By 1973 the changes in the automotive industry had killed the majority of pony and muscle cars. The Mustang, Camaro, and Firebird struggled to retain whatever performance they could. The Charger and Cougar survived only to live their lives as boring personal luxury vehicles. Many legendary nameplates were simply discontinued after their generation ended around 1974-1975.

This makes the 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 with the Q-code 351 Cleveland V8 engine and manual transmission one of the last original muscle cars. The last performance Mustang for sure… Only 3,316 units were built with this powertrain, making it reasonably rare.

And this one looks absolutely marvelous!

It looks almost stock, though we know it isn’t. Sonic Blue was an original color option for the Mustang, but not in 1973. Furthermore, this Mach 1 has the side stripes from the 1971 livery.

The deep blue and black combination emphasizes further the car’s flamboyant curves. The thin chrome accents and machined-ring wheels perfectly outline the silhouette of the car.

I love it so much, I can even forgive Ford for giving it a square face.

Meet Travis Newbold

This 1973 Mach 1 is property of Travis Newbolt. It was his first-ever car, bought in 1992. He still keeps it and I don’t think he’ll ever sell it. It’s like the mechanical representation of his soul.

Travis grew up on his dad’s stories about drag racing ‘55 Fords and ‘68 Cobra Jet Mustangs. In high school, his best friend got a 71 Mustang Coupe. It was an ugly brown one, but it had the 351 Cleveland, and…

“It was FAST AS HELL!”

Travis helped him and his father work on the car. He got bitten by the car bug soon after. He wanted a Ford and he wanted it with a Cleveland V8.

When he found this one in 1992, the car was rusted over, paint peeling, but it had the original 351 Cleveland Cobra Jet running with all other parts attached. Travis bought it for $2,500 and barely made it home with a shot steering.

He’s been restoring it for the last 28 years.

Encouraged by his peers, Travis joined the Ford ASSET program after high school. He was a Ford technician for 22 years becoming a Ford Senior Master Technician and SAE Master Technician.

“My whole life revolves around cars. My friends are in the car business, my hobbies center around cars, my dreams are of owning old Fords, I have spent my whole life loving cars. My three sons even have car related names.”

Eventually, Travis gave up the trade for a more body-friendly career in the oil industry.

But he never stopped working on his Mach 1. Today, the project is approaching its 3rd decade and as we speak, Travis has the dashboard torn down to fiddle with the lights and instrumentation.

1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 – unrestored, original medium blue metallic paint showing through the rust

“Basically, I’ve had the car all these years. I always worked on everyone else’s cars so it has been very slow going.”

Long story short, this 1973 Mach 1 is a real retro rocket.

It makes 484 horsepower and 505 ft-lbs of torque at the wheels from its original Q-code 351 cubic-inch Cleveland V8 engine. Well…the original block anyway.

The Mustang runs a low-12-second quarter-mile with the potential to go into the high-11s.

Mind you, it’s a streetcar that weighs around 3,600 lbs and is pushing 50 years old – full body, full interior, full glass, full everything.

You should agree it’s pretty fast. Here’s a comparable run from a 1969 Mach 1.

The long story follows below.

Ford’s 351 Cleveland V8 is an epitome of small block power

Travis Newbold was hellbent on having this particular motor.

The 351 Cleveland got its name from the Cleveland Engine plant in Brooke Park, Ohio, where it was produced between 1969 and 1974. It was offered simultaneously with the more mainstream 351 Windsor, built in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. We’ll touch on a few of their distinctive differences as we go along.

The dyno sheet below shows a large reasonably flat torque curve that peaks at 505 ft-lbs of torque at 4,700 RPM.

Power peaks at 484 horsepower at 5,500 RPM. The engine produces around 450 ft-lbs of torque at just 2,000 RPM, thanks to its 12.25:1 compression ratio and а final displacement of 410 cubic inches.

It’s been a long journey to get there and Travis has spent years, if not decades, perfecting his setup. The first time he rebuilt the original 351 Cleveland was during his ASSET engine class in the 90s. He had no money for parts, but the dealership he was working at allowed him to pay in installments.

Travis started with a clean block.

All Ford 335 engines were capable of having 4-bolt main bearing caps. Only the high-performance versions, like his Q-code, were machined to have them, but every engine could be modified inexpensively.

The block was bored 0.040-inch over and decked for 0 piston-clearance. Travis increased the displacement to 410 cubic inches (6.7 liters) by installing a SCAT stroker kit, including a 4-inch forged crankshaft and 6-inch forged H-beam connecting rods. A set of Probe SRS flat top, forged aluminum pistons completes the rotating assembly.

The Cleveland engine is notorious for its free-breathing cast iron cylinder heads with larger valves and ports, improved port length and fewer sharp turns. The 4V version was designed to be used with 4-barrel carburetors for racing applications. It featured a closed combustion chamber design for higher compression ratios and even larger ports for better flow.

The 4V heads were also used in the Boss 302 and Boss 351 engines. These heads were pretty much the best thing that came out of Ford’s factories at the time. And they can still make gobs of power today.

Travis took the heads to Chapman Racing Heads, who rebuilt them with new valve seats and guides, as well as a 3-angle valve job and a back cut. He polished the combustion chambers himself, smoothing the sharp edges and tight-radius corners.

