Ford engineers took great pains to design a perfectly symmetrical hemispherical combustion chamber with an optimized spark plug location, only to discover that the spark plug didn’t really care. Here’s another early photo of a Cammer with the original spark plug location. Note the spark plug location at the bottom edge of the valve cover on this early version of the SOHC V8. Here’s Ray Brock, publisher of Hot Rod magazine, eyeballing the setup. In May of 1964, a ’64 Galaxie hardtop with a Cammer V8 installed was parked behind Gasoline Alley at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the assembled press corps could get a good look at it. France regarded overhead cams and such to be European exotica, a poor fit with his down-home vision for Grand National stock car racing.Įven though France barred the SOHC V8 from NASCAR competition, Ford proceeded to develop the engine anyway, hoping to change Big Bill’s mind. But as the Journal reports here, NASCAR boss Bill France turned thumbs down on Ford’s proposed engine. Beaten up at Daytona all month by the new 426 Hemi engines from the Dodge/Plymouth camp, Ford officials asked NASCAR to approve an overhead-cam V8 the company had in the works. The first public mention of the Cammer V8 appeared in the Daytona Beach Morning Journal on Feb. Even today, a powerful mystique surrounds the engine. Into this simpler, more innocent world stepped Ford’s 427 CID SOHC V8, which soon became known as the Cammer. But on the American automotive scene of the 1960s, pushrod V8s were the state of the art. Here in 2014, overhead-cam, multi-valve engines are the industry standard.
In the 1960s, Ford’s overhead-cam 427 V8, popularly known as the Cammer, became the stuff of myth and legend.
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