This is a rare, original 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1 Twister Special, it’s one of the 96 Twister Specials built in 1970, with only 52 still known to exist – according to the official registry.
These are among the least-well-known of the special Mustangs from the time, far less famous than the Shelby or Boss cars, but their history is no less interesting. A significant number of Twister clones have been built over the years, some more accurate than others, but original cars like this one are worth far more.
These are among the least-well-known of the special Mustangs from the time, far less famous than the Shelby or Boss cars, but their history is no less interesting. Image courtesy of Ford.
History Speedrun: The Ford Mustang “Twister Special”
Ford built 96 Twister Special Mustangs in the first half of October 1969, and every single one of them was sold through a single sales district. On the afternoon of November the 7th they sat in a lot at Kansas City International Raceway, parked in numerical order so each dealer could find the car assigned to them.
The district’s own paperwork for the day set it out in plain administrative language – the cars were to be delivered by 3:00 pm, invoices placed inside each one, drive-out release forms signed at 4 o’clock, and a transport company booked for Saturday to collect and deliver whatever wasn’t driven away on the day.
All 96 were Mach 1 SportsRoof Mustangs in Grabber Orange, with a black stripe along each flank and a tornado decal on each rear quarter panel. The name came from Tornado Alley, which runs straight through the middle of the district’s territory – across Kansas and Missouri.
Why Did 96 Mustangs Go To Kansas City?
The story most commonly told is that the Twisters were orphans, you see, American Raceways Inc., the company Detroit land developer Lawrence LoPatin built around Michigan International Speedway and a planned network of superspeedways, ordered pace cars from Ford, went broke, and left Ford to strip the racetrack graphics and drop the cars in Kansas City.
The Twister Special Registry, which spent years assembling the serial number list from Ford invoices, published that version and then controversially retracted it.
This is a rare, original 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1 Twister Special, it’s one of the 96 Twister Specials built in 1970, with only 52 still known to exist according to the official registry.
Its corrected account runs the other way – LoPatin, a personal friend of Ford president Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen, asked for pace cars for five existing or planned tracks. Ford’s Special Promotions Division built ten 1970 Mustangs, five fastbacks and five convertibles, all with 428 Super Cobra Jets, all sent to a Dearborn garage to have their drivetrains balanced and blueprinted.
Unsurprisingly, that work was expensive, and so to cover it, Special Promotions needed a district willing to pre-sell roughly 100 promotional cars, and Kansas City, DSO 53, took the deal. The registry’s summary is that without the Twisters, there’d have been no ARI pace cars at all.
The serial numbers support this later version of events, you see the Twisters fall in the 118,000 VIN range while the registry places the ARI cars in the 120,000s. The latter can’t have come before the former.
A Shortage Of Big Blocks
The original order specified 100 Mach 1s, light on comfort and heavy on hardware, included the 428 Super Cobra Jet, Drag Pack, competition suspension, power front discs, a shaker scoop, and F70-14 Goodyear Polyglas raised-white-letter tires. The only two non-performance options on the sheet were an AM radio and tinted glass.
Tragically, Dearborn didn’t have enough engines. Only 48 428 V8s were on hand at the time, so the remaining 48 cars got the newly released 351 Cleveland V8 four-barrel instead. The 428 cars divide evenly, 24 automatics and 24 four-speeds, all on 3.91 Traction-Lok axles. The 351 cars don’t – the registry counts 39 automatics against just 9 four-speeds, all on 3.50 rear ends.
The gearing difference was down to the fact that the Drag Pack required a 3.91 or 4.30 axle, so only the 428 cars were fitted with it. The package brought cap-screw connecting rods, revised balancing, and an external engine oil cooler. Roger Parlette, a Ford engineer on the Cobra Jet program, later explained that the cooler offered no drag racing benefit at all.
This is a 1970 Mustang Mach 1 Twister Special, one of 96 built and one of 52 the registry has so far accounted for. Its specification puts it in the more common of the two engine groups but a well-documented subset within it – the 351 V8 paired with an automatic transmission, of which just 18 are currently known to survive.
Oil temperatures had run well past 300ºF in wind tunnel testing, and Ford fitted it because owners in Texas were cruising at sustained high speed on 4.30 gears and destroying engines under warranty.
Both engines were quoted in the gross figures of the day – 335 bhp at 5,200 rpm and 440 lb ft for the 428, and 300 bhp for the 351 Cleveland four-barrel.
Total Performance Day
The invitation went out on October the 28th, 1969, from the desk of district sales manager C.V. Toussaint. It promised Ford’s Drag Team, Bob Tasca’s performance seminar, a barbecue lunch, and an afternoon in which dealers could run the quarter mile and the road course themselves for trophies. Toussaint’s pitch was the market itself – performance car sales, he wrote, had gone “from 55,000 in 1964 to an estimated 800,000 in 1970.”
Ford’s own news release from the day described a drive-away of 200 specially built cars, 100 Mustangs and 100 Torino Cobras. The real numbers, outside the realm of the PR department, were 96 Mustangs, 90 Torino Cobras, and two Ranchero GTs.
Survivors + Revivals
Ford built 40,970 Mach 1s in 1970, and of the 96 Twisters, 52 had been located by the registry’s last published tally, with four written off and one stolen. At Mecum’s Kissimmee sale in early-2021, a 428 SCJ automatic Twister carrying a $100,000 to $125,000 estimate hammered at $195,000, or $214,500 with commission – for many, the result was staggering.
The Twister name has come back twice so far, Ford’s Kansas City district introduced 90 Mustang GT Twister IIs at an Overland Park luncheon in November of 1984, 15 years after the original program. It surfaced again in 2008 and 2009 on Mustang GTs converted and serialized by R&A Motorsports of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, which planned a run of 96 but is estimated to have completed just 22.
The 1970 Ford Mustang Twister Special Shown Here
This is a 1970 Mustang Mach 1 Twister Special, one of 96 built and one of 52 the registry has so far accounted for. Its specification puts it in the more common of the two engine groups but a well-documented subset within it – the 351 V8 paired with an automatic transmission, of which just 18 are currently known to survive.
Ford built 96 Twister Special Mustangs in the first half of October 1969, and every single one of them was sold through a single sales district. On the afternoon of November the 7th they sat in a lot at Kansas City International Raceway, parked in numerical order so each dealer could find the car assigned to them.
It has been through a nut-and-bolt restoration and is finished in the correct Grabber Orange over a black interior, with bucket seats and a center console. Equipment includes power steering, power brakes with front discs, a Shaker hood, front and rear spoilers, a Philco AM radio, and Magnum 500 wheels on Goodyear Polyglas tires.
The car was featured in the June 2008 issue of Muscle Car Review and it’s now due to roll across the auction block with Mecum in Monterey. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Mecum
Articles that Ben Branch 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.
