In '63, Pontiac infuriated competitors and the GM brass by creating a circle track version of the '63 Tempest A/FX. This car, wearing the #50, won the "Challenge Cup 250" at Daytona, establishing a precedent of a homologated, big engine lightweight in a circle track environment.

Ford copied the homework and built a 1964 427 "Thunderbolt" for Fireball Roberts to race in the '64 American Challenge Cup. The race strategy was to send Roberts out as a rabbit car to duel with the more exotic sports racers, opening the door for the #97 Falcon Sprint driven by Walt Hansgen to be in a position to win as the more fragile cars dropped from the pounding on the high banks.

As fate would have it, AJ Foyt in the Scarab with the Chevy Mystery V8 didn't get that memo and won, but Roberts was on his home track and chauffeured the brutal Fairlane home to a surprising 2nd place. (Hansgen was 7th)

Here's where it gets interesting: race pictures show a somewhat slicked up, but very stock appearing '64 Fairlane 500 Sports Coupe, wearing the #96 as the Roberts entry in the Amercian Challenge Cup.

Not long after, Hot Rod photogs went to Charlotte and captured a much more race-like '64 Fairlane, with more plastic surgery than a Hollywood starlet.

The wheel wells are reshaped and raised compared to the main gesture line, the body appears to channeled and possibly sectioned. The the rolling stock is flush to the bodyside and the car presents an air of menace- in other words, the usual Ralph Moody Ford. Under the hood, a 427 is in place with the batwing air cleaner, but there are minimal traces of the original structure to be seen.

I will need to go back "The Dust and the Glory" but testing showed the Fairlane unstable enough to end the experiment. Assumptions would place blame at the notch roof in absence of any type of spoiler which would exaggerate handling issues of the wobbly unit body structure. (This is a bit of history repeating itself - the '59-60 Thunderbirds in NASCAR suffered much the same fate of notch roof aero and jiggly body structure.)

The disposition of the car, or cars, seems to be in question. An ad from the mid-60s from Alan Mann Racing (the Ford equipe of the era in England) lists a '64 Fairlane, which looks very much like the Ralph Moody car. In a bit of irony, Lee Holman is building 'tribute' '64s to the very day, claimed to be type-approved for vintage racing. He also claims to have the blueprints used to create the original.

To add depth (or murk, depending on your POV) Phil Bonner Jr. responded to a FB thread on the Fairlane. He claimed to have accompanied his father to H-M to purchase a Thunderbolt with the sports coupe roof. PBJ even posted a grainy pic of the car in the famous "Poppy Red." The sports coupe roof is clearly evident in the shot and gold leaf lettering on the door is visible.

Where do we land? I'm throwing my hat in the two-car ring - one for the race that ended up with Bonner, and one GN mule car that produced a dead-end in Charlotte, but went on to another career in Europe.