[Keith Seymore]

My Dad passed away in November of 2005 and my Mom still lives in the same house I grew up in. As a result, from time to time, we still find things of interest. Mom was cleaning out the kitchen last fall and found something; rather than just posting the document I thought I would sort of walk through the "discovery and interpretation" process, or at least what it looks like from my vantage point. I thought this might be fun, particularly for those of you that are amateur historians, like myself.

Ok - so Mom calls and says "I found something old. You might want to take a look". Those are magic words to me, so I drive up there and she shows me the attached; it was in the bottom drawer under a bunch of old phonebooks and papers.



It is obviously from before 1969, since we moved from that address in September of that year.



Cool return address. For those who don't know, that is the address for Royal Pontiac in Royal Oak Michigan.

Naturally, now I'm really intrigued...



There's no letter or note included; seems to be an old photo of some kind...





BAM! I laugh out loud...I know what this is!; but first, some background:

For those not familiar with my story, our '64 GTO figured prominently in how we came to get the '65 GTO we currently have.

The story goes that when the Michigan State Fair came to town, Royal Pontiac wanted to have a car to display at the Fairground. Since Dad's car had to be repainted (because it had such an awful factory paint job - that's another story) it was the best appearing car that was readily available. They decided to display his car at the Fair.

The problem was that, while Dad had the registration for the car (so that he could plate it and drive it), Royal kept the title with a "Manufacturer's Lien" on it. Since they had the title and the car, one of the other salesman must have thought it was available and sold Dad's car while it was at the Fair. Sold it to some guy from Connecticut or back east somewhere.

Dad went down to pick his car up and it was gone. Naturally, he was beside himself, since he had paid with his own money - not for the GTO, but for the previous '63 Catalina that the GTO had replaced (that's another story too). To appease him and make the situation right, Dick Jesse offered him the '65 GTO that we have today. Incidentally, we have a clear title on the '65!!

So - here's the significance: this is a picture of our '64 GTO on display at the Michigan State Fair.

[Keith Seymore]

Now, if you are typical, some of you might be thinking: "Seymore, you are so full of crap! How do we know that's your car?"

Well - I'm glad you asked.

I was looking at the picture and something caught my eye. See the license plate? HW-1031. It looked familiar for some reason.

I looked up over my desk, where I have a display of the '65 GTO: some photos, the original (unused) keys, a reproduction window sticker and......a copy of the original title. See the plate on the title?



HW-1031.

I didn't know you could do this, but apparently the first plate on the '65 GTO was the plate transferred from the '64.

I'm almost done. For some reason I decided to turn the photo over.

On the back side are the original photo credits, showing that it was a GM publicity photo.



....and, very faintly in pencil, it is noted "Royal Pontiac" in the upper RH corner.

[Keith Seymore]

Well, there you have it. I hope you found that as interesting as I did. I posted this for a couple reasons, but mainly I wanted to show:

a) How these documents are laying around, usually with no explanation, "buckslips", or any indication of why they might have been significant at the time.

b) How they are stored (or not), without regard to how they might or might not be significant in the future.

c) How the significance might be missed, unless the finder has some understanding already. In this case, you could not extract the story from the document alone. You almost have to know the story first and use the document for support.

d) How, sometimes, on rare occasions, it pays off to clean the kitchen.



I heard these kinds of stories my entire growing up years and it is always nice to find some tangible piece of something that corroborates the story.

I did, by the way, run a copy of this over to Jim Mattison at PHS. This is an example of the kind of things that I provide him with, just so he can have a copy and hear the story as well.

K

[chuckmnv]

Kool story, Keith.
cm

[6704gto]

THATS SUPER COOL STORY

[stevensonDNL]

Very captivating, Keith. That photo is a priceless piece of not only your personal family's, but Pontiac's history. Thank you for sharing it and the story. It makes you think to thoroughly check what paperwork you're getting ready to recycle or shred!
Dan

[CanAm1977]

A nice addition to the story would be if you could find any paperwork

on the original '64 GTO ...then get the Vin number and then tracking to see if it survived

The current owners would of the '64 would probably like this story also

[Keith Seymore]

I've always got my eyes peeled for the VIN on the GTO or our '63 Catalina (a SD car with the aluminum package). No luck so far.

K

[sdbob]

thanks keith its good to hear those stories. "I'm A Believer".there have to be the little guys succeeding this gives hope for the average racers.

[GT182]

Fantastic Keith, but what's the car next to you dad's 64? Is that one Pontiac put on display with his..... as in a concept car?

I still say this all should be in a book. Not many ever get to tell a story like this let alone have a dad that raced Pontiacs. You are one lucky guy.... same goes for the rest of your family.

[1967Clone]

That is wicked cool!

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by GT182

Fantastic Keith, but what's the car next to you dad's 64? Is that one Pontiac put on display with his..... as in a concept car?

That was a George Barris Kustom called the "Turbo Sonic".

It lived through a couple incarnations; I don't know why it was on display at the State Fair other than to keep those rebel teens in their nasty dungarees busy and out of trouble...



More info can be found here:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...ctive%26sa%3DN

[GT182]

Speaking of celebrity cars, a friend I worked with up in Champlain, NY owned Gene Pitneys Ford for a good number of years. Can't remember the year of model tho.... CRS on my part, but he did tell the year and model. This was back in the 80s and by 1990 he'd sold it when he retired and moved to Florida. I never had a chance to see it as he had it stored in some safe place, but always promised to take us to have a look. He did have it out in a parade one year but I was on the road working so I didn't see it.

