Dearborn, Mich. — Taurus’ 100th NASCAR Nextel Cup Series victory earlier this year and Kurt Busch’s championship in 2004 were just two of the latest in a long line of on-track success for Ford Motor Co. in the continued growth of America’s most popular motorsport, dating back to the series’ very first race in 1949.

	Ford Motor Co. Models in NASCAR
	Through the years Ford has fielded several models that yielded several wins in NASCAR competition. 1949-1955 Ford/Lincoln/Mercury, 10 wins 1956-1959 Ford Fairlane/Mercury Monterey, 60 1960-1968 Ford Thunderbird/Ford Galaxie, 199 1968- 1971 Ford Torino/Mercury Cyclone, 55 1972-1977 Mercury Montego, 47 1978 – 1997 Ford Thunderbird/Mercury Cougar, 184 1998-2005 Ford Taurus, 100

In June 2005, the Taurus, which was first campaigned in 1998, scored its 100th series victory (counting points races, and preseason and all-star events) when Greg Biffle won at Michigan. Taurus reached the milestone in just 276 events, helped considerably by Biffle, who won six races in a 16-race span, dating back to the last race of the 2004 season.

Last year, Busch became the third Ford driver in six seasons—and second in a row—to win the Nextel Cup championship, producing a clutch fifth-place finish in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway to carve out a thin eight-point advantage in the final standings in the closest championship race in series history. Busch, at the time barely 26 years old, became the third-youngest champion in NASCAR history by best surviving the first-ever Chase for the Nextel Cup, a grueling 26-race prequel followed by an all-out 10-race “playoff.”

By contrast, the previous year, in 2003, Busch’s teammate Matt Kenseth delivered Roush Racing’s first Cup title in dominant fashion: Kenseth, who led the series with five victories in 2002, took the points lead early in ’03 and then held it for the final 33 consecutive weeks, a series record.

Biffle, Busch and Kenseth are among the drivers over the years who were merely following in the tire tracks of Jim Roper, who started Ford’s winning ways in NASCAR by wheeling a Lincoln to victory in June 1949 in the first-ever race sanctioned by the newly formed National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. And, from the time little-known Cleveland mechanic Jimmy Florian drove a Ford to its first NASCAR Grand National victory in 1950 to its historic 500th series win 50 years later, Ford has been a leading car make in NASCAR history.

Ford has now won more than 560 races in NASCAR’s premier division.

	Taurus Wins by Driver
	Dale Jarrett 18 Mark Martin 15 Jeff Burton 14 Kurt Busch 12 Matt Kenseth 10 Rusty Wallace 8 Greg Biffle 8 Ricky Rudd 4 Jeremy Mayfield 3 Elliott Sadler 3 Ryan Newman 2 Carl Edwards 2 Ricky Craven 1 Dale Jarrett 18 Mark Martin 15 Jeff Burton 14 Kurt Busch 12 Matt Kenseth 10 Rusty Wallace 8 Greg Biffle 8 Ricky Rudd 4 Jeremy Mayfield 3 Elliott Sadler 3 Ryan Newman 2 Carl Edwards 2 Ricky Craven 1

From early winners like Curtis Turner, Joe Weatherly and Fred Lorenzen to current stars Mark Martin, Dale Jarrett, Biffle, Kenseth and Busch, Ford has always featured some of the sport’s top drivers.

David Pearson is second on NASCAR’s all-time winner’s list with 105—and more than half of those came in either a Ford or Mercury, and two of his three driver’s championships, in 1968 and ’69, came in a Ford.

Of the top 20 drivers on the all-time wins list, most drove Fords during their careers, including Cale Yarborough, Bobby Allison, Ned Jarrett and Junior Johnson. Even Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, Sr., who both made history in rival car makes, won races in a Ford.

Since the mid-1950s, Ford has produced some of the fastest stock cars in NASCAR history, winning as many as a record 48 races in one season (1965). Additionally, Ford has been the leader in NASCAR Grand National and Nextel Cup victories 13 times.

