine that can do everything well. There are compromises. People say that the holy grail is a fat torque curve and that forced induction will give you that but we all know that a NA motor will spin up quicker than that turbo car so now who's the winner? It can be very hard to decide.

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  6 месяцев назад

      @@jamesmedina2062 Ah, well it all depends on what you like or what type of racing you want to do. There are so many types of engines to choose from. Sometimes a turbo 4 cylinder will be a better choice than a V8. Are you looking to build a car? Like you say there will always be a compromise.

  • @MrBilly235
    @MrBilly235 Год назад

    Fantastic video, thank you my good man!

  • @davidhibbs6989
    @davidhibbs6989 6 месяцев назад +1

    A friend of mine had a 71 SCJ 429 convertible 4spd back in 1980' he lent it to me for the day and the car got away from me at an intersection at 100mph and hit a traffic light pole backwards and totaled it up to the back seat. And when my friend came to the hospital to see me he said are you really hurting like really bad as I moaned loud. And I said yeah man I'm hurting really bad and he said "great 😂 because you completely destroyed my car! Many years later he's still crying over his car. Especially what's it's worth today. He paid $2000. For it with 52,000 miles on it. I've had to listen to his crying for years and I even gave him $2k about a year ago and said I guess we're even now right 🤣

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  6 месяцев назад +2

      Dang, must have hit real hard. At least you survived. I mean I might be crying too if it was my car but my dad paid less than $2k for the one in the video. It’s hard to believe how cheap these cars used to be.

  • @wlm2618
    @wlm2618 7 месяцев назад +1

    NASCAR did everything they could to push their fellow stockholder’s, GM, cars to the front. They just could not keep up without rules help.

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  7 месяцев назад

      Come to think of it. Chevy never made an aero car. I guess they needed to hold everyone back.

  • @monteconnor4713
    @monteconnor4713 9 месяцев назад

    Followed it faithfully from 1976 till 2003, it stopped be good around 1999, when they allowed Ford to race a 4 door car, the Taurus

  • @shanew.williams
    @shanew.williams 11 месяцев назад

    The overhead views of the #29 @10:25 and the #24 @10:40 are an EXCELLENT illustration of what's killed NASCAR for anyone who likes "Stock Car Racing." It's why the younger fans almost never mention "Ford, Chevy" etc, They say no It's a "NASCAR." That galls me !

  • @HFX1955
    @HFX1955 9 дней назад

    Didn't Dodge have to do something similar with the Charger 500 which had the tunnel back window of the standard Charger flush mounted?

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  9 дней назад

      @@HFX1955 Yes they did. They had to change the design because the back window kept getting sucked out at high speeds.

  • @jamiebowles4588
    @jamiebowles4588 Год назад

    Absolutely gorgeous pair.

  • @johngilbert6036
    @johngilbert6036 7 месяцев назад

    I Am no longer a Nascar fan the last race I went to was 74 to watch Petty in his Plymouth 43 and David Pearson in the Wood Brothers Mercury.

  • @larryjex6485
    @larryjex6485 7 месяцев назад

    This reminds me of what was happening in the 2-wheeled world of racing in the '50s. Before the '60s, racing motorcycles had supercharged engines, tiny V-8's and full streamlining in the form of "dustbin" fairings. All kind of BS excuses were being contrived to ban virtually any innovation, and anything that made the bikes look different from their street legal counterparts.

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  7 месяцев назад +1

      Could have advanced a lot quicker without all the restrictions. It’s crazy how much the rules hold back what could be an innovative sport that benefits everyone.

  • @airforceveteran71
    @airforceveteran71 Год назад

    Had a '70 Torino GT with 351...bought for $1200 back in the early 90's...like to find a '71 429 CJ...rare for sure.

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  Год назад +2

      I love these cars. My dad bought the one you see in the video for exactly $1200 back in 2007 from the original owner. He drove it home and man the car was almost completely original. We began restoring it right away. Took a few years but we got it fully restored. It was the first car I ever did a full restoration on and a complete paint job. Around the same time some guy had a 70 ranchero with a 429 CJ that I should have bought but I didn’t have the money. He wanted $3500 for it and it was a good running car that he was daily driving. These cars are so hard to find now.

