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Ford stopped building its flathead V8 in 1953, and it still hasn’t gotten the memo that it’s supposed to be forgotten. Decades later, flathead-powered cars were still setting land-speed records at 300 mph, built by hot rodders working the same engine that once powered ordinary Ford sedans. Read on to find out how a design this old became the engine that built the entire hot rod movement.
In 1958 Ford launched three entirely new V8 engine families in a single year, named after the divisions they were built to serve: MEL for Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln, FE for Ford-Edsel, and FT for Ford-Truck. They shared oiling systems and bolt patterns but arranged their valves in opposite order, a detail that tells you almost everything about how they were designed. Read on for part one of three, covering how these engines were built and why they lasted until 1976.
A nineteenth-century French physicist’s glass jar of lead and acid still powers every muscle car on the road today. Gaston Plante’s 1859 lead-acid battery set the template that Delco and Detroit’s big-block engines would come to depend on for reliable starts. Here is how a decades-old invention quietly shaped the cars in this trivia list.
Ford built the 428 Cobra Jet to solve a problem the 427 couldn’t: it was cheaper and easier to manufacture, yet nearly as powerful. Officially rated at just 335 horsepower to dodge rising insurance premiums, the CJ actually made over 400 with a hood scoop, and it proved it by winning the Super Stock Eliminator title at its competitive debut at the 1968 NHRA Winternationals — months before it even reached dealers. A Super Cobra Jet variant followed with quiet internal upgrades built for durability. Read on for the full story of Ford’s most underrated engine.