Posts Tagged: Ford Muscle Cars
A rare 429-powered 1970 Ford Torino Cobra rolled into a vintage NMCA drag event on nothing but factory-width rubber — and dipped into the 12s anyway. Ford built barely two thousand of these with the big engine, and far fewer with the gearing to make a pass like this possible. Here’s the math behind one of the toughest quarter-miles in muscle car history.
Ford built the 1968 Torino GT to go head-to-head with the GTO and the Chevelle SS, and for owners who actually drove one, it delivered — right down to a 428 Cobra Jet option that could win a stoplight race outright. Yet the car never became a household name the way its rivals did. King of Classic Cars digs into why a genuinely competitive muscle car slipped out of the conversation, drawing on decades of owner stories along the way. Watch to find out what got left out of the history books.
A 1970 Ford Torino Cobra finished in Vermillion with satin black accents gets the spotlight in V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week series, powered by a factory-rated 375-horsepower 429 Super Cobra Jet V8. Owners in the comments dispute that number, with one claiming his SCJ Torino made closer to 540 horsepower once drag-pack options were factored in. Period magazine tests reportedly placed its quarter-mile times alongside a 435-horsepower Corvette, despite the Torino rarely getting the same collector respect today. One owner’s story about the car even ends with a deer strike on a Wyoming highway at 100 mph.