At the 2005 SEMA show, Ford Racing had just unveiled their FR500C Mustang and Ford enthusiasts were abuzz with talk that Ford was back with a factory race car program. After gauging the positive reaction from the crowd and fielding several questions about the possibility of a drag race version of the FR500C, Ford Racing’s Jesse Kershaw and Jamie Allison started talking about the possible variants of the FR500 platform. It wouldn’t be long before the idea for the modern-day CJ was born.

The Beginning

Kershaw envisioned a drag race Mustang that would use a version of the (then under development) Shelby GT500 engine for power. There was also talk of using the Ford Racing 5.0 liter “Cammer” naturally aspirated engine in the purpose built car. However, after the show ended and the Ford Racing group returned to Dearborn, all efforts were focused on the Mustang road race programs, and the idea of building a drag racing Mustang was shelved for a later date.

Weeks later, when Ian James and Tom Nastasi pulled their FR500C Mustang into Gatorade Victory Lane at Daytona, the folks at Ford Racing knew they were back in the factory built race car business. Ford Racing had worked closely with the engineering talent at Multimatic to develop the new S197 Mustang platform, and days after the first FR500C was delivered, it had won the biggest race in the KONI Challenge series.

With the success of Daytona behind them, Ford Racing built twenty-five more FR500C’s at Multimatic’s Markham, Ontario facility and developed a parts program for the do-it-yourself race team. The parts program not only provided spares, but also allowed teams to buy a 2005 Mustang body-in-white shell and build their own FR500C at a much lower price than the $125,000 price tag on the factory built car.

Ford Racing’s line-up of factory built race cars. (L to R) FR500C, FR500CJ and FR500S.

The Ford Racing team took what they learned from the Mustang FR500C program, and in 2007 built the Mustang Challenge FR500S Mustang. The Mustang Challenge Series was a “spec” race series developed by the late Larry Miller, a longtime Ford Racing fanatic. Seventy-seven FR500S Mustangs were built in the prototype assembly line at the Auto Alliance Plant in Flat Rock, Michigan.

By the start of the first Mustang Challenge race in Atlanta, more than half of the FR500S Mustangs had been sold. Currently in its second year, the Mustang Challenge series continues to see 20-25 Mustangs battle for the race wins in the ten race season.

While the road racing side of Ford Racing was enjoying the success of the two Mustang programs, the drag racing fanatics started pushing for a drag racing version of a FR500 Mustang.

The SEMA 2005 discussion was revived and plans were put in place to build a Mustang that could be built by Ford and sold for NHRA Stock or Super Stock competition.

Going back to the Ford Racing history books, the team revisited the 1968 Cobra Jet program, where fifty lightweight Mustangs were built for drag racing as part of the popular 1960’s “Factory Wars.” The 1968 Cobra Jet was the last time Ford built Mustang based factory race cars in quantity and the Cobra Jet or FR500”CJ” was the perfect name for the new program.

Starting in early 2007, Ford Racing began consulting with sportsman drag racers competing in Mustangs and other Ford products, and began to plan what content would go into the next Cobra Jet. Evan Smith, editor of Muscle Mustang and Fast Fords, and Super Stock racer Jim Ronzello were instrumental in assisting Ford Racing with the ins-and-outs of NHRA Sportsman racing.

By the spring of 2008, with a successful FR500S launch behind them, the foundation of the Cobra Jet had been laid out on paper.

“Do we have a viable business case?”

The decision was made to pre-sell all the cars, with a letter going out to all Ford dealers featuring a picture of the 1968 Cobra Jet and a description of the 2008 Cobra Jet’s content. The letter went out in early June 2008 with a dealer price set at $69,900.00. The response was massive. All fifty cars were sold within ten days, with several dealers ordering ten or more cars, and several other dealers forced to wait for a 2010 model.

With a solid business case in place, the team began development of the first test “mule.” This being the first venture in sportsman drag racing, the team turned to Mike Pustelny Racing (MPR) for the design of the six-point roll cage, a mandatory NHRA requirement for cars running under 10.00 second ET’s.

