The SOHC powered Mustang funny car known as Competition + at the '67 Detroit Autorama. Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)
Last time around I posted about what I believe was the very first Camaro flip-top funny car. The 1967 Detroit Autorama also boasted what may have been the first Mustang flopper; the Competition + funny car.
Strangely enough, I can find no information about this car, despite exhausting my usual sources.
Draglist is my goto source for this type of information, but I couldn’t find even a scrap of knowlege about a 1967 Mustang named Competition +. I dug through old copies of Car Craft, Super Stock & Drag Illustrated, Drag Racing, Drag Strip…with no results. Repeated Google searches came up blank for “Competition +.”
This car is a phantom…except for these photos and a couple more taken at Detroit Dragway, I can’t find any proof the car ever existed. Nor do I know who drove the Mustang and what happened to it.
(additional photo after the jump)
What’s so strange is this appears to be a top-of-the-line funny car. It has a Logghe chassis (confirmed by a photo at Detroit Dragway with a LSC sticker on the side.) The body and aluminum work look first class. Assuming that SOHC Ford engine had the right stuff inside, this Mustang should have been a strong competitor to the factory Mercury Comets. If you could run with the Comets in 1967, you could run with anything in the funny car ranks.
The car is set up so similarly to the Mercury machines of Nicholson and Schartmen, that it had the potential to be one of the top funny cars in the country in 1967. Yet it apparently received no exposure, and somehow disappeared into the mists of time.
Notice the stock appearance of the tail lights on this colorful Mustang funny car. Wish I knew who drove the car. Tom Bonner photo (Instamatic 126)
The only time I saw the car run, a couple of months after I snapped these photos, Competition + prevailed against a field that included several blown, nitro funny cars.
So what happened? How could such an outstanding machine fall off the radar?
Surely some Ford fan will come forward to identify the driver of this incredible Mustang.
3 Comments
This car was built by Steve McKesson. Very early car. Paint by Shedlik, lettering by Hatton. While match racing down south in the summer of 1967, McKesson sold the car to Larry Coleman, of Coleman & Taylor fame. Del Hienelt was Colemans driver, and within a months time from buying the car, while racing at Indy, Del suffered a heart attack in the car, while driving, crashed and died. The car was destroyed.
I worked for Doug Nash back in the day and it seems to me this Mustang was Paul Stafanski’s.
Hi David,
I saw Paul Stefanski run a number of times at Detroit Dragway. His early flip-top Mustang was a notch-back style called “Boss Hoss.” He later campaigned a fastback fiberglass Mustang he called “Super Stang.” I think Daryl Huffman called this one, as I have found references to Steve McKesson and the Competition + Mustang in old issues of Drag News from 1967.
Thanks for commenting! Tom