Fastest man alive

In the final moments of the delightful Philip Kaufman-directed film The Right Stuff, there’s a launch in which Gordon Cooper, the final American to fly solo into Earth orbit, breaks the aviation speed record, the creed of faster, higher, farther.

gordo 1

We managed to locate this old Ford publicity photo that shows Cooper, on the left, with a 1966 Ford that he must have loved, even though Tom Wolfe, who wrote the book upon which the film was based, claimed that the Mercury Seven astronauts were Corvette guys. That Galaxie 500 is packing a 427 SOHC Ford engine, the legendary Cammer, which Ford couldn’t get homologated for NASCAR and instead used in drag racing, most notably the nitro classes. That car’s worth a bunch if it still exists. The other guy in the photo is Jacques Passino, who was head of Ford’s worldwide racing program during the Total Performance years, under the regimes of both Lee Iacocca and Henry Ford II. Thanks to Ed Rachanski for the photo.



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