Ford and Grand Am - A Long Tradition

Photos by Wes Deunkel

Ford Motor Company has a storied history competing in endurance road racing events and in 2008, Ford continues to have a major presence in the Grand-American racing series with teams competing in three of the four classes.

The Daytona International Speedway road race was first extended to 24 hours in 1966 and Ford was there in force. A Ford GT, driven by Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby won the overall race and a Ford Mustang fought the good fight in the Group II class. Two years later, Jerry Titus and Ronnie Bucknum, driving a Shelby GT350 Mustang, won the Group II class and finished fourth overall.

Ford teams continued to do well in the Grand-Am series and in ‘95 a Roush Racing-prepared Mustang won the GT-1 class at the Rolex 24. An all-star team including actor Paul Newman, Tommy Kendall, Mark Martin and Michael Brockman drove the car. The race win was of special significance to Newman as he was celebrating his 70th birthday that year.

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Currently, Grand-Am is a race series where technology can be traced back to production versions of Ford products. The 5.0-Liter Cammer engine that powers all Ford Daytona Prototype entries shares several parts and components with Ford Motor Company’s popular modular, overhead cam series of engines.



A Ford-powered car won its class in the ‘03 running of the famed Rolex 24 at Daytona International Speedway, which debuted the Daytona Prototype spec engine and chassis combination. The Ford engine, built by Roush-Yates Engines, has remained competitive and last year Jörg Bergmeister won Grand-Am’s Rolex Series Daytona Prototype driver's championship in a Ford-powered Riley chassis.

In the Koni Challenge Series, the Mustang FR500C continues to battle the imports from Porsche, BMW and Nissan. The Mustang FR500C starts life as a body-in-white produced at the AutoAlliance plant in Flat Rock, MI. Once a body has been selected for race preparation several weight and safety modifications are made but the basic suspension geometry is similar to the road ready Mustang GT.



The engine powering the Mustang FR500C is based on the same modular Cammer engine found in the Daytona Prototype. In fact, the cylinder heads are from the production Ford GT program. This technology transfer is very important to the development of both race and street versions of the Mustang.

The Mustang FR500C hit the track in 2004 and has proven to be very competitive. The car won the first Koni Challenge Series race at Daytona despite being in the winning teams hands for less than a week. The Mustang went on to help David Empringham, and his Multimatic team, win the ‘04 Grand-Am Cup Driver, Team and Manufacturer Championship.

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