Car of the Week: 1965 Ford Mustang 2+2 (Phantom Rotary)

Digging into the rotary-powered Mustang presumed urban myth. The Phantom Mustang has been found!

Among all of the gleaming cars at the National Automobile and Truck Museum (NATMUS) in Auburn, Ind., there’s a little 1965 Mustang 2+2 that might appear to be “just another red Mustang.” Even I looked past the unique car the first few times I scoped out the museum, and I have been active and in the Mustang community for 40 years and was once a Ford corporate employee. In my years of travels, I have seen Mustang prototypes and one-of-a-kinds, some of which have been kept hidden from public view for decades. Yet this red Mustang at NATMUS remained right under my nose until something about it caught my eye during a visit in 2021.

That year, during one of my regular visits to NATMUS in search of story subjects, I decided to change things up by starting at the rear of the gallery and working my way toward the front. While scanning the automobiles, my eyes locked on the uniquely different front fender emblems on the red Mustang fastback that I’d glanced over so many times before. Even from afar, I could tell the car’s “RC2-60” emblems were unlike any I’d ever seen. Most other passersby had probably done exactly what I had done on earlier visits and scanned past the unique emblems since they are the same size and general shape of the “V-8” emblems they replace on a production Mustang.

Upon approaching the Mustang, I noticed weathered “Curtiss-Wright” parking stickers on the front and rear bumpers, indicating it was a one-time employee or company car and making me further wonder what I had stumbled upon.

In the past, I’ve taken part in the automotive archaeology of one-of-a-kind Mustangs and Shelbys, and there were too many unique items on this Mustang to ignore. It was time to dig deeper, study the clues and look at the evidence that lied within this unique automobile.

The front of the Mustang seemed to be higher than normal. I walked up to the front of the car and raised its hood, only to find an engine bay minus the power plant. Even though the Mustang was void of an engine, I could tell this engine compartment was unlike any other I’d ever seen on a Mustang. The car had an unusually thin radiator with heavy-duty steel brackets that were unlike those on a factory Mustang. The compartment also had a large metal container resembling an oil or water cooler mounted in front of the shock tower on the driver’s side, and like the front and rear bumpers, the passenger side shock tower had a Curtiss-Wright decal. This decal read, “Rotating Combustion Engine — A New Shape in Power.”

A stalled Wankel

I put the Mustang’s hood down and sought out Don Monesmith, NATMUS’ Youth and Adult Volunteers Coordinator. Monesmith oversees the volunteers who help him maintain the museum’s collection of 175 automobiles.

Monesmith said a museum benefactor by the name of Steve Estes had donated the red ’65 Mustang to NATMUS back in 2005, and that it’s powered by an unusual RC2-60 Wankel rotary engine, but the Mustang was not road-worthy when the museum received it. The rotary engine in the Mustang would start up, but then it would stop running.

John Taller, a volunteer at NATMUS who heads the museum’s engine maintenance and rebuild department, along with one of the youth volunteers, pulled the engine in 2019 with the idea of rebuilding it. Once the rotary engine was out of the Mustang, they ran into issues with damaged O-rings and other one-of-a-kind components.

I asked Monesmith if NATMUS still had the engine and he said, “Yes, it’s in our engine room. Follow me and I’ll take you there.”

When we walked into the engine room, Monesmith pointed to the back where I saw the entire Curtiss-Wright rotary engine and its components strategically spread on shelves and a work bench. Monesmith pointed to several O-rings on the work bench and mentioned he’d never seen a Teflon-and-silicone O-ring like the ones in the rotary engine. A search to find replacements or a company to produce them had been a major issue with reassembling the engine. To date, they had not found replacements or a company to produce them.

The following week, John Taller directed me to the NATMUS engine room and walked me through the RC2-60 rotary engine disassembly process. As Monesmith explained earlier, Taller had discovered issues with the rotary engine. It would start up, run briefly, then shut down. During the engine tear down, Taller noticed the Apex seals had been overtaken by carbon and collapsed. But the major issues were the damaged O-rings and worn main bearings. These components were one-of-a-kind experimental parts, and he said finding replacements has been impossible. This lack of available replacement parts had derailed the engine rebuild and presented a major setback to getting the Mustang running again.

An experienced electrical engineer, Taller has spent his career specializing in mechanical practices and manufacturing operations. For more than a decade of that time, he’s successfully worked with several private companies to find unique and rare parts for special or unique automobiles. Unfortunately, none of his contacts could produced an O-ring that would work as a replacement for the Curtiss-Wright original. He continues to search for replacements, reaching out to manufacturers in hopes of finding replacement O-rings for the rotary engine.

As Taller explained the challenges of the rotary Mustang project, something inside me said this car is an important part of automobile and Mustang history. The passion that Taller and Monesmith have for this project greatly inspired me. Even with all the roadblocks and obstacles, Taller continues his mission to see the ’65 Mustang up and running with its RC2-60 Wankel rotary engine. He’s determined to one day drive it in downtown Auburn. Wanting to see the RC2-60-engined Mustang drive under its own power influenced me to get involved in the project and start the fact-finding journey with him and the NATMUS team.

It also helps that NATMUS is a dynamic museum. The collection is diverse and not just one person’s dream. There’s also a team approach involving adult and youth volunteers who work together to learn, mentor and educate each other, a process unlike anything else I have seen within the automotive industry or community. Simply put, NATMUS has a system that stresses hands-on learning through mentoring and team work. It’s a proven model for success.

