[Keith Seymore]

Royal at the races:

"Jim liked spinners and put them on all the center caps except for this car and I managed to keep the plain center caps. As soon as this car was finished Jim's 'green' car (which he used as a tow car for the race car) and Dick's white car were painted with the Bobcat scheme.





"As soon as the paint was dry my car was moved to the Service Department and Charlie put the full Bobcat tune on it. It also had the stock GM 'spaghetti' shifter in it, but Jack Watson had quit GM and was working for George Hurst so he brought over Hurst shifters for all three cars.

"There was a Mickey Thompson carrier made of aluminum with a 4.30 ratio in it there and Jesse had it put in also. This is something else I can tell Jim now, then he knew that the rear end was there but I don't think he ever knew what happened to it, or if he did he didn't press the point.

"The first Sunday out the car ran mid 14's and by the end of the season it would run 13.80 at any strip. The first Sunday at Ubly Butch Schmidt, who was the Service Manager at Bukoski Pontiac in Ubly, was running the drag strip. He teched the car and said 'B Stock?' and I said 'sure', and the car ran B/Stock all year. [Pontiac would often rent Ubly for test and press days].

"The car was a good running car from the very first and won every class run it ran. It was Stock Eliminator at several events in '63. We were at Ubly for the 4th of July "Great Lakes Championship" and Royal was going to run the Ramchargers in a 3 out of 5 match race. Jim was blowing a head gasket every run on the Catalina, which was about par for the course. Charlie ran out of gaskets and I had 2 Fitzgerald's that I gave him to save for the match race runs. Once while Charlie was changing head gaskets Jim and I made a run in our Bobcats and I ran a 13.70. After that Jim said 'better slow down or you're gonna get torn down'. Well - it didn't work, the car I ran for Stock Eliminator was the Ramchargers 'B' Stock automatic Dart. They protested me and I had to do a complete tear down. I was completely legal and Jim Thornton was really upset, especially when I told him that I would tell him everything that we had that was not stock if he would do the same, because I knew we were a lot more 'stock' than he was!

"We ran the Ramchargers 3 more times that year and the car held the 'B' stock record at 13.42 before Art Noey and Jim Stephens at Shaker Engineering bombed the record out of sight.