George Alderman has been a road racer for most of his life. Alderman is known for racing Datsun 240Zs and 510 sedans, because he was a Datsun dealer for many years in Wilmington, Delaware.
More recently, he has sold Lotus Caterham 7s, but when he was racing in the mid-1960s, just before Datsun and Lotus entered his vocabulary, Alderman raced an early Mustang in the SCCA Trans Am series. Alderman and racing buddy Brett Lunger were also itching to race at the Sebring Trans Am in 1966, but neither owned a car that was eligible.
“So we decided, ‘Let’s go,’ ” Alderman says, now 79 years old. They located a 1965 Mustang coupe that had been raced in SCCA’s A-Production category by Buzz Marcus at Watkins Glen, New York, and Reading, Pennsylvania. “So I called Buzz and we bought the car from him.”
The ’65 coupe came off the Ford assembly line equipped with a plain-Jane six-cylinder, but within a year, the previous owner (Marcus) had car builder Ray Heppenstall install a HiPo 289 engine, Cobra aluminum-case T-10 four-speed gearbox, Cobra bucket seats, and a roll cage.
One of the first things Alderman and Lunger did to the Caspian Blue coupe was to paint it British Racing Green, probably because Alderman had raced so many British cars prior to the Mustang.
Almost 50 years ago, veteran driver George Alderman campaigned anything on four wheels, including this 1965 mustang Notchback, which he ran in the Trans-Am series and co-owned with Brett Lunger. The car had a Hi-Po 289 engine, Cobra transmission, gauges, and seats. GEORGE ALDERMAN
In January 2009, Alderman, his son, Paul, and restoration friend Erich Bollman repurchased the car. They intend to restore it to its 1967 Trans-Am livery and begin vintage-racing it. GEORGE ALDERMAN
At the time of the 1967 Sebring Four-Hour race, Lunger was in the military and couldn’t get leave, so Alderman drove the event solo and finished ninth overall. He also raced it at Marlboro, Maryland, and Reading, before selling the car in 1969 to local racer Norm Taylor.
By that time, his Datsun and Lotus franchises were cranking up, and he was mostly racing those brands. The Mustang was forgotten for 40 years until Alderman’s son, Paul, began restoring and racing Mustangs. Paul began to ask his father where the old Mustang might be. He learned Taylor had stored the car in a lean-to building behind his water business.
“I called Norm [Taylor] and his wife about buying the car back, but they said no, and not to call back again,” Alderman says. But Alderman knew one of Taylor’s employees who confirmed that the car was still behind the building.
When Taylor died in 2008, one of his company’s employees decided to clean up the work lot and towed a bunch of old trailers, an old Impala, and the Mustang to the dumps. “We had to race to the junkyard to retrieve it before it got crushed,” Alderman says. Many of the car’s racing parts were missing, such as the engine and the radiator.
“We were never able to inspect the trailers before they were crushed, and we believe the parts were in there,” he says. But at least he got his old racer back.
Alderman, his son, Paul, and Erich Bollman—owner of Christiana Muscle Car Restorations, a partner in the car—are restoring it back to its Sebring race configuration in the hopes of racing it in a vintage series.
“It was such a wonderful car to drive,” Alderman says. “I was always right up there with the Corvettes when I raced it in A-Sedan.”
