When I first spoke with Jeff Freed a couple months ago, Jeff mentioned that no story about a 1950’s fuel injected Pontiac would be complete without acknowledging the late John Thropp. I did not include the reference to John when I wrote up the summary of our conversation since I had never heard of John and did not know anything about him. I have since done a bit of research and last week I spoke with Jeff again to find out more.
According to Jeff, John Thropp was highly regarded for his expertise in rebuilding, setting-up and the high performance tuning of the early Pontiac Tri-power and Fuel Injection systems. Jeff recalled that whenever John attended a Pontiac event he was constantly in demand by the other Pontiac owners who would seek John’s advice on their Tri-power and F.I. issues. Jeff also purchased some F.I. parts from John, some of which may have been used on Jeff’s 1957 Bonneville that was at the 30 millionth Pontiac celebration, but Jeff still has most of the parts he obtained from John and intends to use them on his current 1957 Bonneville restoration project.
John Thropp was a member of POCI and also a member of the Safari Chapter. According to the chapter briefs section of the October 1982 issue of Smoke Signals magazine, a new Safari chapter officer for 1983 was chapter vice president John Thropp. John also had quite a career as a drag racer and was runner up in Stock Eliminator at the 1969 Dallas World Finals driving a F.I. Pontiac.
Sadly, John past away on November 18, 1994 and the following announcement appeared in the January 1995 issue of Smoke Signals.
It seems appropriate then, that in 1994 at Springfield, Illinois at the last POCI national convention that John attended, he is credited with the white 1957 Bonneville that was awarded 1st place in class H-1 (the gray 1957 Bonneville of Glen Bappe was 2nd).
The announcement regarding John’s passing mentions that he recently had worked on John Denlinger’s first place ’57 Bonneville, so I wonder if that was actually John Denlinger’s car at the convention, but with John Thropp getting credit for presenting it as thanks for his contribution to the car.