[Tenney]

Originally Posted by John V.

War Eagle, can you or somebody else post the pic from the April '64 Speed & Custom showing the better engine shot with the visible transfer lug "pyramid"?

I've been working out a time line based on what was written back in '63 & '64 vs. the recollections that were published many years later.

Lots of things that don't add up.

For example, JW said in an '89 MCR interview that he stormed into Delorean's office armed with the unfavorable review published by Hot Rod and walked out with two order blanks, implying the Blue car and Tenney's Red car resulted from those order blanks.

But Roger Proulx wrote in his article published March '64 in C & D that JW invited him to drag race a GTO that Royal had just finished prepping in OCTOBER. And it seems 100% certain he drove the same Blue car that went to C & D in NYC and on to Daytona.

The Red car Manifest shows a Date Produced of 11/2/63. The Blue car had already been bobcatted by then.

The Hot Rod mag report on the GTO appeared in their Dec '63 issue (hey Keith, your keys are laying on your copy of that mag, LOL!)

I don't think that mag would have hit the newsstands until after the Red car was already built and if Roger Proulx drove the Blue car in Oct., definitely was not out til after the Blue car had already been prepped by Royal.

The kicker is that my read of the Hot Rod review was FAVORABLE to the GTO, not the "bad press" that it was made out to be.

JW has written that the Blue car was equipped with 3.55 gears and an open diff. Clearly, if the pix are believed, this car was equipped with the Safe-T-Track locking diff.

And multiple articles published in the day starting with the Proulx article all say it had a 3.90 axle. Now I doubt that the writers/testers had any way to know what axle ratio was in the car (not indicated on the Window Sticker), so had to rely on what JW told them I would think. So do we believe what was in the articles or what was said many years later? I sure don't know, but it makes sense to me that the Blue car would have had 3.90 gears, why else tell people that it did?

JW has also claimed the testing was done with the Red car. But there is an interesting retrospective that appeared in the January '75 issue of C & D, written by David E. Davis. I bought that mag new in the infancy of my GTO obsession and still have it. David E. writes that John Jerome drove the "test car" down with his family and Wangers drove a "back-up GTO" down from Detroit. He mentions what fun they had in Daytona, at one point drove over Jerome's camera bag, busted the rear window in the rented Ford convertible, and "lunched the engine in the back-up car".

Twice in the '75 retrospective he refers to the "back-up" GTO and called the Blue car driven down by Jerome as the "test car". Why?

He took credit for writing most of the original article that was published with "help" from Jerome.

JW has said the testing at Daytona was done with the Red car. Many years after, he "admitted" the Red car went to Daytona with a 421.

But the David E. piece written in late '74, many years prior to JW's admission, seems to purposefully point to the Blue car as the car that was tested. Why call the Red car a "back-up" and mention the blown engine if it was the primary car tested in Daytona.

One further fact appearing in the original '64 C & D article. The Price as tested is given in the box with the acceleration results and technical data about the car as tested.

The Price as Tested is $3377.91. This is pretty close to what I am able to calculate for the Blue car with the options described for it in the article.

The Red car stickered for about $250-$300 more than the Blue car, not even close. If the acceleration test results were for the Red car, why was the price of the Blue car indicated?

The article does say they "ran dozens of acceleration tests on the two cars." Doesn't differentiate anywhere between the two of them, so if they saw any performance difference, it wasn't mentioned. They did talk about the difference obtained between the red line tires (higher mph) and drag slicks (lower et).

Both cars featured the Bobcat kit, I don't think there is any doubt about that. I suspect they also featured identical drivetrains. It would make sense that a "back-up" twin was there in case of a blown engine. Logically, you would not have wanted C & D to blow up the 421 car and wind up testing a 389 and reporting less impressive nos.

If the photographic evidence is clear that the engine in the Blue car was a 421, I would conclude C & D took the data it obtained from that car and reported it. No doubt, the Red car performed just as well until the motor went lame.

I believe the Blue car was built weeks ahead of the Red car. But I just don't think it was a non-VIN'd pre-production model. Calling it a "pilot" car really changes nothing, my understanding from those days, "pilot" cars were just the first very early production cars that came down the line at a snails pace while everybody learned their jobs and worked out the kinks before the line speed was sped up. But I doubt it was a "pilot" car either. Pilot production would have been long over by 9/11/63 when VIN 824P003147, one of the early Zone Announcement GTOs, was produced.

Somewhere between that VIN & the Red car VIN is likely the Blue car VIN. Sure wish Jim M. would spend the time to turn up the Manifest record for the Blue car, might at least tell us if the 3.90 axle was special ordered for it.

I love your passion for this stuff, John! And knowledge (I can only aspire to one day be "Tenney V."!). Wish I could do more to lend a hand in your quest to get to the bottom of this.

Again, I only "know" what I've read, heard and been relayed to me, fortunately, by people who were there.

And, so ...

I'm told the Red Car was purpose-built specifically for the Car and Driver test. Build dates/test dates indicate this is possible, if not likely. Particularly as it was only used in this one test, I understand.

Both Mr. Wangers and David E. have told me the red car was used for the acceleration #'s. JW stating it was purpose-built for this task. There's a pic of it in the article making a run on the Daytona straight.

It seems the blue car existed, and was used for press work/photos, earlier - as we've seen. Jim told me, and wrote in his book, that it was a pilot car, and was not built/modified in tandem with the red car.

A question I have is why lie at this point? Where's the upside?

Why would Jim finally cop to the 421 in the red car, but not the blue car. Maybe one of the reasons he admitted to the red car after all this time was because so many people had seen it up close w/their own two, and it essentially had already been "outed" for years?

But really, why then would it matter to keep the 421 in the blue car a secret? Once you're busted, who cares?


p.s. maybe Jerome's departure schedule couldn't be coordinated with that of his family, or perhaps he had stuff to tote (granted, how big's a stopwatch?!), hence the plane/rental car combo platter?