  • @charlesduke3835
    @charlesduke3835 Год назад +1

    Love the Torino 👍

  • @willyhwang1059
    @willyhwang1059 8 месяцев назад

    you look great with the hat dude

  • @mkowboy13
    @mkowboy13 7 месяцев назад

    Oh hell ya that would be the dream I would want a Torino or Falcon that matches my Mercury car

  • @derektrieglaff9103
    @derektrieglaff9103 Год назад

    Even though I agree with the fact that nascar hasnt been good since the early 70's... i have to say that the retardation of performance and speed to save lives was actually a pretty good thing. If the speeds kept up past the 200 mph marks then there would likely have been not only driver deaths but also spectator deaths. Not only were the tires not up to the speeds but the racetrack safety standards werent up to handle wrecks at that speed either. The retention fences for the grandstands were not much more than a screen stapled to some 2x4s. (Thats obviously hyperbole)... until the tracks were ready to develop better safety standards and equipment, they couldnt let the drivers uncork the speed demon and let it fly in the wind. Honestly, track equipment and vehicle equipment didnt catch up to those speeds until the early 2000's.

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  Год назад

      Yeah the Daytona’s and Superbirds were getting ridiculously fast. And a lot of those race cars were still using drum brakes. It was wild. They probably did save more lives. Maybe they could have redesigned a few race tracks but of course that’s super expensive.

  • @shanew.williams
    @shanew.williams Год назад

    For the 1970-71 seasons, the factory Ford NASCAR teams dismissed using the new Ford Torinos due to an unfavorable front end geometry. NASCAR rules at the time allowed use of the 3 latest model years cars,therefore, the front running Fords were all running 1969 Torino's in 1971. * (The lone exception being Bobby Allison's Holman Moody 1971 Torino winning a couple of races mid season.)

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  Год назад +1

      The stock Torino 1970-1971 front ends created too much lift. Without the King Cobra front ends they were pretty much useless on the extremely fast tracks compared to the much more aerodynamic Talladega Torino. The 70-71’s advantage was only on the technical courses or shorter tracks where they didn’t pick up as much speed.

  • @buttslappingpirate
    @buttslappingpirate Год назад +1

    1. "Real cars" began to disappear after the 1967 Daytona 500, and Mario Andretti's win in a '67 Fairlane...in which the only 'real' part of the car was the outside body shell. It was a modified Galaxie chassis underneath (which later showed up under Darrell Waltrip's first NASCAR car), and every Fairlane or Torino from that point until the 1972 season was essentially a purpose-built ride. Oddly enough, there was actually a return to the original 'stock car' for 1972 (at least from Ford, anyway), as body-on-frame midsized cars replaced the superior unibody units (they became worse aerodynamically as time went on, at least until the much-smaller Box bird showed up in 1980). They were actually more stock from 1972-1979 than they were from 1967-1971.
    2. Have you been listening to old boomers concerning just how great NASCAR was in the 1960's? The racing was actually freaking terrible, you'd have winners who would be ahead of second place by multiple laps at the end of the race, it was a freaking death sentence most of the time to get into any sort of an accident (look up Lee Roy Yarbrough if you want a horror story about NASCAR crashes during this era), and reliability of the cars themselves was absolutely hideous: You couldn't run a race in your car at full steam, the valve springs wouldn't handle the stress, you had to pick where you wanted to run your fastest, and your engine might last 100 miles before you had to back off...for the rest of the race. Valvespring technology wouldn't improve until Bud Moore figured out that you were supposed to flood your valve covers with oil, and even then, it still wasn't a full-length run, that only occurred in the last 20 years, when valvespring technology took its greatest leap forward.
    Yes, NASCAR's politics are fucking terrible, most of the child drivers are terrible, the cars themselves are terribly underdeveloped...but the racing has actually improved inexplicably on the whole since the Next Gen came out.
    3. The 'factory' door panel on the driver's side has a rectangular repair to cover up the power window switch hole. Original to this car, or another one?
    4. I had a 5-hour conversation with Larry Shinoda about both of these cars (the King Cobra and Spoiler II) two years before he passed away (I was researching a King Cobra clone build, I simply dialed his number, he picked up immediately and wouldn't stop talking).
    The front end wasn't as bad as you're implying, if it was plowing, the body channels forward, and produces a bigger target for the air to hit in the rear, which is why one of the Ford prototypes has a bubble rear window versus the normal fastback glass. Concerning the issue of the rear glass and rear wing, the Mercury was 4mph faster at Daytona...with the same nose, and without a wing.
    5. The issue with why the King Cobra/Spoiler II were never sent into battle is that Ford pulled the plug on the Total Performance era for the 1970 season, when motorsports budgets were slashed 75%...across the board. Larry notes that neither of these cars went beyond more than a few days of track testing, and first Bunkie Knudsen was fired in 1969, with Larry fired almost immediately afterward (right as development was moving forward with these two cars). NASCAR had nothing to do with why these cars never went anywhere, there wasn't any development money available after the budget slashing by Lee Iacocca (remember, all Ford motorsports were slashed, Trans-Am was even cut down to one factory Ford team), so it was pretty much ran as it was, never mind it was terrible at any mid-level or speedway track versus the Superbird, the Daytona, or even the previous-gen Ford/Mercury.

