When you’re building a race car, you have to consider weight. That’s not a suggestion, that’s a requirement. Take any kind of racing, and the weight of the machine has to be considered. It’s the biggest reason why people complain about late-model Mopars…800+ horsepower is nice, but not when it has to move over two tons of bulk in the process. In the 1970s, the move to smaller, lighter cars was going to hit the Pro Stock ranks in short order, but local racers picked up on that almost immediately. If you were a small-block racer and you wanted to keep your powertrain alive for a while and didn’t want to eat up other parts, you started with something fairly featherweight to begin with and did as much as you could to make it competitive.
Tommy Lee Byrd is a friend of BangShift and plays with quite a few neat old rides most of the time, but this 1971 Ford Pinto is especially cool. This isn’t an old Pro Stocker that has made it into the next century, this is an old 1/8th mile car that was parked after the local track shut down for a bit of time. It’s got that killer Gapp and Roush-like look, with the U.S. Indy mags and fat rears, but take note of where the air scoop sits. Not over where the engine should be, is it? Nope…that engine was set far back into the body, and that’s just one trick to this machine that you need to see more of. Click on the video below to get the full scoop!
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