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ast in Georgia, he was able to borrow
it to create the necessary tooling to re-
produce it. Blueprints came from
Klaus Arning, through Ford’s archives.
The original set-up was later sold and
the new owner asked Carling to build
him a duplicate. Carling was never
paid, so he ended up with the original
IRS set-up as well as the duplicate he
had made.
Fast-forward to last year when
Jim Marietta, Ted Sutton and Peter
Brock begin discussing the details of
building a GT350 R-Model the way
Brock had originally intended. The
IRS was a perfect fit and suddenly
Carling joined the project
.
bout a year and a half ago,
members of the original Shelby
American crew that developed
the iconic prototype "R" Model GT350
made headlines in the Ford Perform-
ance world. That first Shelby GT350
competition development team re-
united in Henderson, Nevada to create
a new car, re-imagining the way they
would have liked to complete it a half-
century earlier. On the 50th Anniver-
sary of the car’s first race victory, won
by Ken Miles on February 14, 1965 at
Green Valley Raceway outside of Dal-
las, Texas it was unveiled at Willow
Springs raceway. The Original Venice
Crew (OVC) of Peter Brock, Ted Sut-
ton and Jim Marietta had teamed up
again to create a “new” 1965 Shelby
GT350R, but this time developed with
an IRS that was originally designed
for the first Ford Mustang but later
found its way onto the Ford GT40s
that won Le Mans!
Surprisingly, the project revealed
that even many well-versed Mustang
fans had no idea that an Independent
Rear Suspension (IRS) was developed
way back in 1962 for the very first
Mustang. So our friends at
FordPerfor-
mance.com
felt it was time that the in-
side story of just how close Mustang
came to having an IRS from the very
beginning be told.
To that end, we’ll need to turn
back the clock. As the swinging 60s
dawned, Ford Motor Company was
saddled with a dowdy product image
and was in desperate need of what is
now called a “makeover.” The original
1950s sporty, two-seat Thunder Bird
had grown into a four-place luxo-
tourer. Ford’s plain-Jane econocar, the
Falcon, had originally sold well but
now was slipping. And the Edsel, a
name that became synonymous with
failure, was breathing its last after a
three-year run. To make matters
worse, General Motors had introduced
a sexy new version of their Corvair
called the Monza with bucket seats, a
four-speed and even an optional tur-
bocharger.
Forty-three-year-old Ford Chair-
man and CEO Henry Ford II wanted
to breathe new life into Ford’s product
image, so turned to his 36-year-old
right-hand man, Lee Iacocca (who had
succeeded “Whiz-Kid” Robert McNa-
mara as Ford president) to make it
happen. Spurred by his product plan-
ning guru Hal Sperlich, Iacocca
formed the “Fairlane Committee,”
which met after hours at a now-razed
hotel called the Fairlane Inn (about a
mile down the road from Ford World
Headquarters), to dream up cars that
would fit in a new “Total Performance”
theme at Ford. In May of 1962, the
committee authorized a small group,
headed by expat Englishman Roy
Lunn, to build a concept car to be
shown at the U.S. Grand Prix at
Watkins Glen on October 7th. About
fifty colleges were located less than
100 miles from the track and the
USGP was traditionally a huge week-
end party for these college kids.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Summer 2016 63
A
Suspension engineer Bob Negstadt [
standing
] and Roy Lunn with the Mustang prior
to the car being shipped to Watkins Glen.
Photo taken during testing of the IRS
Mustang at Riverside shows Ford engi-
neers McQuaid and Arning and drivers
Ginther and Miles. Note on photo pins the
date as February of 1964.