Before we even knew what a RA III was, my friend Scott and I went to look at a 70 Formula 400 for sale locally, this was Summer of 1978. The poor thing looked horrible, the red paint was cracked and flaking off everywhere. The interior was OK but dirty. We took it for a test drive anyway.
I didn’t like anything about the condition of the car for the cheap price. But Scott was driving it and said it felt really fast. He bought it.
After he got it home,, we cleaned it up, (nothing was going to save that paint) tuned it up, and in the process we figured out what a RAIII was. It was stripped except for gauges w tack, the RAIII(including functional hood) with a turbo400, and Non posi 12bolt with around 3.73 or so gears. The car had a Holley carb on it as bought but otherwise was stock. Scott raced anyone and everyone he could find who would street race, While some cars were close he never lost, he wanted to go faster and ended up putting a set of Hooker headers on it and line lock, then took it to the local track. On a set of bias ply F60-14 that he heated up one at a time because of the open diff. , at our elevation of 2500’ it ran 14.3 first pass. He eventually got that car to go 14.02. And only ever lost one street race, to a Dodge Dart.
One time he beat a Super Bee and the owner was mad enough he wanted to fight. We pulled over to talk like we had after many of our street races, but the guy got out and reached into the back seat for a crowbar, so we got the heck out of there.
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