(Photos by Joe Grippo) – The hits just keep on coming from the lens of Joe Grippo whose massive collection of photos from the 2014 FE Race and Reunion at Beaver Springs Dragway document one of the great gatherings of Blue Oval horsepower ever seen on the east or any coast. The Ford Mustang has been getting all the credit for its 50th birthday in 2014 and while that is cool, a car that has been completely overshadowed in the hullabaloo has been the absolutely amazing Ford Thunderbolt. Pound for pound, the legendary “T-Bolt” is the baddest factory drag machine ever produced. Some may run harder and faster, but for sheer blunt force impact on the sport, the T-Bolt has its own special place. It was the Ford that scared the Chrysler and GM products right down to their very foundation. An absolutely ragged 427, lightweight parts all over the place, and all of it packaged into what was an otherwise mundane car, the Thunderbolt re-wrote the book on what an all out factory drag effort was.

In this gallery you’ll see a bunch of T-Bolt tribute cars and in some upcoming photos maybe you’ll see a real one or two. They were made in very short volume and they were essentially handed to the best drag racers of the day to go out and match the other Detroit offerings blow for blow all over the country. The part of that era we love the most is that it wasn’t “national event” driven, meaning that at any “local drag strip USA” you had a shot of seeing a huge name roll through the gate in a wildly rare and fast car to match race with other names that dominated the headlines of the day. You didn’t see Thunderbolts at 23 races a year. You saw them at your local track on a hot summer night taking on Chryslers and GM offerings. Great days and the FE Race and Reunion event is designed and operated to bring spectators and participants back to those heady days of yore. Looks like they did a fine job to us.