THE pair of Ford Mustangs built and raced in GT-Performance and Nations Cup by Prancing Horse Racing in the early 2000s have found a new home – and they will be brought back to life.
Father and son team Corey and Rod Gurney regularly compete in the Stock Car Australia national series and recently collected the pair of V8 muscle cars from former owner Neil Byers.
The duo has purchased both cars and all associated spare parts and intend to run the cars in their Nations Cup specification and liveries.
PODCAST: V8 Sleuth winds the clock back to talk about the Nations Cup
NATIONS CUP FAREWALL: We recap the last appearance of the class at Mallala in 2004
The cars first debuted in 2001 as GT-P spec Mustangs, most famously driven by John Bowe with Budweiser sponsorship, before being updated to compete in Group Two of Nations Cup from 2002 onwards.
“Our plans are to get the cars back to how they raced in Nations Cup,” Corey Gurney told V8 Sleuth today.
“We’ve got all the bits we need, there’s a brand-new spare engine sitting there, and we can do all the mechanical work ourselves.
“They’re not too far away from how they need to be, we’ll get the livery back to how they ran in the period and from there we’ll run them properly on track. They’ve been sitting for a few years, so down the track we’ll find somewhere to run them in a category with the AMRS or something under Motorsport Australia.
“We’ve spoken with JB (John Bowe) and he’s keen to have a steer of them, which we’d love to make happen down the track.”
Gurney said the explosion of prices for ex-V8 Supercars had prompted him to look elsewhere for a race car with history.
“I’ve been racing for a while, but I always wanted something unique,” he says.
“There’s lots of Supercars out there now where the price is just way too high for the everyday person to afford. It’s a father and son family project we can do together and it’s affordable. I’ve got two twin sons racing karts as well, so it’s an all-round great motorsport project for our family.
“We’ve been able to find some cars that have some significant history that fit within our budget, and we’ve got some cars that are unique. There were only two of them and Prancing Horse was a pretty trick team of the era too.”
Nations Cup cars have been in the news of late, especially given one of the former Team Lamborghini Australia Diablo GTRs raced by Paul Stokell recently sold for $700,000 at a Shannons auction.
