1985 MERKUR XR4Ti IMSA-IS RACE CAR
For those interested in the high performance Ford 2.3 Liter Turbocharged cars that were available during the mid to late 1980's, here’s a short story about my Merkur XR4Ti :
First a little history: My
hobby has always been cars, and finally in the early ‘80s I showed up at a
Shelby Cobra club track event at Willow Springs road course in California just
to see what it
was
all about. I got a wild ride around the 2.5 mile road course in Alan Bolte’s
’65 Shelby 5R101. If you are familiar with Shelbys then you know that’s one of
the original Shelby Mustang competition race cars. I immediately realized this
was for me … and why didn’t I know about this before??!! Needless to say, at
the next event I was on the track with my ’65 Mustang GT K fastback (that I
still have) and have been to lots of track events since.
I liked Merkurs day one. Finally got an ’88 XR4 street car in ‘91. Thought "wouldn’t it be nice to have an XR4 track car", and was considering building one, when I saw an ad for one in Atlanta in November of ’96. I live in Kansas City. I flew in to look at it and it was in complete, excellent, runable condition. Well, OK, I’ll take it! I left a deposit and flew home. Returned 2 weeks later with a 24ft Ryder truck, loaded 3 crates of parts, spare motor, spare body cladding and wing, 2 spare sets of wheels, the car I’d never even sat in, and drove home.
The car was built and raced by Bill Topping of Maryland (and later Georgia). He started construction in ’86 and completed it in ‘88. He ran it full time in IMSA for the 4 years ’88 thru ’91. It’s listed, and is in some of the action photos, in the IMSA yearbooks for those years. The IS (International Sedan) division had various sponsors during that time frame including Toyo Tires in ’91 as you see on the car. All of the entry/tech stickers are on the A pillar roll bar. Ran well in the top half of the pack at numerous tracks in the eastern half of the country and as far west as Topeka and San Antonio.
Not
the first car Bill had built so he had some really good ideas on how to do this
one. No way I could have come close. It was a complete ground up construction,
every inch inside and out was stripped and prepped. Full cage, gauges, accusump,
fuel cell, fire system, Tilton/JFZ racing brake system, custom shock tower
camber plates, adjustable coilovers, adjustable lower radius rods, custom sway
bars front and rear, heim joints everywhere, intercooler, oil cooler, plus lots
of really trick pieces and modifications too numerous to list. Weight is around
2,500 lbs.
The IMSA-IS rules were that you could do all the suspension, brakes, safety stuff but the engine was supposed to be stock. Well … close to stock anyway. My plan now that I’ve run the car for some time and have rebuilt all necessary suspension, brakes, driveline parts and am comfortable driving the car to it’s limit (or mine) is to add horsepower and lower my lap times. My hobby is doing club type track events, primarily with the Shelby/Ford clubs, not competitive events. But hey, you still want to at least keep-up with or pass whoever’s in front of you!
OK, well really, I’m an XR4 nut. I still just love these cars. And this one is an absolute blast !!!
Thanks Bill !
Peter Cipolla
816-444-0191