Photo Courtesy Source Interlink Media Archives

Bill Stroppe’s involvement with racing runs so deep that it would probably be easier to list the types of racing he didn’t participate in than those he did. On-road, off-road, even in the water, the vehicles that Stroppe and his crew built were fast, competitive and usually groundbreaking in their design and execution.

This portrait of Stroppe with one of his NASCAR Mercurys is an outtake from a photo shoot done for a March 1963 article in Motor Trend magazine.

“We’ll be seeing some very fast, loaded-for-bear Mercurys on the stock car trail this season,” wrote Wayne Thoms. “The team will carry the banner of racing wizard and Mercury expert Bill Stroppe—just like old times.”

Stroppe had been working with Lincoln/Mercury since the early ’50s. He, with partner Clay Smith, built the hot-rod Lincolns that took the Mexican Carrera Panamericana road race by storm in 1952 and 1953. Stroppe’s efforts on behalf of the factory went underground somewhat when the Automobile Manufacturer’s Association banned OE participation in racing events in 1957. But by 1963, several manufacturers were getting back into racing—often using what Thoms referred to as an “indirect connection.” Ford, for example, “contracted with Bill Stroppe, who has prepared a team of cars, signed drivers, and will be solely responsible for Mercury’s destinies on the race courses.”

Stroppe had great material to work with. Mercury’s Marauder had a new fastback roofline that provided enough of an aerodynamic improvement to go hunting for 160 mph on the speedways. Underhood was a new engine, “427 cubic inches of high-performance V-8 that cranks out its rated 410 hp at 5,600 rpm,” Thoms wrote. Stroppe had run some of the early 427s on his dyno, and while he was mum about actual power numbers, “confident smiles around the shop indicate that the factory’s 410-hp rating is not only reasonable, it just might be conservative,” said Thoms.

The talent Stroppe assembled for that racing season included big names, such as Troy Ruttman, Rodger Ward and Louis Unser. Yet it was relative newcomer Darel Dieringer who earned 15 top-10 finishes on the NASCAR circuit that year and gave Mercury its only stock car victory at the season’s last race at Riverside.

Another racer on Stroppe’s roster was Parnelli Jones, who had a big year in 1963. He won the Indy 500 and also raced a Marauder up Pikes Peak a couple of months later to win the stock car class and set a class record during qualifying.

Jones and Stroppe would continue their racing adventures for years to come. It was Stroppe, in fact, who got Jones into off-road racing, and he was Parnelli’s co-driver in the Big Oly Bronco for back-to-back Baja 1000 wins in 1971 and 1972.

Photo Courtesy Source Interlink Media Archives

Bill Stroppe’s involvement with racing runs so deep that it would probably be easier to list the types of racing he didn’t participate in than those he did. On-road, off-road, even in the water, the vehicles that Stroppe and his crew built were fast, competitive and usually groundbreaking in their design and execution.

This portrait of Stroppe with one of his NASCAR Mercurys is an outtake from a photo shoot done for a March 1963 article in Motor Trend magazine.

“We’ll be seeing some very fast, loaded-for-bear Mercurys on the stock car trail this season,” wrote Wayne Thoms. “The team will carry the banner of racing wizard and Mercury expert Bill Stroppe—just like old times.”

Stroppe had been working with Lincoln/Mercury since the early ’50s. He, with partner Clay Smith, built the hot-rod Lincolns that took the Mexican Carrera Panamericana road race by storm in 1952 and 1953. Stroppe’s efforts on behalf of the factory went underground somewhat when the Automobile Manufacturer’s Association banned OE participation in racing events in 1957. But by 1963, several manufacturers were getting back into racing—often using what Thoms referred to as an “indirect connection.” Ford, for example, “contracted with Bill Stroppe, who has prepared a team of cars, signed drivers, and will be solely responsible for Mercury’s destinies on the race courses.”

Stroppe had great material to work with. Mercury’s Marauder had a new fastback roofline that provided enough of an aerodynamic improvement to go hunting for 160 mph on the speedways. Underhood was a new engine, “427 cubic inches of high-performance V-8 that cranks out its rated 410 hp at 5,600 rpm,” Thoms wrote. Stroppe had run some of the early 427s on his dyno, and while he was mum about actual power numbers, “confident smiles around the shop indicate that the factory’s 410-hp rating is not only reasonable, it just might be conservative,” said Thoms.

The talent Stroppe assembled for that racing season included big names, such as Troy Ruttman, Rodger Ward and Louis Unser. Yet it was relative newcomer Darel Dieringer who earned 15 top-10 finishes on the NASCAR circuit that year and gave Mercury its only stock car victory at the season’s last race at Riverside.

