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Aditya Dimri
PJ Jones,
son of famous Mustang driver Parnelli Jones:
"The Mustang is a car that you can hustle."
David Donohue,
son of famous Camaro driver Mark Donohue:
"There's no replacement for displacement."
"Uh-oh!" isn't a phrase you want to hear coming from a driver's mouth in the middle of a tricky corner during a hot lap on a racetrack, especially when you're in a brand-new Ford Mustang GT and you've got strict orders to bring it home sans dents or scratches, much less dangling from the hook of a wrecker.
At the moment, the tail of the Mustang is cocked at an outrageous angle as it slews past an apex at New Jersey Motorsports Park, and from my vantage point in the passenger seat, all I can see out the windshield is disaster. But driver PJ Jones has two decades of experience in everything from GTP prototypes to Indy cars. So he calmly--but expeditiously--slaps on some opposite lock to corral the wayward Mustang, and he keeps the car on the pavement with a good, oh, half millimeter to spare.
"That's why you shouldn't drive while you're looking in your mirror," Jones says, and I can imagine him grinning, even though I can't see his face inside his helmet.
When I check the sideview mirror, I see that it's filled, and I mean completely, with the sharklike snout of an equally new Chevrolet Camaro SS driven by David Donohue, who'd raced on this very track a few weeks earlier in his Daytona Prototype. We'd asked Donohue and Jones to give us a few brisk laps in close proximity so we could shoot some arresting photographs of the cars in action. Nothing too crazy, just a little bit of showboating for the camera. Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
But now, riding shotgun as I watch the Camaro bomb past with the rear end twitching under hard braking, I realize that this is what we should have expected when we put two race car drivers in two of the hottest American performance cars on a single racetrack at the same time. And as we hurtle past the start/finish line, fender to fender at better than 120 mph, it strikes me that what I'm seeing here is nothing less than history repeating itself.
Forty years ago, during the heyday of the Trans-Am series, Parnelli Jones and Mark Donohue--the fathers of the drivers we're lapping with today--raced previous editions of the Mustang and the Camaro against each other in one of the most contentious rivalries in motorsports history. Donohue was killed during practice for the Austrian Grand Prix in 1975, but Jones is still around, and he hasn't forgotten or forgiven the hostilities of 1969. When PJ told him that he'd be testing a Mustang against a Camaro driven by Donohue's son, Parnelli said, "Make sure you kick his ass."
Mustang versus Camaro has been the most volcanic battle in the Ford-versus-Chevy war that's defined the American automotive landscape for much of the past century. The Mustang arrived first, staking out the pony car high ground in 1964 and earning boatloads of easy money during the two and a half years it took General Motors to respond. When the Camaro finally debuted, it inevitably was cast as Avis to Mustang's Hertz, and it's tried harder ever since with hotter engines, snazzier styling, and a host of other touches.
Mustangs and Camaros have faced off in showrooms, at stoplights, and, most dramatically, on racetracks. The Trans-Am road-racing series, created by the SCCA in 1966 for production-based machinery, turned out to be the perfect showcase for the pony cars emerging not only from Ford and Chevy but also Mercury (Cougar), Pontiac (Firebird), Dodge (Challenger), Plymouth (Barracuda), and American Motors (Javelin). Mustangs won the first two manufacturer's championships. Camaros took the third. The showdown came in 1969.
Ford threw its factory support behind stock-car legend Bud Moore and Parnelli Jones, the 1963 Indianapolis 500 winner turned famously uncompromising road racer. Chevrolet opted for a different approach, entrusting its Camaro to a pair of graduates from the SCCA club-racing ranks - team owner Roger Penske and his driver/engineer/team manager Mark Donohue, who'd breezed to the Trans-Am championship the previous year.
Donohue and Jones were polar opposites as well as on-track rivals, and the friction between them and their equally antagonistic team owners touched off fireworks that enlivened a 1969 season full of protests, skullduggery, and rough driving. Jones won twice, but Donohue swept six of the last seven races to give Chevrolet a repeat title. The next year, Jones got his revenge, beating Donohue--driving a Javelin--by a single point after winning the last race of the season.
By 1972, both of them had quit Trans-Am, Jones heading off to dustier pastures in off-road racing (and winning the Baja 1000) and Donohue focusing on more sophisticated prototypes and open-wheel cars (winning the Indy 500 and then the Can-Am title the next year). The fuel crisis of 1973 gutted the pony car brigade, and while the Mustang and the Camaro soldiered on, their glory days were behind them. F-body sales eventually became so anemic that Chevrolet quit making the Camaro altogether in 2002.
son of famous Mustang driver Parnelli Jones:
"The Mustang is a car that you can hustle."
