[Dick Boneske]

My '64 came out of the factory with 3.90 Safe-T-Track, metallic manual brakes, manual steering, 750X14 Uniroyals, wide ratio 4 speed and Carter AFB. Showroom stock with Hoosier recap slicks, it ran 14.08@100.00 mph the first time I ran it at Union Grove Drag Strip.

In 1965, I installed a '62 Big Pontiac Tripower with mechanical linkage (Ansen ball bearing crap linkage), Doug's 3-tube headers, milled heads .035", disconnected the vacuum advance, put weaker mechanical advance springs on the distributor along with a bushing to limit total advance to 34 degrees, and put Isky Polylocks on the rockers so the lifters could be adjusted to the end of their travel. I put an Air Lift bag in the right rear spring to equalize starting line traction. The best I ever ran with the 389 in this configuration was 13.29 @ 109.75 mph. I drove the car to work every day, as it was the only car I had then, similar to OMT at that time.

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Dick Boneske

... put weaker mechanical advance springs on the distributor along with a bushing to limit total advance to 34 degrees...

I have to comment quickly on the "weaker mechanical advance springs" -

Remember those cloth hand towel machines that were in the men's rest room of the day (the ones that were a continuous loop)? You'd give them a little tug like a window shade, and they would present the next section of "clean" towel for your use.

Dad and his buddies discovered that there were little springs inside those, that were perfect for replacing the mechanical advance springs in the distributor.

He said, at one point, you couldn't find a bathroom in Pontiac or at Chevrolet Manufacturing where the towel rack worked. They'd just go "bzzzzzttttt" and the whole length of towel would end up on the floor......

[Keith Seymore]

We were pretty much in the same line of thinking, as far as hop up tricks, as what I've seen here. Atlas bucrons were the tire of choice around here, unless you could run an M&H tire -

The only tricks I haven't seen mentioned yet are (a) reworking the hydraulic lifter, essentially creating a "solid" lifter, in conjunction with locking nuts and (b) running a thin fan belt in deep groove pullys.

The combination of the above would allow Dad to shift at 7000 rpm. We had a 7 grand Sun tach in the car and he would shift as the needle would go off the face.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Tenney

Anyone have a copy? Can these pages be located via the Keith decimal system, perhaps?!

Guessing the blue car was #'d somehow, btw. Though, per "Glory Days", it did not have a "production VIN".

Re: Photos - Doesn't ring a bell. I can check around though.

I'm struggling a bit with the VIN question.

Do the photos clearly show the blue car with a regular Michigan plate? If the rules back then were the same as today, then the only way to regular plate the car would be if it had a saleable production VIN. Anything else would require the use of a Manufacture's plate.

I might be able to prove this out. I know some of the Design Studio cars, driven by Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell as daily drivers, did not have VINs. Let me find some old photos and see how those cars were plated.

K

[John V.]

Keith, you have that March '64 PHR, you shared the images with me a couple years ago. I had forgotten until Tenney reminded me about the article.

Actually two articles in that issue. 1st detailed the Bobcat kit, 2nd was test of Blue car. Unfortunately, no way to know if this test was done before or after Daytona.

My guess is before. Assuming the PHR test was done in Detroit, Tenney tells me the Daytona testing was 12/26 to 12/29, makes sense given the weather in Daytona then plus other evidence.

We know that Roger Proulx drag raced in October, just after Royal completed prepping a GTO per his article. I assume that was the Blue car, it was definitely not the Red car which didn't get built until Nov. and was PS equipped.

Assuming the PHR test was done in Detroit, the likelihood that it was tested before Daytona vs. after is based on what I see in the pix. I know there wouldn't always be snow on the ground in January, but the conditions look more like Nov/Dec to me. If Proulx drove the Blue car as I believe he did, then the PHR article likely details the Bobcat installation done in Oct and the driving test conducted sometime thereafter but before the car went off to NYC to be tested by C & D staff. JMO. Remember, the C & D article says the manual steer (presumed Blue car) was driven from Detroit to NYC, then driven by the entire staff over the course of 10 days BEFORE John Jerome drove with his family to Daytona. That means the Blue car must have left Detroit by 12/15, maybe a day or 2 earlier.

