25 Greatest Mustangs: 1968 1/2 Cobra Jet
With all due respect to Steve McQueen’s Highland Green costar, Mustangs were actually getting creamed on the street by Chevys and Mopars, and it took a car dealer to fix the problem.
Tasca Ford in Providence, Rhode Island, was a hub of Blue Oval performance. Bob Tasca, Sr., sold a lot of Mustangs, but his customers weren’t satisfied. “We found the [390] so noncompetitive, we began to feel we were cheating the customer,” Tasca’s performance manager, Dean Gregson, told Hot Rod in 1967. “We had to do something.”
What they did was crank up a 428 Police Interceptor with 427 low-riser cylinder heads and a special cam, put it in a Lime Gold coupe, and gave it to Hot Rod to test. The response was so strong, Ford created the Cobra Jet Mustang the following year.
[Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared as part of the 25 Greatest Mustangs cover story in the July/August issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. You can find the other entries here.]
