Boss 302: the Mustang Ford built to go racing
The Mustang built to beat the Camaro was styled by the man who drew the 1963 Corvette Sting Ray. Ford’s answer to Chevy came with a lot of Chevy in it.
Re-checked Oct 5, 2026 against the Wikipedia articles listed below (Boss 302 Mustang, Larry Shinoda, Semon Knudsen, Allan Moffat, 1970 Trans-Am) and the Commons file description.
The Mustang built to beat the Camaro was styled by the man who drew the 1963 Corvette Sting Ray. Ford’s answer to Chevy came with a lot of Chevy in it.
A Chevy boss and a Corvette designer walk into Ford
Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen spent his career at General Motors. He ran Pontiac, became general manager of Chevrolet in 1961, and in February 1968 resigned to become president of Ford Motor Company. He brought Larry Shinoda with him. At GM, Shinoda had worked with Bill Mitchell and Zora Arkus-Duntov on the concepts that became the original 1963 Corvette Sting Ray.
Shinoda’s first project at Ford was a Mustang homologation special. Asked what he was working on, he answered “the boss’s car,” meaning Knudsen. “Boss” was also 1960s slang for excellent, so the name stuck twice over.
It outlasted the boss. Knudsen was dismissed on September 11, 1969, after infighting with career Ford executives including Lee Iacocca, and Shinoda was let go a few days later. The car kept the name anyway.
Built to a rulebook
The Boss 302 existed so Ford could race a Mustang in the SCCA Trans-Am series, which was for cars with engines of 5.0 liters (305 cubic inches) and under. So the 302 got the parts you need when a street engine is going to spend its weekends at high rpm: solid lifters, four-bolt main bearings instead of two-bolt, threaded freeze plugs, and canted-valve heads with bigger valves that were being developed for the 351 Cleveland. The Cleveland did not debut until the following year, which means the race-homologation Mustang got the new heads first. Ford rated this “G Code” engine at 290 horsepower.
Shinoda’s styling did real work too. He deleted the fake air scoops from the rear quarters of the regular 1969 Mustang and added a front spoiler and a rear deck wing, which made the Boss 302 one of the first production cars to wear both. A designer removing fake scoops is a rare and beautiful thing.
The plan paid off on track. In 1970 Bud Moore ran Ford’s factory effort with two cars, and Parnelli Jones edged out Mark Donohue and Team Penske’s AMC Javelins. Ford took the 1970 Trans-Am Over 2 Liter manufacturers’ title.
The red car in the photo
The car pictured is Allan Moffat’s Coca-Cola Boss 302, photographed at the 2003 Sydney International Motor Show. It came new from Kar Kraft, Ford’s in-house race car shop in America, and was finished by Bud Moore Engineering. It was one of seven factory Boss Mustangs built for racing, and it gave that group its first win, at the Southern 60 at Sandown in May 1969.
Between 1969 and 1972, Moffat won 101 championship and non-championship touring car races from 151 starts in it. That is two wins in every three starts. The one thing it never did was win him the Australian Touring Car Championship. In 1971 he went into the final round at Oran Park four points behind Bob Jane’s 7.0-liter Chevrolet Camaro ZL-1 and finished six-tenths of a second behind it, second in the race and second in the series. The car built to beat the Camaro was beaten, just barely, by a Camaro.
So the Mustang built to beat the Camaro got its name from a former Chevrolet boss, its look from a former Corvette designer, and its most famous record in Australia. Not bad for a homologation special.
Boss 302 or Camaro Z/28: which one gets your garage?
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