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Cy Schmidt’s 1969 Mercury Cyclone CJ has spent decades doing exactly what it was built for, cruising the backroads of Ohio instead of sitting under a cover. Mercury built the Cyclone as its answer to the Mustang, and the Cobra Jet engine under the hood gave it a reputation gearheads still respect today. Petrolicious caught up with Schmidt for a late-afternoon drive that shows why this often-overlooked muscle car still turns heads. Watch to find out why.
Owner Anthony Lucarz has kept this 1972 Ford Gran Torino Sport 351 Cobra Jet for eighteen years, restoring it back to exact factory specification down to its 8,000 RPM tachometer and functional hood scoop. My Car Story host Lou Costabile catches up with the car in Gilberts, Illinois to find out what keeps an owner committed for that long. See what nearly two decades of dedication looks like up close.
Ford quietly swapped engines mid-year on the 1968 Shelby GT500, and the change turned an already potent muscle car into a legend. Early cars carried the proven 428 Police Interceptor, good for a genuine 360 horsepower, before Ford dropped in the underrated 428 Cobra Jet and renamed the car GT500KR, King of the Road. Only 1,570 KR models were built that year, split between fastbacks and convertibles.
A rendering promising 435 horsepower and a return to showrooms is exactly the kind of story muscle car fans want to believe, but does the paper trail back it up? We dug into where the 2017 Ford Torino revival rumor actually came from, and the answer says as much about internet car culture as Ford’s real plans. Along the way, we revisit what made the real Torino GT and Cobra genuinely special the first time around.
Ford needed to build 500 street cars just to legally race this aerodynamic Torino at NASCAR’s biggest tracks, and the result was a muscle car so subtle most buyers had no idea what they were driving. Under that stretched, flush-grille nose sat a 428 Cobra Jet backed by a bench seat and column shifter. It went on to rack up roughly 29 NASCAR wins and a manufacturer’s championship before fading into obscurity. Fewer than 800 were ever built, making this a genuinely rare piece of Ford’s racing history.
This 1966 Ford Fairlane 500XL lists a 428 Cobra Jet under the hood — a genuinely confusing spec, since Ford didn’t build that engine until 1968. The real 1966 R-code Fairlane ran a side-oiler 427 instead, and only 57 were built before exhaust manifold shortages shut the option down. We dig into what actually powered the real R-code cars, and why a well-executed tribute build might be the closest most enthusiasts will ever get to driving one.
A 1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator built with the rare 428 Cobra Jet and 4-speed combination lines up against a 1969 Chevelle SS396 packing the solid-lifter L78 396, two genuinely scarce muscle cars that collectors spend years trying to find, let alone see race each other. Road Test TV brought both to the same quarter mile to settle an argument that started in dealership showrooms over fifty years ago. Watch which rare survivor comes out ahead.
Ford spent most of the 1960s watching the GTO and the Road Runner dominate the mid-size muscle conversation from the outside. The 1968 Torino GT, detailed by OldCarMemories.com, changed that — pairing a 390 V8 with the now-legendary 428 Cobra Jet option to turn Ford into a genuine sales leader in the segment. Watch to see what finally got Ford taken seriously.
Ford officially rated the 1969 Mustang’s 428 Cobra Jet at 335 horsepower, a number widely believed to be deliberately understated to dodge higher insurance rates – real output likely topped 400 hp. Fewer than 30 GT convertibles were built with the four-speed R-code version of this engine that year, and today only four are confirmed to survive. This car’s rare Indian Fire Red paint and factory power top make it a standout even within that tiny group.
The shaker hood on this 1969 Mustang Mach 1 wasn’t cosmetic — it fed a 428 Cobra Jet rated at 335 horsepower and 440 lb-ft of torque straight from the factory. Car Life magazine ran one to a 13.90-second quarter mile in 1969, numbers that still hold up decades later. Only 10,130 R-code cars were built that year; see how the shaker system actually worked.
To satisfy NASCAR’s homologation rules, Ford built the Torino Talladega with a stretched nose and smoothed bodywork purely to cut drag at superspeedway speeds, then sold roughly 750 of them to the public. The car won a championship in 1969 before NASCAR’s rule changes ended its racing career within two seasons. Here is the story behind one of Ford’s strangest street-legal race cars.
Mercury’s 1971 Cougar 429 Cobra Jet was one of the rarest big-block options Detroit ever built – expensive to insure and correspondingly rare, with only 448 built across the whole model year. Under the hood sat a Ram-Air or non-Ram-Air 429 backed by a competition suspension package tuned for the drag strip rather than the daily commute. Fewer still were built as convertibles with the desirable 4-speed manual.
This 1968 Shelby GT500KR convertible is one of just 517 built that year, and it may be one of the best-preserved survivors left. Powered by the legendary 428 Cobra Jet and backed by a four-speed, it remains numbers-matching, wears its original factory color, and is still running its factory exhaust after four decades. RamblinAround takes a slow, detailed walk around a genuine time capsule. See why originality like this is nearly impossible to find.
The Mercury Cougar burst onto the scene in 1967, ready to purr into the pony car competition. With its wood-dash and fake leather flair, the XR-7 model was the cat’s meow. Under the hood, the Cougar roared with options from a modest 289 V8 to the fierce 428 Cobra Jet. While its design took cues from the Mustang, the Cougar added a European twist with hidden headlights that played peek-a-boo. By 1970, the Cougar was strutting into luxury territory, flaunting fashion-forward houndstooth vinyl.