Owner: Joe Davis From San Jose, California

1965-1966

Owners:

How Colt 45 became of the Fiat:

At this point Joe was racing solo with the Fiat in early 1965 as the Ansen Automotive Engineering Fiat for the main sponsor. Wes Ingram moved on to build his own race car which became the famous Jewel T of 1967. 

Joe Davis worked for Ford's factory quality control in San Jose, CA. Ford verbally agreed to help Joe out with a new 1965 Mustang coupe body & a new Cammer motor for the project. Joe first got the body and modify the front wheel opening due to the front wheels were 8 inches forward from the stock opening. Joe bought the mustang skin pieces from the local Ford dealer and put the body together and dropped it on the Fiat 96" wheelbase chassis. After he got the car running & racing with the old Chevy power plant , Joe asked Ford about now getting that new Cammer motor & Ford backed out of the deal by offering only a new small block Ford motor. That was the end of the Ford relationship in Joe's race program.  

Here is a story told by Jon Tedesco who was a a 22 year worker at Johnson's Body Shop where Joe Davis would hangout to work on the car at that time.   

" One day I rolled in with my new 1964 1/2 Mustang coupe which became the inspiration to put a Mustang body on the Fiat chassis. I remember the day we parked my Mustang alongside the Fiat and began to ponder how we could put this body onto that frame. It was a lot of work but I am happy to say we did it. We even had to fabricate some body parts by making fiberglass molds off my brand new car. The Colt 45 became one of the first "Funny Cars" because nobody knew how to classify this coupe body on BB/A chassis and simply called it a funny car. We were at the Carlsbad drag strip the day Joe drove it for the first time and I was near the end of the strip filming with a Super 8 camera when the Colt 45 crossed the finish line about a foot off the ground and popped the windshield when the parachute opened. We knew very little about aerodynamics but decided that air got under the Mustang hood and lifted the car. We lowered the front end in the pits and took another pass with more success. This was a real learning experience but a ton of fun."

  Colt 45 was one of the fastest cars off the line.

Special thanks to Joe's son Rand Davis & Jon Tedesco for all the detail information.