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For the show’s 200th episode, V8TV sat down with three-time Indy 500 winner Bobby Unser next to the exact 1969 Ford Torino he drove to victory at Pikes Peak — a car built by Bill Stroppe, Holman & Moody, and powered by a Smokey Yunick-built Boss 429. Unser hadn’t seen it since 1969. Watch to hear him tell the story of a car, and a win, he clearly hasn’t forgotten.
Most Batman fans never knew George Barris built a Batmobile purely for drag racing, powered by a blueprinted Holman & Moody 427 side-oiler and driven by ‘Wild Bill’ Shrewsberry. It ran the quarter-mile in just over 10 seconds at roughly 120 mph while touring dragstrips across North America from 1967 to 1968. Here’s the real racing story behind Batman’s other car.
After David Pearson took back-to-back NASCAR Grand National championships, Ford and Holman-Moody built him a street Torino Cobra finished in his No. 17 livery. The detail that makes it unrepeatable is the rear spoiler, which was taken directly off the race car he had just driven to the title. Read on for how the car was built, what it ran, and why documentation matters more than horsepower here.