The power plant in the 2008 Cobra Jet would be a “detuned” version of the 5.4 Liter DOHC Supercharged engine, similar to the one found in the 2007-2009 Shelby GT500. A prototype engine was built, led by Ford Racing’s Rob Deneweth, using many of the parts already in Ford’s system. Critical to the performance of the Cobra Jet engine was the Eaton “roots style” supercharger. Those within Ford Racing knew that with proper tuning, the engine could produce over 600 horsepower. Updates to the Cobra Jet development engine included: Cobra Jet specific cams, American Racing Headers long tube headers, Innovators West vibration damper, and SFI Approved Qucktime Bellhousing. Feeding air to the CJ engine was an Accufab Billet 63.5mm Dual Throttlebody and a unique Cobra Jet cold air kit.

The power plant in the 2008 Cobra Jet is a “detuned” version of the 5.4 Liter DOHC Supercharged engine, similar to the one found in the 2007-2009 Shelby GT500.

The Cobra Jet made some promising numbers in dyno testing, especially with the fine-tuning of the air/fuel maps by Ford Racing’s calibration guru Dev Saberwal. Once the engine combination was finalized, Ford Racing submitted the engine to the NHRA rules committee for approval.

After receiving initial NHRA signoff on the engine and a 425 horsepower rating, the next step was to engineer the Cobra Jet’s suspension and other content. That project was handed off to the suspension and body build team within Ford Racing. After working on the road race FR500C and FR500S, the team welcomed the challenge of building a drag race Mustang.

“We are talking about designing and building competition-ready race cars,” said Jamie Allison of Ford Performance Group. “These are not just the simple parts that we sometimes create. This is a full-fledged, ready to race vehicle. There is a lot of engineering that goes into the preparation, development, testing, and release of these cars. There’s a full team of engineers from Ford Racing who have been involved on the engineering side of the Ford Racing Mustangs, led by Andy Slankard who leads the group”.

Andy Slankard and engineer Jeff Feit supervised the Cobra Jet chassis and suspension engineering team. Critical to any fast Mustang built for drag racing is the rear suspension set up. Ford Racing worked closely with TeamZ Motorsort’s Dave Zimmerman to engineer a lower control arm, upper torque arm, and anti-roll bar for maximum traction. For the rear end, Ford Racing selected Strange Engineering to build a complete bolt-in 9-inch rear axle assembly for the S197 chassis. Springs were chosen using various off the shelf Mustang rates and dampers were adjustable units commonly sold in Ford Racing’s GT500 Handling Pack.

The Cobra Jet was officially unveiled at the 2008 SEMA Show in Las Vegas. Here, Brian Wolfe introduces the car to the SEMA crowd at the Ford Racing stage.

In September of 2008, with the “mule” built and through preliminary development, two additional development Cobra Jets were built to prove out the assembly process.

With three development Cobra Jets now complete, track testing began in September 2008 at Milan Dragway, just west of Detroit. Longtime NMRA racer Paul Svinicki was assigned the enviable task of test-driving and fine-tuning the Cobra Jet mules. Paul, owner of Paul’s High Performance, gave great feedback on how to make the car quicker and more consistent.

Once the development cars were finalized, Ford Racing invited Bruce Bachelder from NHRA up to Dearborn final approval. After a thorough review, NHRA asked for some minor changes.

While the Mustang FR500CJ, known simply as the Cobra Jet, was officially unveiled at the 2008 SEMA Show in Las Vegas, it received final approval later at the PRI show in December 2008. By this time, the team had already started production and it was full steam ahead to finish building the fifty Cobra Jets by the end of the year.

Vendors had already lined up and purchase orders were submitted for all of the unique parts on the car. Fifty AAI produced Body-In-White 2008 Mustangs were built and shipped to Livonia, Michigan in preparation for the build. Roush Industries was contracted to handle the final assembly of the Cobra Jets on the same production line that builds Roush’s Signature-series Mustangs, such as the Roush 427R and P-51.

Fifty AAI produced Body-In-White 2008 Mustangs were built and shipped to Livonia, Michigan in preparation for the Cobra Jet build.

The 5.4L Cobra Jet engines were built at Romeo Assembly’s Niche line a few weeks earlier and shipped to the Cobra Jet line for build out. Once the engines were at Roush, the technicians installed the headers, Tremec transmission, front suspension K-member and other items to prepare it for installation on the line.