Gene Pitney...... http://geocities.com/genepitney/

Sorry for going off topic.

[1969 Ram Air]

Keith - great story and picture. I can't believe they sold your dad's car out from under him! He must have been really mad...until he got the '65. Great picture, that was a different time back then. I like the James Dean looking guy to the right and the way everybody is dressed so nicely.

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by 1969 Ram Air

I can't believe they sold your dad's car out from under him! He must have been really mad...until he got the '65...

I think he was pretty scared - at the thought of losing the car and his monetary investment - but he WAS really mad, too!

He never dreamed anything like that could (or would) happen, so the car was displayed with all his "good stuff" on there: the tow bar brackets, headers and hop up tricks were all still installed -and - he had stored the slicks in the trunk! He lost all that stuff and had to start over on the '65...

K

[Keith Seymore]

One of the things I enjoy about being "my father's son" is finding the little surprises he left behind.

I was in his garage the other day and I found this "well loved" Chassis Service Manual:



This was significant (to me) for a couple reasons:

First - I found this folded up in the middle of the pages:



I realize it's impossible to read (anybody else remember the old "onionskin" typing paper?), so I retyped it here so that it would be legible:





It's the service letter introducing the "Ram Air" package. Since we raced our car with an early ram air box installed, Dad used this letter as verification that he could legally run the airbox in NHRA competition.

Then, there was this "To Do" list (a list of things, from "beyond the grave", that he wanted ME to finish ):







Lastly, as I was flipping through the pages, I found these sketches:



As you might guess, there's a story there, too.

[Keith Seymore]

Dad had the opportunity, through his connections at Royal, to work a little bit with Roger Huntington. For those not familiar with Roger he was a free-lance author and tinker-er, and fancied himself to be somewhat "forward thinking" in the areas of performance and automotive engineering. He probably was, actually, but was crippled by polio and therefore wheelchair bound; as a result he had to live out these theories through others and the subsequent articles.





Recall that the main issue facing these high horsepower cars back then was the lack of traction. Conventional wisdom called for production rear suspensions, as released by the manufacturer, and the addition of "Atlas Bucrons", or some other "soft" compound tire. There were no wrinklewalls, no "fat" tires, no water burnouts, and traction compounds were for the fledgling professional race categories (if at all).

There had been some thought that "longer" rear control arms were better, perhaps resulting from successes with the Swiss Cheese cars and other big Pontiacs. In fact, some work had already been done installing these longer Catalina lower control arms on the smaller intermediate sized GTO's.

Roger proposed that this thinking could be taken to the extreme: if a lower control arm, or traction bar, could be fabricated to attach all the way up at the car's "center of gravity", then that would be ideal, right? So between he and Dad they devised a scheme to fabricate such a device and install it on our GTO. The sketches you see here are the result of that brainstorming session.

The first order of business would be to locate the CG of the car, in the fore/aft direction. Dad had told me previously about jacking the car up, using a small scissors style jack on each side, and moving them forward and rearward along the car until it "balanced" with the front and rear tires off the ground. This would establish the location for the forward attachment point, at each frame rail. Square tubing was used to fabricate the bars themselves and they were clamped to the rear axle tube to secure the rear of the bar.

In short order the new setup was ready for testing. Arrangements were made to rent one of the local tracks and Dad and Roger met there with high hopes and great expectations. After warming the car, Dad proceeding to the starting line for the first test pass. Equipped with a skinny set of M&H "Racemasters" - a couple short, "dry hops" indicated everything was in order - Dad staged the car and the tree came down. Dad launched the car and BOOM!! it immediately spun end for end, moving only a few feet forward and pointing exactly back the way he came. Shaken, Dad "putt-putted" back toward the bleach box area and shut the car off to regain his composure.

After a short break a second run was attempted. Dad tried "driving" the car out (a much less violent launch), but the car never gained traction down the quarter mile, slipping and sliding until the run was finally aborted. The "traction bar" concept seemed to be a dismal and complete failure, after just these two attempted passes.

Today, in hindsight, we can see why these would not work. Per the "doorslammer" chassis guru's, like Chris Alston or Dave Morgan, the instant center of the 4 link rear suspension is driven rearward and down from the production location, providing more "percentage of rise" when compared to the car's center of gravity. Today we would never consider moving the instant center to go directly "through" the heart of the CG; what they had tried out was completely "directionally incorrect".

As has been said before, you can learn as much from your mistakes as from your successes. The rear suspension was returned to it's "production" configuration (ie, control arms attached at their original locations, reworked bushings*, air bag located in right rear spring), and it is in this condition that the car ran it's best ET and is how it sits today. It is basically the same setup that I have on my bracket/index car today.

Dad had mentioned that some of the bracketry and holes can still be seen under the car; I haven't checked specifically but the next time it's up in the air I will take a look.

K

*an old hot rodder trick is to drive 10 penny nails longitudinally into the bushings. The diameter of the nails take up space inside the bushing, compressing the rubber further and giving the end result of making the rubber appear "harder". Today we would probably simply purchase polyurethane bushings and install those but back then they were not yet available.