Pertinent pics attached. Note the chalk "W" on the firewall, code for the Nocturne Blue exterior paint? I think so.

So do you see a 421 in these pix?

The 3rd pic is the 1st page of the separate Test Report article, shows the HJ-4471 with the Royal plate frame, same as seen in the C & D article. I believe this is the Blue car, the subject of the Bobcat treatment discussed in the other article (the article was intended to be generic in some respects, but I believe specifically shows the Blue car undergoing the Bobcat installation).

The PHR Test report says this car had already turned a 13.21@109.1 on cheater slicks at a drag strip and C & D said they got a best of 12.8@112. The times seem all over the map to me. What do you race experts think? If the PHR pix show a 421, did the Blue car go to Daytona with a 421 and are the times indicative of that or not?

OMT makes a good point about the difficulty of managing traction with the factory vac secondaries. The Bobcat treatment employed mechanical linkage. But he also says times were just as good vac linkage if the car would hook.

I sure don't know, just trying to figure out if the Blue car likely did or didn't have a 421 when C & D drove it 3000 miles and then gushed about it.

[geeteeohguy]

The engine shown in both pics with the "W" chalked on the firewall looks like a 389 to me. The bores don't look big enough. The head gasket is in the perfect position to block out the area around the back of the block, though. Any other opinions? 389 or 421?

[J GLASGO]

Those are 421 valve reliefs in the first photo,not 389.421s,are deeper than 389,s. Thats how the 389 and 421,s have the same compression ratio,with the same head.The piston of the 421 has at least twice the volume of cc,s taken out of it,as everybody knows that the 4 inch stroke,and .030 overbore would yield a higher compression ratio with the same cylinder head cc.

[War eagle]

John you need April 64 Speed and Custom to see the transfer lug or pyramid, page 26, upper left. This is the same Bobcat build but includes a different view. Also note the 6550 fuel pump. (both in your first attachment and page 23 of S and C)

[Tom Vaught]

There should be one more picture (of the guy whose arms you see installing the passenger side head), installing the driver's side head
on the same "W" marked car/ engine in one of the Cars/ etc magazines.

The picture is taken from the passenger side so you can clearly see that they were not installing 421 SD heads on the engine, (or in these photos) BUT, you also can clearly see the "Pyramid" on the block of the 421 engine.

The block in your attached article is also straight across (on the passenger side) at the gasket surface at the front of the block, another clue of a 421 engine. A 389 engine has a cast in pocket in that area.

Another comment, 421 Pistons and 389 Pistons look "different" on the top of the piston surface.

here is a link to a 389 type valve relief "cluster"
http://store02.prostores.com/servlet...Pistons/Detail

Look at the photos in the article and you will see the pistons more closely resemble a 421 piston.

Tom Vaught

[Tom Vaught]

Originally Posted by J GLASGO

Those are 421 valve reliefs in the first photo,not 389.421s,are deeper than 389,s. Thats how the 389 and 421,s have the same compression ratio,with the same head.The piston of the 421 has at least twice the volume of cc,s taken out of it,as everybody knows that the 4 inch stroke,and .030 overbore would yield a higher compression ratio with the same cylinder head cc.

X2

Tom Vaught

[Tom Vaught]

Originally Posted by geeteeohguy

The engine shown in both pics with the "W" chalked on the firewall looks like a 389 to me. The bores don't look big enough. The head gasket is in the perfect position to block out the area around the back of the block, though. Any other opinions? 389 or 421?

Dyam! You got good eyes to be able to see .030" difference in the bores from several feet away! (;>)

Tom Vaught

[Tom Vaught]

Originally Posted by War eagle

John you need April 64 Speed and Custom to see the transfer lug or pyramid, page 26, upper left. This is the same Bobcat build but includes a different view. Also note the 6550 fuel pump. (both in your first attachment and page 23 of S and C)

Again, some good eyes and memory of the Pyramid, and the other clues.

Tom Vaught

ps Like I said, I knew Jim was fibbing for years on at least one of the red or blue cars.

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by John V.

Keith, you have that March '64 PHR, you shared the images with me a couple years ago. I had forgotten until Tenney reminded me about the article.

Dang! I need to tighten up on my organizational skills....

You don't happen to know where my car keys are, do you?

(lol)

[Keith Seymore]

Sounds like the concensus of the group is "421".

