This started out a few months ago as a post on “What Are You Working On?”. Since then, John Craft has finished this project. Unfortunately, it was also destroyed later in Texas Hurricane Harvey. If you don’t know John, he has been in the Ford Talladega camp for many years and even did a fabulous recreation of the Wood Brothers’ Cale Yarborough Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II race car many years ago. Although his most recent project is not one of the Aero Cars, it is part of the heritage that eventually brought NASCAR to the Aero Wars. John provided the following multi-part article and photos and we thank him enthusiastically not only for the write up but also for the restoration of this piece of Ford and Holman-Moody race history.
Holman Moody 1964 Galaxie
Part 3: Holman-Moody
For the 1964 season, Holman Moody would ultimately build at least 24 cars (the exact figure isn’t known) throughout the year, both for themselves, and for customers. Their plan was to run two regular cars themselves, a Wimbledon White #28 Galaxie for Fred Lorenzen, and a Regency Purple colored #22 for 1962 Daytona 500 winner Edward ‘Fireball’ Roberts (so named because he’d been a demon baseball pitcher for the Zellwood Mud Hens).
In addition, the HM team entered a third, and sometimes fourth car, depending on the event. These cars would feature a variety of part time drivers, whose strengths were best suited to a specific track.
Throughout this post we reference this Holman Moody race car as VIN number (C4HM-10041), however, no number was actually assigned until late in 1964 after Holman Moody finished racing it. The demands of stock car racing increased throughout the 1960s. As a result, it became necessary for Ford to adjust its supply of base vehicles for its factory teams. In 1963, Ford supplied race teams with actual street spec cars that were driven off the Norfolk, Virginia assembly line. They were complete turnkey Q Code 4V 427 cars! However, in 1964, Ford supplied similar cars but without an engine or transmission. By 1965, they supplied only ‘bodies in white’, which were incomplete cars pulled from the assembly line prior to being fitted with items unnecessary for a race car such as heavy sound deadening, interiors, and factory body tags. It was at this point when Holman Moody began preparing for the 1965 season that they began applying HM specific identity tags. It was also at this time that this 1964 Galaxie was fitted with its HM VIN.
