The First Factory Supercharged Fords

The 2003 – 2004 Ford Mustang “Terminators” Were Awesome Beasts
But they weren’t the first!

In 1957, Ford Solved the HP Deficiency with Superchargers – and Caught the Competition Flatfooted!
The top illustrations show the different mounting positions of the supercharger in both the Fairlane and T-bird, and the Fairlane image shows the NASCAR version of the VR57 Paxton supercharger.

Forty-six years before 2003 Ford faced the same dilemma – the competition had more cubic inches or just more raw HP.  What to do? Some suggested Ford follow Mercury’s lead and adopt the Lincoln 368 CID race engine and go for it, but Ford management saw that this would just escalate Chevrolet and Plymouth adopting their siblings’ larger powerplants.

The solution? The same one adopted in 2003 – supercharging.  As all of you may know, what a pressurized system does is “fool” the engine into thinking it’s much larger than it really is. Since an IC engine is really an air pump, the amount of fuel to be burned is, for the most part, determined by atmospheric pressure (you open the intake valve, and air is pushed in). If, however, we pressurize the air, we can increase the amount of air/fuel shoved into the cylinder. When that fuel is burned, we get more power. Without changing anything else – boom – the engine becomes effectively larger.

Superchargers also effectively bypass the inefficiency of poor head design and even smaller valves; a problem Ford faced with the Y-Block.  Ford knew that this would work, but a lot of research was done to ensure that the right supercharger was selected. Ford even went so far as to develop a racing supercharger for NASCAR and “street” one for the daily customer. The race unit was eventually outlawed, but the street one could be tweaked to get the same HP (about 400 HP in NASCAR trim). The street version was rated at 300 HP, and the race version was modestly set at 340. This far out shadowed their competition. 

The blower on the left is the NASCAR VR57 and the one on the right is the “street” unit.
The NASCAR version delivered close to 10 lbs. Boost.

• • Learn more about the 1957 Ford HERE  https://over-drive-magazine.com/2025/06/01/1957-ford-cars-fact-sheet/
  • See the 1957 T-Bird Fact Sheet HERE  https://over-drive-magazine.com/2024/10/09/1957-ford-thunderbird-fact-sheet/

BONUS – You can check out the 2003 SVT Cobra Brochure HERE https://over-drive-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2003-Ford-Mustang-Cobra-Brochure-pg-1-16C.pdf