This was a name of the most striking reverence, spoken of in the same manner in which one might reminisce about a past lover, one that was too beautiful, too perfect to hold onto for any significant length of time. No, Belchfire wasn't a Mustang, but it was a vehicle so legendary that it became the car against which all other cars were measured.
Perhaps adding to its mysterious past, is the fact that the above picture isn't even a proper representation of the car. It's a '67, and Belchfire was made—forged perhaps would be the better word—in 1970. The mystical numbers and names discussed over beer and barbecue in the backyard held little meaning to me at the tender age of eight, yet they gave this sinister machination of horsepower the sort of infamy that I could never forget:
"She was a 1970 Ford Custom debadged police interceptor with a PI 428 motor."
It was our close family friend, Jim, who came into possession of this monster courtesy of a police auction. Jim and his brothers Ed and John had grown up with my dad, worked with him in Saudi Arabia during the 1970s and 80s, and as far as any of us were concerned, they were just as much family as anyone else. And they all had a knack for storytelling.
"First thing we wanted to do was adjust the timing when we got her. Turned the distributor, turned the key, and boom!" Explosions were of great interest to my eight-year-old self, and I listened intently, stunned with wonder, "...shot a fucking flame from the top of the carb three feet high." Even without knowing what a "carb" was, I knew that this must have been a special feat indeed, for after that moment, the car was referred to only as "Belchfire."
Then came the recitation of the otherworldly features that separated the car gods from the car mortals.
"360 horse right out of the gate, but we all know that Ford just made up those numbers for insurance purposes. Any higher than that and it would have had to be classified as a race car." The mystery, the intrigue ballooned in my imagination, as I saw Henry Ford and his conspirators hovering over Belchfire's shadowy engine bay, rambling off horsepower numbers to dubious insurance inspectors, hiding the car's true and terrible nature.
"The suspension was dialed up so that when you went faster, the car would lower itself. After you got past 100 miles and hour, it was like you were sitting on the ground. That's the police package that they left in there. On accident or on purpose? Who knows..."
There were the stories of street racing far more expensive sports cars, beating the Porches, the Corvettes with ease. There was the story of drag racing a "Smokey and the Bandit" car, a 1976 Pontiac Trans-Am with "the 7.5 liter V8." Jim would tell how, with seven other passengers along for the ride, Belchfire beat the Trans-Am by two car lengths, leaving the would-be Burt Reynolds to beat on his steering wheel in a fury.
Then there was story of the motor mounts, of how the engine was so strong and powerful that it would snap motor mounts like dry twigs with every hard push of accelerator. Belchfire broke so many motor mounts, in fact, that Jim had to take a length of logging chain and weld one end to the block and the other to the car's frame. I was later liken this modification to the adamantine chains from Paradise Lost, the ones that held Satan to the confines of his hellish prison.
Like so many other car legends, Belchfire was one day untimely defeated, its body wrecked, mutilated, sold off for scrap. But at its heart, that 428 PI police interceptor motor, there remained the hints of mystery that persist even still.
"The motor?" Jim would take a swig off a Budweiser as he continued his wistful reflection,
"Yeah, it didn't seem right having it just sit around in my garage. Gave it away, actually. Gave it to a buddy of mine that was building a '67 Mustang for the racetrack."
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