Ned Jarrett won Ford’s first driver’s championship in 1965, winning 13 races and compiling an astounding 42 top-five finishes in 54 starts. Jarrett closed that season with a victory, his 43rd in a Ford, and to this day remains the manufacturer’s all-time wins leader.

As Fords became more and more dominant in the 1960s, more of the world’s top drivers wanted to drive them. Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt all took time out of their open-wheel careers to win in Ford stock cars.

By the late ’60s, Pearson had emerged as Ford’s top gun. En route to the first of back-to-back championships in 1968, he won an amazing 16 races in a new Ford Torino. He was one of five Ford drivers to win a championship that year. A.J. Foyt drove a Torino to the USAC crown and Benny Parsons won the ARCA title, producing a sweep of the three major stock-car divisions by Ford.

In 1969, the year before all makes began to cut back their factory support, Ford won 26 NASCAR races, including nearly all of the superspeedway events. Driving both a Ford and Mercury for Junior Johnson, Lee Roy Yarbrough won all four races at Daytona and Darlington as well as the World 600 at Charlotte.

With a national fuel shortage causing American manufacturers to cut back their racing programs, the 1970s produced few Ford victories. But, by the mid-1980s, Ford came roaring back with a new car and a new star.

In 1983, Ford debuted a new version of the sleek Thunderbird, which would go on to produce 184 victories, two driver’s championships and two manufacturer’s titles. It was the first car to win the prestigious Winston Million, and win the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 in the same season.

In 1985, Bill Elliott captured the nation’s attention by winning 11 superspeedway races in a Thunderbird and setting speed records nearly every time he climbed behind the wheel. Among his victories were three of the four big events—the Daytona 500, the Winston 500 and the Southern 500—making him the first driver to collect the $1 million bonus put up by then-series sponsor R.J. Reynolds.

Elliott’s remarkable feats helped make the Thunderbird one of the hottest-selling cars in America, and earned him the nicknames “Awesome Bill from Dawsonville” and Million Dollar Bill.”

He won 12 more races over the next two years and gave Ford its fourth driver’s championship in 1988.

Four years later, in 1992, Elliott played a key role in another of Ford’s greatest seasons. By winning 16 of 28 races, Ford won its first manufacturer’s championship in the modern era (post-1972), and underdog owner-driver Alan Kulwicki, driving his so-called “Underbird,” won the driver’s title by a mere 10 points over Elliott. Elliott and Davey Allison, one of the sport’s rising stars, each won five times that year, with Elliott tying the modern record with four in a row. The next year, however, tragedy struck the Ford camp as Kulwicki and Allison were both killed in separate aircraft crashes.

Mark Martin was Ford’s top performer in 1993, winning five races and matching Elliott’s feat of four consecutive victories.

The mid-1990s saw Ford win 60 races in a four-year stretch (’94-’97) and two more manufacturer’s championships. Thunderbird went out with a bang in 1997 by winning a series-best 19 races in its final season of competition. After 15 years on the track, it was time for a change.

Ford made history in 1998 when Taurus bolted onto the scene as the manufacturer’s flagship model in NASCAR, becoming the first full-time, four-door vehicle to compete in the series. Rusty Wallace made the car’s debut a success by winning the preseason Bud Shootout non-points event in Daytona, and Mark Martin scored the car’s first official victory three weeks later in the inaugural series race at Las Vegas.

After winning 15 races in its first season, Taurus showed its strength in 1999 as Dale Jarrett won the driver’s championship, to match his father Ned’s accomplishment 34 years earlier, in leading Ford to its 13th manufacturer’s title and fourth of the ’90s.

Taurus made headlines again in 2000 when Jeff Burton won at Las Vegas to make Ford the first manufacturer with at least 500 victories in NASCAR’s premier division, and Taurus earned the manufacturer’s title

As the 21st century unfolded, the championships by Kenseth and Busch followed, and Taurus scored another manufacturer’s title in 2002 en route to reaching the century mark in victories.

And, starting in 2006, Ford Fusion will join the legendary lineup of Ford race cars as Ford’s new face for The Chase.