In December 2008, Cobra Jets started rolling down the production line. The first completed car rolled off the line on December 18, 2008.

Pallets of ready to install Cobra Jet parts and sub-assemblies arrived in preparation for the build. In November/ December 2008, Cobra Jets started rolling down the production line, with the first completed car rolling off the line on December 18, 2008. Within two weeks, all fifty Cobra Jets were built and ready to ship to their respective dealers.

To commemorate the occasion, a special ceremony was held at the Ford Racing/Roush facility with new Ford Racing boss Brian Wolfe handing the keys over to Brent Hajek, Cobra Jet #1 owner. Brent, a longtime Ford Racing collector, was so excited about the project he bought ten of the 2008 Cobra Jets to race and turn into more Ford race cars with race winning pedigrees.

Brian Wolfe, Director of Ford Racing Technology, hands the key of the first FR500CJ off the production line in Livonia, Michigan to the first buyer, Brent Hajek of Ames, Oklahoma.

Once Brent received his Cobra Jets in December, a mad thrash started on four of the cars to get them ready in thirty days for the 2009 NHRA Winternationals in Pomona. Brent had lined up a team of very talented Ford Stock Eliminator racers to pilot the cars at the kickoff of NHRA’s 2009 season. The race also marked the 40th Anniversary of the 1968 Cobra Jet debut and eventual race win by Al Joneic. Hajek teamed up with John Calvert, Jim Waldo, Gary Stinnett, and Jim Ronzello to drive the Cobra Jets at Pomona.

Brent Hajek showed up at the 2009 NHRA Winternationals with four 2008 Cobra Jets in “throwback” 1968 Cobra Jet graphics.

During Winternationals qualifying, all four Cobra Jets were competitive, with John Calvert taking the number two qualifying spot with a 10.08 ET 1.170 seconds under the 11.25 A/Stock Class index. In storybook fashion, Calvert went on to win the Stock Eliminator class, going through seven rounds of racing in a brand new untested car.

John Calvert went seven rounds driving an A/S Cobra Jet at the 2009 NHRA Winternationals and won the Stock Eliminator class.

“We got the cars on December 28th and had no days off,” said Calvert. “We were either testing, transporting, or working on them and we were worn out by the time we got to Pomona. It was quite an experience, and I’m really excited at the result.”

When the 40th Anniversary Cobra Jet Mustang won the 2009 NHRA Winternationals at Pomona, duplicating the success of the original Cobra Jet, the sportsman racer’s interest level in the 10-second race-ready Cobra Jet shot through the roof.

“The attention focused on the Cobra Jet is unlike anything I have seen in the sportsman class in many years in racing,” said Brian Wolfe, director of Ford Racing Technology. “I couldn’t be happier for Brent Hajek and John Calvert, who have taken a car that we designed, and created a championship race car in just six weeks.”

In addition to complete cars, Ford Racing has a Cobra Jet parts program for the build-it-yourself racer. Any 2005 – 2010 V6 or V8 Mustang is a great starting point to build your own Cobra Jet. Ford Racing sells the complete Cobra Jet 5.4L crate engine plus all the other parts to build your own Cobra Jet.

Current plans are for a 2010 Cobra Jet based on the restyled 2010 Mustang. Ford Racing will produce a limited run of fifty 2010 Mustang Cobra Jets, the minimum number that must be produced to receive clearance from NHRA for competition. Exact specifications are being finalized and the build is scheduled for December 2009. The initial plan is for the 2010 Cobra Jet to have an NHRA rated 425 horsepower 5.4-liter supercharged engine with an option to upgrade to an estimated 475-hp aluminum block engine. The cars will also feature an eight point 8.50 ET legal roll cage, lightweight brakes, and manual steering.

One thing we know – Ford Racing will have no problem selling the 2010-spec version of this legendary drag car. Our hats are off to Ford for developing, building, and racing one of the coolest cars of our generation – in an economy that everyone can agree is far from “Super.”

Source:
Ford Racing Performance Parts
http://www.fordracingparts.com

Extra: The Video Story of the 2008 Cobra Jet

Ford Racing produced a video that tells the story behind the development of the 2008 Cobra Jet.