Seems kind of funny for them to lay it out there for all to see -

K

[Tom Vaught]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

Sounds like the concensus of the group is "421".

Seems kind of funny for them to lay it out there for all to see -

K

I don't think at the time at they thought anyone would be looking closely at the pictures 47 years later. The funny thing is those magazine articles were not in mainstream magazines of the time Like Hot Rod or CD. At one time I would buy any magazine I could find on the older Pontiac engines/ road tests at the swap meets and put them away as reference materials.


Tom Vaught

[J GLASGO]

Originally Posted by Tom Vaught

. At one time I would buy any magazine I could find on the older Pontiac engines/ road tests at the swap meets and put them away as reference materials.


Tom Vaught

I used to do the same thing.When i was in junior high i would go to this guys house and he would sell me these old car magazines for 50 cents apiece.I got a lot better bang for my buck than buying new mags,and i got to read about my favorite cars.Learned alot,and knew Wangers was full of it long before he ever admitted to the 421 swap! I cant really blame him though. He was just pumping some more excitement into the cars we have all come to love!

[Tom Vaught]

I have nothing but good to say about Jim Wangers and the way that he marketed the 64 GTO for Delorean.

Jim ran a "Ringer" in on these boys and they bit hook, line, and sinker. If you look at your old magazines, people could buy 4.5" stroke cranks for Pontiac 389 engines in 1962. That made a big Pontiac "389" engine.

What Jim did was run a true "Ringer" on these guys. Very very hard to spot unless you were into Pontiac engines the way we are today.
He probably had a guy like "Birdie" porting his 389 cylinder heads the way that Milt S had "Birdie" do the heads on Tenney/ Sherman's car.

Tom Vaught

$5.00/hr was good pay back in the 60s. You race someone for $50 you had better know what you were doing, especially if you were racing all night.

[Tenney]

Originally Posted by Tenney

Unless, Tom, the shots of the blue car were press/publicity stills, and the engine shots are of a different car.

What I meant by press/publicity stills is illustrated here. In that we see the same stock shot of the blue car used in two different articles ...

[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.

[Ragtop Man]

Just to keep all this in perspective: C/D did not blast the GTO through the Chrondeks at Detroit (or anywhere else) and did no more tech inspection than filling it with the highest octane premium available. Their testing used a stopwatch and fifth wheel, and anyone thinking those were scientific, repeatable numbers ... not so much. Remember, this is the same team who reported a Viper-like 3.9 0-60 (and 13.80 1/4 mile) for the '65 2+2, which Wangers freely admits to being utterly bogus in methodology.

To be sure, the GTO's were prepped to the nth degree, and it seems rather possible that at least one and maybe both had 421 engines, either by substitution at the Engineering Garage or at Royal. As Darksiders know, the first 421 blocks were transfer lug-less 425A 389 blocks that were simply broached an extra .250 in the mains for the larger crankshaft; a simple overbore provides the rest of the displacement. Recall also that Smokey was cutting down 421 cranks to 3.00" in '62, well before the hot shoes from C/D uncorked the test cars. As the great crew chief Walter "Bud" Moore once grumbled: "I got five ways to make a P&G meter read anything you want. Three of them everybody know, two of 'em I'm keeping for myself."

So, were those engines Bobcat 389's? Yes, and more. A lot more. Were the test numbers truly accurate, and backed up by an average of 10 runs? Were all the tires on the cars factory fitted, with properly recalibrated speedos? Nope.

Was GTO a lightning bolt to the synapses, with the styling, power, handling, price and image that Detroit had not mustered in one car since the Stutz Bearcat or Jordan Playboy, timed to explode exactly as the first baby boomers reached the age of majority? Yep.

And was it the complete validation of everything that enthusiasts and magazine journalists had been begging for since Day One, a no-holds-barred high-performance automobile with instant credibility and monster capability greater than any unleashed by Detroit to that moment? Yep.

Has anyone since ever created a cultural Tsunami of that proportion, either by accident or design, that still rings absolutely clear to this day? Nope.

There have been faster cars since. There have been better cars since. But there will never, ever be another car with sheer charisma of that first GTO, period. The competition has had 46 years to do something of equal impact and importance... and we're still waiting.