It was a posting on Craigslist.com that got Lars Ekberg’s attention—a 1969 Ford Torino Talladega located in Clemson, South Carolina, just a few hours away from his North Carolina home.
Talladegas are rare cars, built to homologate the body for NASCAR competition. Traditionally, NASCAR required that at least 500 be built for street use in order to race on the track.
“I drove down and saw that the car wasn’t worth what they were asking,” Ekberg says. “So I made an offer, got in my truck, and drove home.”
He never expected to hear from the owner again, but to his surprise, his phone rang about six months later. “The guy called and said to drive back down the next week, and to bring a winch,” he says. “He had accepted my offer.” The former owners, a married couple, had owned the car for 20 or 25 years, according to Ekberg. The lady had tears in her eyes as he loaded the car on his trailer.
Surprisingly Lars Ekberg located this rare Torino Talladega on Craigslist. The car was built in small numbers, with the assistance of Charlotte’s Holman-Moody, in order to make it legal for NASCAR competition. LARS EKBERG
It had a 428 cubic-inch engine with a column shift automatic, but it was missing many parts under the hood. Luckily, when he opened the trunk, he discovered all the missing parts. “I brought the car home on a Friday night and had it running by Saturday morning,” he says.
He enjoyed driving his barn-find to local cruise-ins for a couple of years, but eventually decided to move on to something else. “I sold it on eBay to a guy in California,” Ekberg says.
Apparently someone needed that car more than Ekberg, and the price, once more, was right.
It’s all in the nose. This is the magic part that made the car so successful on the race track. The fenders and hood are several inches longer than stock, which gave it superior aerodynamics. LARS EKBERG