David Donohue,
son of famous Camaro driver Mark Donohue:
"There's no replacement for displacement."
"Uh-oh!" isn't a phrase you want to hear coming from a driver's mouth in the middle of a tricky corner during a hot lap on a racetrack, especially when you're in a brand-new Ford Mustang GT and you've got strict orders to bring it home sans dents or scratches, much less dangling from the hook of a wrecker.
At the moment, the tail of the Mustang is cocked at an outrageous angle as it slews past an apex at New Jersey Motorsports Park, and from my vantage point in the passenger seat, all I can see out the windshield is disaster. But driver PJ Jones has two decades of experience in everything from GTP prototypes to Indy cars. So he calmly--but expeditiously--slaps on some opposite lock to corral the wayward Mustang, and he keeps the car on the pavement with a good, oh, half millimeter to spare.
"That's why you shouldn't drive while you're looking in your mirror," Jones says, and I can imagine him grinning, even though I can't see his face inside his helmet.
When I check the sideview mirror, I see that it's filled, and I mean completely, with the sharklike snout of an equally new Chevrolet Camaro SS driven by David Donohue, who'd raced on this very track a few weeks earlier in his Daytona Prototype. We'd asked Donohue and Jones to give us a few brisk laps in close proximity so we could shoot some arresting photographs of the cars in action. Nothing too crazy, just a little bit of showboating for the camera. Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
But now, riding shotgun as I watch the Camaro bomb past with the rear end twitching under hard braking, I realize that this is what we should have expected when we put two race car drivers in two of the hottest American performance cars on a single racetrack at the same time. And as we hurtle past the start/finish line, fender to fender at better than 120 mph, it strikes me that what I'm seeing here is nothing less than history repeating itself.
Forty years ago, during the heyday of the Trans-Am series, Parnelli Jones and Mark Donohue--the fathers of the drivers we're lapping with today--raced previous editions of the Mustang and the Camaro against each other in one of the most contentious rivalries in motorsports history. Donohue was killed during practice for the Austrian Grand Prix in 1975, but Jones is still around, and he hasn't forgotten or forgiven the hostilities of 1969. When PJ told him that he'd be testing a Mustang against a Camaro driven by Donohue's son, Parnelli said, "Make sure you kick his ass."
Mustang versus Camaro has been the most volcanic battle in the Ford-versus-Chevy war that's defined the American automotive landscape for much of the past century. The Mustang arrived first, staking out the pony car high ground in 1964 and earning boatloads of easy money during the two and a half years it took General Motors to respond. When the Camaro finally debuted, it inevitably was cast as Avis to Mustang's Hertz, and it's tried harder ever since with hotter engines, snazzier styling, and a host of other touches.
Mustangs and Camaros have faced off in showrooms, at stoplights, and, most dramatically, on racetracks. The Trans-Am road-racing series, created by the SCCA in 1966 for production-based machinery, turned out to be the perfect showcase for the pony cars emerging not only from Ford and Chevy but also Mercury (Cougar), Pontiac (Firebird), Dodge (Challenger), Plymouth (Barracuda), and American Motors (Javelin). Mustangs won the first two manufacturer's championships. Camaros took the third. The showdown came in 1969.
Ford threw its factory support behind stock-car legend Bud Moore and Parnelli Jones, the 1963 Indianapolis 500 winner turned famously uncompromising road racer. Chevrolet opted for a different approach, entrusting its Camaro to a pair of graduates from the SCCA club-racing ranks - team owner Roger Penske and his driver/engineer/team manager Mark Donohue, who'd breezed to the Trans-Am championship the previous year.
Donohue and Jones were polar opposites as well as on-track rivals, and the friction between them and their equally antagonistic team owners touched off fireworks that enlivened a 1969 season full of protests, skullduggery, and rough driving. Jones won twice, but Donohue swept six of the last seven races to give Chevrolet a repeat title. The next year, Jones got his revenge, beating Donohue--driving a Javelin--by a single point after winning the last race of the season.
By 1972, both of them had quit Trans-Am, Jones heading off to dustier pastures in off-road racing (and winning the Baja 1000) and Donohue focusing on more sophisticated prototypes and open-wheel cars (winning the Indy 500 and then the Can-Am title the next year). The fuel crisis of 1973 gutted the pony car brigade, and while the Mustang and the Camaro soldiered on, their glory days were behind them. F-body sales eventually became so anemic that Chevrolet quit making the Camaro altogether in 2002.