199-Mile Drag Racer 1969 Mustang Boss 302 Survivor Parked in 1970 Would Smoke HEMIs Dry

In mid-1969, a certain Robert H. Justice, a drag racer from Houston, Texas, got what he asked for and then some: a brand-new Ford Mustang 302 Boss. At the time, it was Blue Oval’s bread and butter for homologating the engine – and everything else – for SCCA racing. In the late sixties, Ford was getting its tailpipe kicked by Chevrolet’s Camaro wearing Z/28-sized track shoes.

Ford’s answer was the Boss 302. The Sports Car Club of America rules were clear – if you wanted to bring a new gun to the gunfight, you had to put it in at least 1,000 road cars. Ford planned to assemble 1,500 Boss 302s in 1969 but sold 1,628. It was a pretty good number, given its late market launch from earlier that year. (The following year, the model moved 7,013 units.

The car made an immediate impact not only on customers but also on motoring media. In June 1969, Car and Driver declared that ‘the Boss 302 is the best handling Ford ever to come out of Dearborn and may just be the new standard by which everything from Detroit must be judged.’ A message Bob Justice, the racing Texan who was enjoying his fresh-out-of-the-line Boss 302, would have supported in a heartbeat.

The man went to a local dealership to customize his performant Mustang for one job and one job only: show the ponytail to the guy on the other lane while crossing the finish line 440 yards later, at high speed. Justice convinced the dealership to sponsor him and added several higher-performance options on the Ford while taking some anchors off at the same time.

The factory-installed 3.91 Traction-Lok rear was removed and replaced with another of Ford’s higher gearing, but not the 4.30 Detroit Locker (that wasn’t fast enough, apparently). Mr. Justice served his Boss 302 true justice and installed 5.14 gears into the 9-inch diff. Clearly, he had only very short and fast trips in mind, so the M&H Drag Slicks on the driven wheels came along swiftly.

Skinny 7.6x15 Goodyears took care of the steering (not that there would have been too much of that). Custom traction bars stiffened the ride, together with high-performance shocks (Gabriel Hijacker in the rear, Cure Ride Drag Shocks upfront). The four-barrel Holley carburetor got new jets; a hotter cam and open headers let the 302-cubic-inch (4.9-liter) V8 breathe freely and rev up to whatever it could. Someone might say that the Boss 302 came with RPM-capping equipment, but the dealership removed it, along with all the smog equipment. The 9k-RPM Motorola Tach definitely would have had something to show.

The car was in full compliance with NHRA Class 10 F/S Drag Racing rules, so racing it did. Its best time was a 13.04-second pass at Eastex Dragway in Porter, Texas, during one of the less-than-five races it attended. Sources vary slightly on the number of events this super-cool quarter-horse Ford Mustang ran, but they all agree it was below five.

The reason is heartbreaking – in 1970, Bob Justice left the drag strips and went to teach the seraphs a thing or two about Ford’s wild pony. His wife put the car in the garage and closed the door, which was the end of the story for the Boss after just 196 miles. For the next 38 years, the barely-used SuperFord sat quietly, and it would have probably sat until today had it not been for a fantastic twist of fate.

Around 2008, Dick Jones, a man from New Zealand (but living in Texas for some 15 years at the time), was on the lookout for a car and came to see an old Mopar, a 1962 Imperial that was auctioned in Houston. He bought the car but also made acquaintance with Larry Justice, the son of the late drag racer. The man wanted to sell the car but had little idea about its value and approached the New Zealander.

Justice Jr. wasn’t aware of what treasure he was sitting on and didn’t impress Dick Jones until he mentioned the mileage ‘at under 300 miles.’ That immediately stopped the man from across the planet dead in his tracks, and the salvage story unfurled from there. Larry Justice later called back Mr. Jones to confirm the mileage, which began this Boss’ resurrection. A friend of the New Zealand-born-and-raised Texan bought the car, which then was sold to another friend, and so on. Dick Jones recalled the whole affair in an interview with a car enthusiast several years ago – you can listen to it in the second video at the 06:03 timestamp.

Ultimately, the car passed through several hands before ending in Randy Saba’s possession, where it still is. The car has been refreshed since it was pulled out from its 38-year hibernation, as most of its rubber elements were irrecuperable. Amazingly, the rest of the vehicle was far beyond expectations. The original buyer was an entrepreneur in the air-conditioning business, and his garage was climate-controlled, which kept his low-mile drag-racing Boss 302 in nearly impeccable shape.

Still, anything else is just how Bob Justice ordered it, with one exception: the Hurst shifter for the four-speed manual transmission, or so the present owner says. Randy Saba added the forgotten Boss 302 to his collection in 2017, and in 2018, took it to the car’s first show, the Boss Nationals in Marysville, Kansas. But look closely at the gallery and you'll see that Dick Jones took a photo (second video, 08:46) of a 9,000-RPM clock. In the first video, however, the tach reads 10,000 RPM (05:19).

Last November, the ‘Bob Justice Pony Tail’ appeared at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois. As mentioned above, the car has all the factory- or dealer-installed equipment, including the original battery. And yes, of course, the 65-year-old battery won’t wake up the engine. That’s why Lou Costabile removed it and put in a new one so that we could hear the V8 thunder again in the first video attached.

With all the modifications made to it, there’s no telling what the output of the Boss 302 engine is. Still, when Ford put it in the SCCA-homologating cars, the specs were 290 hp (293 PS) at 5,800 RPM and 290 lb-ft (393 Nm) at 4,300 RPM. If that sounds less than impressive, it’s only because it’s likely not authentic. Dyno tests in the period revealed a stable of 320 ponies. Still, with all the mods on this Acapulco Blue survivor, there’s a good chance that number is surpassed.