[Dr. Eric M. Schiffer]

The Hurst wheels could never be part of the options because they where too heavy. Pretty much comon knowlege. Jim Wangers worked very closely with George Hurst.

Jack "Doc" Watson, Hurst's Shifty Doctor, will be the first to tell you those wheels should never have been released. Not just due to weight, but because the different materials did not jell well. The outside rim being a different alloy material then the inner spokes and the bolts that held the rim to the spoke was a third metal. Eventually they would stress, fracture and come apart.

Jim helped where he could. Jim put Hurst wheels on as many of the press cars as he could when they where released in 1965 through 1966 The first set released to the public are still on the white 1965 GTO 4 speed convertible given away at Motor Trend 500. At the same time Jim had Pontiac supply George Hurst with Pontiacs. Many of the Hurst Corp. Pontiac's, full size wagon's, Bonnie's and GTO's all had gold Hurst wheels to compliment the Hurst/Tiger Gold paint.

Hurst show cased the wheels on their Hemi Underglass cars too.

Bottom line...Jim Wangers being the great promoter was helping everyone by show casing their products. Pontiac Motors, Ace Wilson's Royal Pontiac, Hurst, Cure Ride, Schiefer Clutch, Doug's Headers, Car's Magazine et.al.

It didn't matter about the weight to Royal. Jim had made sure that orders on the line were that all Royal press cars would be built minus dumb dumb and sound deading.This would otherwise be automaticlly added weight to every car that moved down the assembly line.

Ace Wilson's Royal Pontiac was PMD's off sight engineering test center. After 6PM that is when the PMD/Royal Racing Team would be put in gear. They changed their uniforms from Ace Wilson's Royal to Pontiac Engineering.

Trailers from PMD would bring cars for guys like Frank Redicker, Win Brown, Chuck Broomfield, Clarence Walters, Dick Jesse ,Joe Voytesh ,Sid and Dave Warren, Brian Ballish,John Politzer, Van Seymore, Meryl Wittkier, Bill Schmitz and many I forgot. They'd work the cars over and a few hours later or early the next day they went back into the trailers and off to PMD for evaluation.

The Royal cars, when driven correctly should have won every race in their class.

In 1969 Dave Warren, Brian Ballish and John Politzer took Royal's '69 Firebird 350HO car to the east cost. John laid down a blazingly fast 11.80's ET. during qualifing. It was well under the NHRA record. The NHRA track tech inspector came over to them and said I don't know what you have done to this car but I suggest you leave now before you are torn down and band. The car was perfectly legal but the way they were asked to leave was more of a threat.

To this day both Dave and Brian would love to duplicate that Firebird. Brian say's it was just a matter of everything coming together and working well. The combination had been suggested for the original 350 HO, 48 Heads and 744 cam shaft. According to Brain the problem was this combination actually produced more than hp then the 400 with the 068 cam shaft. This was the combination that would have been used in Jim Wangers Road Runner fighter the Tempest post coupe, ET. John Delorean didn't want a 350 to be faster than a 400 GTO or Firebird 400. He felt it would hurt sales. So when the 350 HO was realeasd it had the lesser 068 cam shaft.