    • @rj.voodoo
      @rj.voodoo Год назад

      Listen here young buck, everyone born before ‘67 knows nascar died the summer of ‘71. I remember listening to zeppelin with my diddy listening to some of the races when we lived in bowling green Kentucky, and it was good stuff. I reckon these young rascals don’t know nun about that!!!

    • @buttslappingpirate
      @buttslappingpirate Год назад

      @@rj.voodoo NASCAR is an entertainment venue, just like...fixed professional wrestling. The problem is when the NASCAR entertainers fly over the top rope.

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  Год назад +1

      1. Real cars are defined by using a production chassis and body shell. In fact the body shell is the most important part. A cage that ties it all together doesn’t change the fact that the body shell is quite literally the frame of a unibody car.
      2. I watch vintage NASCAR and it is immediately obvious that the 1960’s races are superior to modern NASCAR. Much more fun to watch.
      3. The door panel is definitely an original one. Whether or not it’s original to the car is up for debate. But I am the man who did all the paint and bodywork on that Torino.
      4. By plow I mean downforce was good enough that the rear would lift especially since there was no rear wing to counteract the force. Of course the concave rear glass didn’t help much. Aero Technology would take a huge step forward in 1976 with group 5 cars. No reason NASCAR couldn’t take a hint from that series.
      5. The real issue was that NASCAR changed the rules for 1970 and required 3000 speciality cars be produced for homologation instead of 500. Neither Ford or Dodge had the budget. Plymouth got close.

  • @DarrenShaw-ev5tb
    @DarrenShaw-ev5tb Год назад

    That Torino ! - Is what WOODYS are made from ( luv Luv )

  • @Stufftowatch21
    @Stufftowatch21 Год назад

    My favorite was 1975 Grand Torino

  • @petertornabeni602
    @petertornabeni602 11 месяцев назад

    You know, we had seen the best cars and the best drivers. The likes of which are no longer. NASCAR is a thing of the past. gone. POOF 💥 - history.

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  11 месяцев назад +1

      Yep, that era was special. It’s sad that it’s all history now. I wish I could have seen it in person.

  • @futten3230
    @futten3230 7 месяцев назад

    i wouldent say it died in 71 as they still used factory based cars up to the late 70s the bespoke tube chassis started off in the 80s really i mean you seem to have a bias for with fords which i get ford have been very innovative over the years where as chevy and chrysler has stuck more to the older recipe on building cars and engines but i still think nascar had innovations up til the 90s and after that there was more and more standerization of the cars making them all equal which is dull and the drivers being premadonnas

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  7 месяцев назад +1

      You are right. When I say died it’s really just the end of the muscle car era for me which isn’t completely Nascars fault due to the economy and fuel crisis. However like you said, they could have kept on innovating instead of using standardization which is a real let down in my opinion. NASCAR could have been so much more.

    • @futten3230
      @futten3230 7 месяцев назад

      @@scottsvt9104 emagine if smokey yunick harry hyde etc were allowed to build as they saw fit one thing with smokey he was very early on in improving the safety of cars by building X in the roof section of the rollcage and he did this in the late 50s already

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  7 месяцев назад

      @@futten3230 Absolutely! It’s unfortunate the NASCAR heads didn’t see it that way! Smokey was a true innovator!

  • @eddiebowens1919
    @eddiebowens1919 Год назад +1

    I have been saying the samething for years! today's NASCAR SUCKS

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  Год назад +1

      At least I’m not the only one who thinks the same! Most people get offended when you say it.

    • @rj.voodoo
      @rj.voodoo Год назад

      Exactly ! These young bucks don’t know anything about real nascar. Back when Budweiser tasted like real beer

  • @sandy8090
    @sandy8090 11 месяцев назад

    😏 'Promo SM'

  • @lr7633
    @lr7633 Год назад

    stopped watching after the g bodies

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  Год назад

      I think the G bodies were some of the very last production based NASCAR’s. They were the last true hold outs. Afterwards NASCAR started going the cookie cutter route.

  • @geraldscott4302
    @geraldscott4302 Год назад +1

    The France family destroyed NASCAR.

  • @samthompson1080
    @samthompson1080 Год назад +4

    I stopped watching when Toyota joined

    • @scottsvt9104
      @scottsvt9104  Год назад +2

      Toyota joining NASCAR never made sense to me. Lol

    • @rj.voodoo
      @rj.voodoo Год назад

      Exactly

    • @chadbailey189
      @chadbailey189 Год назад +1

      sad that more toyotas are made in usa then American brands

    • @samthompson1080
      @samthompson1080 Год назад

      @@chadbailey189 Plus. NASCAR today are just fiberglass bodies on a tube frame. Not like the old day when they used cars that you could buy at your local dealer..