Another racer on Stroppe’s roster was Parnelli Jones, who had a big year in 1963. He won the Indy 500 and also raced a Marauder up Pikes Peak a couple of months later to win the stock car class and set a class record during qualifying.

Jones and Stroppe would continue their racing adventures for years to come. It was Stroppe, in fact, who got Jones into off-road racing, and he was Parnelli’s co-driver in the Big Oly Bronco for back-to-back Baja 1000 wins in 1971 and 1972.

But for marketers, one of Facebook’s most anticipated changes is the service’s new ability to easily add framed content to a Facebook page—technically known as content presented within iFrames. Essentially, the new feature makes it much easier for web designers to be significantly more creative
on Facebook.

Moreover, web marketers say that the introduction of easy iFraming also makes it much easier for a business to crunch analytics, including tracking user activity on Facebook pages and thoroughly analyzing how sales and other sought-after conversions are unfolding on their Facebook pages.

All told, the makeover has stimulated marketers to update their best marketing practices for the service, as detailed below:

Understand Why Facebook is So Powerful: While social networking has been around for awhile (it was done on discussion forums long before Mark Zuckerberg got his first tricycle), Facebook was one of the services that made such networking so effortless, so fun and so multifaceted. For example, once people sign up for your “fan” or business page on Facebook, they immediately begin getting information about your firm in their news feed, can instantly share your offers to others in their social network, can effortlessly engage in discussions on your Facebook page, can give their opinions of your products or services and can shop on your Facebook page—all without even thinking about how to do these things. Small wonder that Facebook now has half a billion registered users and is still growing.

Essentially, any content that appears within these specially designed iFrames is no longer subject to the limitations of Facebook’s design language. Instead, the content can be easily designed with more robust web-design programs, such as DreamWeaver.

“I, for one, am thrilled with this long-awaited news,” said Janet Driscoll Miller, CEO of SearchMojo, a web-marketing firm. “This is a huge timesaver when you’re trying to program pages to match your corporate brand.” (Users can check out what their content will look like within an iFrame)

Take Advantage of Facebook’s New Integration With Google Analytics: “Not long ago, Facebook removed some features that allowed you to track your page views in Facebook via Google Analytics,” Miller said. That’s no longer a problem, she added, now that Google allows company web content to be displayed within the new iFrames model. Any content showcased within the frame can be completely tracked, sliced and diced with Google Analytics, a free program that has a great reputation for analyzing user behavior on websites.

Easily Track Sales and Other Conversions Sought on Your Facebook Presence: “Seriously, this one deserves about 15 exclamation points,” Miller said. “iFrames makes tracking conversions from Facebook—and keeping ad respondents within the Facebook application—much easier.”

Post a “Like” Button: A recent Facebook ability to “Like” a business confers an instant recommendation of your business to everyone within a Facebook user’s circle, be it 12 people or 1,200 people. You can easily add a “Like” button to your Facebook page.

Consider Other Business-Friendly Social Plug-ins: These plug-ins include “Recommendations,” which gives users personalized suggestions for pages on your site that they might like; “Comments,” which allows visitors to comment on content on your Facebook site; “Like” box, which enables users to “like” your Facebook page and view its stream directly from your website; “Facepile,” which shows profile pictures of a user’s friends who have already signed up for your site; and “Live Stream,” which allows users to exchange comments and engage in other shared activity in real time as they interact during a live event on your Facebook page.

Post Freely Under Your Business Name to Other Pages on Facebook: With the March 1 makeover, Facebook made it very easy for a business to make a post to the walls of other pages. Previously, business’ messages were restricted to appearing on the Facebook news feeds of people who liked the business, friends of those people and, of course, on the wall of your own business Facebook page. Used judiciously, this new freedom to post to the walls of other Facebook pages could suddenly make promotion on Facebook a whole lot easier.

Post Often, Interestingly and With Plenty of Graphics: The only way to continually attract attention to your Facebook page is via constant updates to the page. Fortunately, you can post to Facebook a few times a week or, in some cases, every day, and other Facebook users won’t consider you annoying. After all, those who “friend” you are clearly saying that they are interested in what you have to say. Just be sure it’s interesting and includes images or video often. Graphics are the lifeblood of Facebook.

Engage, Don’t Broadcast: If you’ve had a Facebook business page for any amount of time, you’ve probably already heard this, but it bears repeating: Businesses that use traditional methods to broadcast their brands on Facebook are generally met with a collective yawn and sometimes even negative retribution from users protective of the social network’s culture. Quite simply, users expect a conversation from the businesses they befriend. And they expect it to be authentic.