The valve train comes from MPG Heads/Cam Research. The company produced custom solid rollers and paired them with their own lifters, springs, pushrods, and titanium keepers and locks. A set of Comp Cam Pro Magnum rockers completes the valve train.

The camshaft offers 252/255 degrees of duration at 0.050/0.650 inches of lift, and 110 degrees between lobe centers.

“With the excellent Cleveland combustion chamber and big overlap cam, I only have to use race gas when it’s hot outside. “

The intake is an Edelbrock Torker unit with a 1-inch open hole carb spacer and a Holley 950 cfm double pumper. Travis rebuilt it using Jet Carburetors metering blocks, a Proform main body, and Proform throttle plate.

Sadly, the dual hood scoops are purely cosmetic. Mach 1s were available with the Ram Air option, which added a fiberglass plenum and vacuum-operated doors to push cold air into the airbox. This one doesn’t have it. And while I hate fake scoops, at least these ones aren’t nearly as many or as obnoxious as the ones on the Shelbys.

Ignition is sorted via an MSD Pro Billet distributor with an MSD Digital 6 Plus box. Another difference between the Cleveland and Windsor is the use of smaller 14-millimeter spark plugs.

The engine breathes out of Hooker Competition headers paired to a 3-inch Magnaflow X-pipe exhaust.

Drivetrain upgrades

With 500 ft-lbs of torque on tap, Travis needed to beef up the rest of the drivetrain, if his 1973 Mach 1 was to become a real street racer.

A custom clutch takes power to the original Toploader, 4-speed manual transmission. Travis serviced and resealed the gearbox, but kept the original gears and shafts. The Toploader was designed to also couple with big block engines of the late 60s, so it’s strong enough for the Cleveland as is.

Next, a custom driveshaft transferred power to a 9-inch nodular iron rear axle, equipped with a 4.11:1 final drive and a Trac Loc differential.

The Shelby Drop

The Mach 1 already came with a Competition Suspension with various upgrades depending on the engine option. But it’s handling was just like any other run off the mill Mustang – not particularly great.

So, Travis implemented what’s called the Shelby Drop. Developed by one of Ford’s suspension engineers – Klaus Arning – and used extensively on Shelby Mustangs, this modification is one of the most effective and cheap ways to improve the handling of your Mustang, or other Falcon-based vehicles.

The reason for this is stock Mustangs had a positive camber curve on the front axle. When the suspension travels up – during cornering or over bumps – the wheel picks up positive camber. This provokes understeer, body roll, and disrupts the steering accuracy.

The Shelby drop consists of lowering the mounting point of the upper control arm.

By relocating the mounting point, the motion of the wheel is changed as it travels up into the wheel well. This prevents positive camber and even induces a small amount of negative camber – perfect when she leans into the corner. In this case, Travis went with a 2-inch drop, which is pretty much the max you can go with this method.

Travis also installed a ProMotorsports Negative Wedge kit. The wedge is mandatory to correct the angle of the upper control arm ball joint, when you do the Shelby Drop.

Check out the video below for more information on how the Shelby Drop. Skip 04:00 for the visualization!

Next, Travis boxed in the lower control arms, which is cheap and effective for making the stock ones strong and rigid. The front end of the Mach 1 also got stiffer springs, a 1.125-inch sway bar, poly bushings, and more rigid shock tower braces from MPG Heads.

At the rear end, Travis installed stiffer 5-leaf suspension with 1.5-inch lowering blocks and CalTrac traction bars.

The Mach 1 runs on a set of Ridler 695 wheels front and back ( 675 at the front in some photos). The tires are Nitto 555 G2 – 245/45R17 front and 285/35R18 rear. Finally, braking power comes from 4-piston Wilwood disc brakes on all four wheels.

This completes the engine, drivetrain, and suspension. It takes 10 minutes to read through what took Travis more than two decades to build with his own hands. Only after all these modifications was the Mach 1 ready to step up to the drag strip and show off some real performance.

“I would sacrifice for a car that I never could really drive. It’s been 28 years and I ‘ve put 4,000 miles on it! Most of them in the last 10 years. … It’s getting so close to being “done”. Yeah right!”

You’ve got to respect the patience and dedication he had for his car. All of it was worth it though because…

This 1973 Mach 1 goes 12 seconds easy at the dragstrip

Travis bracket raced the Mustang at his local drag strip, before it was closed down. The car completed the quarter-mile in low 12 seconds at 4,200 ft altitude.

“I would drive it to the strip, race it for hours in 100+ degree temps, and drive it home. I never really drove it as hard as I could.”

The interior is a chapter in the story that’s still yet to be written. As we mentioned earlier, the dashboard is currently in pieces while Travis replaces the heater core, some damaged plastics, cracked dash pad, and add LED instrument cluster lighting.

The front seats are pretty much destroyed. The Mach 1 needs new door panels, seats, steering wheel, and some odds and ends restored. Unfortunately, interior pieces from the ‘71 – ‘73 facelift are hard and expensive to obtain.

“The only creature comforts it has are a heater and some ear plugs in the console. My whole philosophy for the car is that they looked so cool from the factory that I wanted to keep it looking mostly stock.”

Amen.