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Ford built the Boss 351 for exactly one model year, and Jeff Ball’s grabber lime 1971 example draws out some serious quarter-mile debate in the comments — including the claim that it actually beat a 429 Cobra Jet Mustang in a straight line. Lou Costabile gets the full story at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont.
Ford built the Boss 351 for exactly one model year before discontinuing the entire Boss lineup — just 1,806 were made. Jeff Ball’s example, finished in Ford’s short-lived Grabber Lime and shown at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois, is the rare kind of Boss most enthusiasts have only read about. Under the narrow-windowed 1971 bodywork sits a 351 Cleveland V8 that some owners call the quickest of the three Boss Mustangs. Watch to see why this one-year-only Ford still divides opinion decades later.
Ford built the Boss 351 for exactly one model year, 1971, to homologate a racing program it had already walked away from. Fewer than two thousand left the factory before the entire Boss nameplate was retired. Underneath the wider, heavier restyled Mustang sat a 351 Cleveland assembled from a parts-counter wish list, and in Grabber Lime it announced itself from a block away. Here is what the engineers managed to push through, and why the car is still undervalued.