The Ford Mustang Boss 302 Trans Am was built with a very specific task in mind – Ford wanted to trounce the Chevrolet Camaros in the SCCA Trans-Am Series and reclaim their crown as the fastest pony car manufacturer in the United States.
Chevrolet has joined the pony car bandwagon in 1967 with the Camaro, a car that blasted to the front of the pack in the Trans-Am field and won the championship in 1968 and 1969. Ford responded quickly, Larry Shinoda had been hired away from GM (where he had been a leading force in the design of the C2 and C3 Corvette), and the Boss 302 Mustang was designed by Shinoda as a no-holds-barred race winning car.
Shinoda removed the fake rear air-scoops on the Mustang and added both a front spoiler and a rear deck wing, a clear indication of intent. The name “Boss” came about by accident, the project had been started in extreme secrecy so as to avoid giving Chevrolet any advance warning – so when he was asked what he was working on at Ford Shinoda would just reply “the Boss’ car”.
The Trans-Am Series limited engine sizes to 5 litres (305 cubic inches), so Ford developed a G Code engine using a Ford Windsor 302 cubic inch engine block with the cylinder heads from the 351 cubic inch V8. The road-legal homologation version of the Boss 302 Trans Am was fitted with disc brakes up front, thicker front and rear anti-roll bars, a lowered ride height, reinforced shock towers, and a heavy duty 4-speed manual transmission.
Period tests showed that a new Boss 302 could make the 0-60 mph dash in 6.9 seconds, and the quarter mile in 14.6 seconds. These performance numbers translated directly into on-track success – the Boss 302 Mustang won the SCCA Trans-Am Series outright in 1970, and claimed 3 of the first 4 wins in the 1969 season during its debut year.
The extraordinarily well-preserved 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 302 Trans Am you see here is due to be sold by RM Sotheby’s on the 19th of August at the Monterey Auction – if you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can click here to visit the official listing.
Images courtesy of RM Sotheby’s
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
