Back in the late 1960s, NASCAR’s homologation rules required automakers to produce street-legal versions of the cars they planned to campaign in competition and offer them for sale to the general public. For a brief period of time when wild aero was king, this resulted in the big wing Mopars – the Dodge Daytona and Plymouth Superbird – along with Ford’s Torino Talladega and its corporate cousin, the Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II.
Built for the big oval tracks of the series, these cars were designed to use wind to their advantage, creating meaningful downforce and stability at high speeds while also keeping aerodynamic drag to a minimum. It’s a strategy that ultimately worked a little too well, and NASCAR effectively banned the "Aero Cars" after just two seasons in competition.
Today, the street-legal homologation cars are highly sought after by collectors and often kept under temperature-controlled lock and key, only to see the light of day on rare occasions. But Mike Callahan of Cincinnati, Ohio doesn’t roll that way.
Callahan’s Cyclone Spoiler II was originally built in Ohio and then shipped to California, where it was sold new at the Sachs & Sons dealership in Downey. The Spoiler II was available in two different trims – the white exterior, red interior Cale Yarborough Special, and the Dan Gurney Special, which featured white paint with a blue interior. This car is one of the Gurney models, though it received a more sinister coat of black paint decades ago.
Callahan spent a few years running Power Tour and competing in the Ultimate Street Car Challenge, the Ohio Mile and other series with a ’99 Crown Victoria, a car with an interesting background in its own right. Formerly a Bondurant Racing School instructor car used for training exercises at the facility, as the story goes a total of 18 Crown Victoria Police Interceptors were originally sent out to Roush Performance by Bondurant and outfitted with the powertrain from the Mustang SVT Cobra, along with various chassis and aesthetic upgrades from the Ford Performance parts bin. Colloquially known as "Cobra Vics", the Bondurant Crown Victorias were the closest things to a no-holds-barred traditional muscle car and the fantasy of many a gearhead who loved the idea of a full-frame sedan with room for at least four adults and a manual transmission.
“I thought it was a really cool car, so when the school switched over the GM vehicles, I picked one up,” he explains. “I lowered it and cleaned it up a bit, but it already had the safety stuff in it, so for the most part I left it the way it was. That’s the first car I ran at Bonneville. My whole life I’ve been reading in HOT ROD Magazine about cars at Bonneville Salt Flats and I’d always thought that would be a really cool experience. So when I retired, I decided I was going to run it.”
The car had enough juice to join the “130 Club” at the salt flats, running an average speed of 130 mph or above during the last quarter mile of a 2.25-mile exhibition pass. But after a few years of faithful service and plenty of knowledge gleaned from returns to the salt flats with the Crown Victoria, Callahan found himself at a crossroads with the car.
“The engine developed a big problem – bad piston, or rings, or something those lines,” he recalls. “And at that point I figured I had two options: either sink a bunch of money into this car, or sell it and start on something new.”
Callahan chose the latter, and after the Crown Vic moved on to its new owner in 2014, he began scouring eBay for the next project. “This ’69 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II caught my eye immediately, it’s just a really cool looking car. I bid on it, but I was actually out-bid by someone else.”
Fortunately that buyer ended up backing out after the fact, so Callahan was able to strike a deal with the seller. “The car was out in LA and I had planned to have it transported back to Ohio,” he says. “But the car was so nice, I decided to just fly out there and drive it back.”