Installing a Wankel in a Mustang

Under the leadership of William “Bill” Figart, manager of advanced programs at Curtiss-Wright and founder of RPI (Rotary Power International), the Wankel rotary engine Mustang project was developed. According to sources, Curtiss-Wright purchased a red 1965 Mustang 2+2 fastback from Dockery Ford in Morristown, N.J., in 1970 for the purpose of replacing the car’s factory-installed 289-cid V-8 engine with the RC2-60 rotary engine. A team of Curtiss-Wright engineers helped with the rotary engine conversion. The project was done off-site at a private automotive body shop belonging to the father of one of the engineers. It’s fair to say the engine swap was small scale by today’s standards.

Apparently Curtiss-Wright didn’t have the facilities nor the resources of an automotive manufacturer and the installation was relatively crude. However, it demonstrated that the team’s engineering knowledge and expertise could adapt and rise to the challenge of installing an aircraft engine into a Ford Mustang, and make it perform much like a factory-built 289-cid V-8-powered production car.

The RC2-60 twin rotor engine was mated to the Mustang’s stock torque converter and Cruise-O-Matic transmission with no adjustment for the rotary engine’s different characteristics. A Rochester two-barrel carburetor from a Buick 401-cid V-8 was used, and the exhaust from the rotary engine’s peripheral exhaust ports was routed into the Mustang’s original single exhaust system.

The RC2-60 was a light engine, weighing 237 pounds, including the alternator and other accessories — significantly lighter than the approximately 600-lb. 289-cid V-8. The RC2-60 was also more compact than the 289-cid V-8, and when installed, there was a 15-inch gap between the fan and the radiator with a plastic shroud installed to bridge the large space. The power output for the rotary engine was 185 bhp compared to 200 bhp for the 289-cid V-8 engine it replaced.

The interior of the Mustang also has a few clues that it’s not a factory-stock Mustang. Starting with a sheet-metal panel installed below the dash on the passenger side for accessory gauges, there are two gauges recording pyrometers. Additionally, there’s a small knob under the driver’s side of the instrument panel that controlled which of several pickups were to be monitored. These gauges were installed to record the performance, durability and overall operation of the RC2-60 rotary engine during real-world driving. There’s also a “Curtiss-Wright Rotating Combustion Engine — A New Shape in Power” decal on the instrument panel that’s identical to the one on the passenger side shock tower. Except for the gauge panel, knob on the driver’s side and decal, the interior is all Mustang.

Why a Wankel?

It’s not clear if Curtiss-Wright intended to get into the automobile industry. This ’65 Mustang served as a platform for its research center and to likely license its technology. I’ve discussed the rotary-powered ’65 Mustang with retired Ford Motor Co. (FoMoCo) power train engineers, some of whom mentioned how the 289-cid V-8 engine had been in high demand during the 1960s. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, the company stretched itself thin by offering its small-block engine (initially the 289, then the 302) in just about every Ford and Mercury model. The engineers indicated the company was looking at alternative small-displacement engines to power their automobiles. It was also known within FoMoCo that emission standards were going to get tighter, and rumors of an oil embargo were on the horizon. Being a major manufacturer of aircraft engines, it’s possible the management team at Curtiss-Wright looked at the demand that the government and the buying public was putting on the automobile industry for small-displacement, energy-efficient engines with low emissions, and tested whether it could produce a small-displacement rotary engine for automotive use in cars such as the Mustang. If successful, the RC2-60 engine might entice Ford or other American automobile manufacturers to use the engine. However, the project doesn’t seem to have gotten farther than the Mustang inside NATMUS.

NATMUS’ RC2-60 Wankel rotary engine-powered Mustang was last registered by Curtiss-Wright in 1973. The company sold the rotary branch and license to John Deere in February 1984. During the transaction, Jim Barricella, owner of Mazda 17 — an Upper Saddle River, N.J., automobile dealership — purchased it and added it to his automobile collection where it was displayed for several years. It’s believed that during the acquisition process, Barricella (or someone from his organization) requested an endorsement for the Curtiss-Wright Mustang, and William Figart obliged by signing the glove box door.

Back in 1971, William “Bill” Figart had given an interview to the New York Times in which he discussed the Curtiss-Wright RC2-60-powered Mustang and how the company had an interest in possibly providing rotary engines to automobile manufacturers. He personally used the ’65 Mustang as his company car. This explains the Curtiss-Wright-issued stickers on the car’s bumpers.

During his career at Curtiss-Wright, John Deere and RPI, Figart consulted on rotary engine programs for NASA and the U.S. military. He remains a major presence within the rotary engine community, although he’s since retired and living in New Jersey.

The rotary Mustang’s future

Under the leadership of John Taller, NATMUS intends to rebuild the Curtiss-Wright RC2-60 rotary engine and reinstall it into the 1965 Mustang with the purpose of making it safe, drivable and road-worthy. However, generating the resources to complete the Mustang project has been challenging.

A fund for donations for this project has been set up at NATMUS with all money going directly into a dedicated account for the rotary-powered 1965 Mustang. (Contact Dave Yarde at NATMUS with questions: info@natmus.org or 260-925-9100.)

Old Cars intends to follow the Curtiss-Wright RC2-60 engine rebuild process. Research and fact finding also continues for this historic Mustang. Stay tuned for the latest developments when this project gains traction.

Epilogue

When I began researching this unique car, some of my contacts within the Mustang community said that, during the 1970s, they’d heard about a rotary-powered ’65 Mustang. Those contacts referred to it as the “Phantom Mustang,” as not one of them had ever seen the car in person. They thought it was just an urban myth. We’re here to say it exists and resides at NATMUS in Auburn, Ind., and is a phantom no more. 

View the 24 images of this gallery on the original article

SHOW US YOUR WHEELS!

If you’ve got an old car you love, we want to hear about it. Email us at oldcars@aimmedia.com

View the original article to see embedded media.

*As an Amazon Associate, Old Cars earns from qualifying purchases.

Old Cars Weekly