Trans AM Stallion
Saleen and Parnelli Jones team up to build a late-model Mustang like no other
by Justin Wakefield
photos by Jerry Heasley
Conservatively rated at 290 hp (estimates pegged it at 350), it was coupled with a standard four-speed manual Toploader gearbox, but that was only part of the deal. A special suspension with wider track, staggered rear shocks, along with standard power front disc brakes and some of the biggest and widest tires yet seen on a production car (Goodyear F60-15 Polyglas GTs), the car was a real handler in its day and could run rings around most anything coming out of Detroit at the time. It lasted but two model years, but boy those years were something. On the race track, the Boss 302s acquitted themselves well. During the 1969 season, the Bud Moore cars, driven by Rufus ‘Parnelli’ Jones and George Follmer, finished runner up to the Penske/Sunoco Camaro driven by Mark Donahue, but only by the slightest of margins. For 1970, it was game on as the distinctive Grabber Orange Boss cars drove into the history books, Parnelli Jones clinching a sterling performance that year to nab the driver’s championship - just one point ahead of Mark Donahue and Ford garnering the constructors’ title. After that, the bloom was off the rose and Ford pulled out of racing. However, the images of those Boss Trans Am cars tearing around the track in 1969/70 continued to loom large.
Parnelli Jones went onto do other things, notably some successful endeavors in Baja racing, but he never forgot those halcyon Mustang years. In the late 1980s he was back at it, driving Mustangs for Steve Saleen in SCCA and helping the small volume manufacturer win the 1987 constructors championship, along with former Bud Moore teammate George Follmer.
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