Tom, I agree that it is fun to untangle the spin.
Jim, I'm not looking to disparage Wangers. The man WAS there and he knew what he knew. But I agree with Tom. I don't know that Wangers spins the tale on purpose. He is surely entertaining and engaging. But there have been a few holes in his stories over the years. For guys like me, I like to get the facts precisely straight, but that isn't always (if ever) possible. When Wangers says something that flies in the face of the evidence, I like to dig deeper to see what might be the truth. I could read his take on the '64 GTO in his book. But it is still HIS story, at least his most current version of it. And his version of events may not be entirely accurate, either because time has confused the events or because some aspects of the story did not involve him. So I'm always interested in discovering what else can be learned.
I'd really like to speak to David E. Davis, Jr. about the Daytona test and discovrer what he might remember.
In the January '75 Car & Driver, Davis wrote a retrospective piece on the '64 GTO and that March '64 article. In it, he includes 4 sample letters from the June '64 C & D responding to the article. An excerpt, "I've finally been exposed to the most asinine article to ever appear in any sports car magazine, bar none!"
Rereading THAT article, I now discover that I have been wrong in saying that it was Davis and his family that drove the GTO down from NY. My bad.
In the retrospective article, Davis writes that "John Jerome drove his family down from New York in the test car and Wangers drove a back-up GTO down from Detroit."
John Jerome was the Managing Editor at the time. Davis was Editor & Publisher.
But wait, there's more!
"It was a surreal trip. Out at the track, we drove one of the cars over Jerome's camera bag (including camera), lunched the engine in the back-up car and busted the rear window out of our rented Ford convertible. We sailed around Daytona like crazy people, had the time of our lives and shared a growing gut feeling that we were really on to something."
Davis goes on to write, "I wrote most of the feature inside with John Jerome's help...".
Well, there you have it. If Davis was correct in the '75 article, it was the back-up car that had the wounded engine.
Davis also credited Wangers with coming up with the idea of comparing the Pontiac to a Ferrari. He states that C & D had been trying to get a "GTO to test for weeks, but the Pontiac PR people kept stalling, feigning ignorance of the car's existence-but then, maybe they weren't feigning. Wangers worked for Pontiac's advertising agency and was far and away the most involved and aggressive press agent in all of Detroit. He got us the car."
Interesting that Wangers claimed in '92 that Ferrari stonewalled C & D, kept Davis from obtaining a Ferrari GTO to do the comparo with. In '75, Davis says that the Ferraris were all in pieces or being saved for the next racing season, none to be had. In '64, he wrote that they actually drove two Ferrari GTOs but were never able to get the cars and the weather to cooperate at the same time, so never got them on the track together. He also wrote that they considered other venues, but since it was "midwinter and raining buckets", they went to Daytona. Depending on what time frame one considers "midwinter", could it be that Davis had forgotten when the test was conducted?
Also interesting that Wangers stated in '92 that they met at Daytona the day after Christmas. I had assumed it may have coincided with the Thanksgiving holiday (the week after JFK was assassinated). But Christmas would have made some sense. Weather history shows that the weather was quite nice in Daytona the week of Christmas, '63. No rain, temps ranging to the mid 60s on the 26th, even warmer on the 27th, no rain.
Wangers went on to generate a lot of Woodward Ave. publicity with the Red car. But I remain smitten with the Blue car, as that was the car that had Jerome, Davis, and the rest of the C & D staff (except for the Technical Editor, Jan Norbye according to Davis) gushing about the '64 GTO.
Did the Red car go to Daytona with a 421? If it did, it may have been of little consequence, since that engine went lame.
Did the Blue car get sent to C & D with a 421? Maybe the C & D staff would have been blown away by a 389 GTO with 3.90 gears (the '64 article claims the Blue car had 3.90 gears pretty matter of factly) anyway. Both cars were claimed in the '64 article to have gotten the Royal Bobcat treatment.
Maybe neither car had a 421 at Daytona. Maybe the Red car got the 421 after it came back from Daytona, the engine had been wounded so it needed work anyway.
I still think, if either car had a 421, it was the Blue car. That would account for why the C & D staff was so thoroughly blown away. And if a GTO produced times anything close to what C & D claimed for it, seems to me it could not have been the 389 powering it. There are those that claim the Red car was used for the acceleration testing. I'm not convinced.
Would Wangers have been aware if Royal swapped one or both engines? Would he remember which car (if only one)? I have no idea.
Maybe it was Butcher and not Wangers that messed up the facts in the '92 Interview. Butcher mentions in the '92 article that he asked Jim many of the same questions that Paul Zazarine had asked in an interview with Wangers that appeared in the October '83 issue of "The Legend". Anybody have that issue and care to see how the answers compared?
Jim, interesting comment about Wangers and the "mystique". I call it the GTO Mythology. No question in my mind that the mythology has caused us to perceive the GTO as having been a sensationally special car beyond what the reality actually was. In that respect, Wangers approach makes perfect sense.
Tom, you mention the idea that Wangers "ordered the two cars". I seem to recall a story attributed to Wangers that DeLorean whipped out two Order blanks and told Wangers to order them the way he wanted. I can't recall if this supposedly had to do with the two cars that wound up in Daytona. If so, that would seem to disprove the idea that the Blue car was a "pilot line" build. The Red car was final assembled in early Nov. according to the Manifest. I would believe the Blue car was likely built about the same time.
If nothing else, it would be interesting to know if Wangers did order them both according to the story I think he has told about them and would be great if PHS would dig up the Manifest for the Blue car and publish it.
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