Doug (427strato) - That's sad to hear about the lack of interest in Canadian Pontiacs and, unfortunately, the whole industry is focused on sales volume. The great thing about the Ames event is the shear number of great cars it attracts and your Strato Chief would be a head-turner there. I don't go for the trophies or the vendors, but rather for the show (500 cars), race (500 cars), and the best Pontiac swap meet (including Canadian Pontiac) in the North America. Being in north central Ohio, it is fairly close to us and it sounds like you too. The event is worth the travel (we like to drive our cars - 600 miles round trip) and we aren't getting any younger and take advantage of the adventures while we can (and while we can drive our cars ourselves, haha).
According to the numbers Fred Simmonds compiled years ago and Diego has filtered through, we surmise maybe a dozen Catalina sedans were 428 HO 4-speed cars, with maybe half (5-6) factory ordered with 4.11 gears and the M-21. We heard of a few Ventura's and GP's similarly equipped., so may out of the 173 - 428 HO 4-speed cars produced, 25-30 were M-21/4.11 cars....pure speculation here.
I think a group picture of the two cars would be awesome. I know Barry Kluczyk at Hemmings & Musclecar Review, and Don Keefe at Poncho Perfection would love to do articles on both the cars, together or separately. My brother, Dan, who owns and is restoring the Cat, says that it won't likely be finished this year due to his work-load and is behind a couple of projects at Scott Tiemann's shop. I will certainly be posting progress reports and pics when it happens. Dan is currently assembling the 428 and hopefully will be broke-in and on the dyno in a month to see what the motor does. He is rebuilding it with a Mellings 068 cam, so it will be a true "pure-stock" HO. Dan degreed all the timing events and they were 'dead-on' to a real PMD 068 cam he has.
Dennis
|