And by enduring a constant uphill struggle against Ford and Chrysler Funny Car teamsas well as grief from Chevy racers, who benefitted from an open back door to the engineering departmentBeswick has carved out his place in drag-racing history as one of the sport's true underdogs. 7 solid cam. After the 1972 fire, I quit racing to focus on rebuilding my farming interests. The 13 Super Duty Tempests were equipped with an exotic Powershift transaxle essentially two Corvair Powerglide two-speed automatic transaxles mounted inline to yield four forward speeds that worked kind of like a four-speed automatic with a clutch pedal. For 1968, Pontiac radically restyled the GTO body, so I kept up with an all-new car, the Star of the Circuit II. And it worked. Besides, on the match-race circuit, strip promoters would pay me three times as much to bring the Pontiac as they would the Comet. Since the Tempest was a unibody car, the end result weighed 2,800 pounds. http://ji5766.wix.com/paul-rossi-racing, Found an 83 (?) The one-piece fiberglass body was made by Fiber Glass Ltd. I was still running Turbo 400s in my cars. I lost two engines due to this and had to return the entire engines to Ford for repairs. Used to announce him drag racing at Detroit Dragway. Or are those cars so awful that even Carols name can not add value in our age of skyrocketing car prices. I've had many of my cars modeled in scale. Some one we all know then put my Practice Race Victory in the Toledo Blade. The 421 wanted to go 6,500 at the finish line and that cost me some races. This tractor is one of many I raced. I named it Super Judge, and I guess you could say it was my first professionally built car. The youngest has been in for 17 years, so she'll be hanging in there for a little while yet. Though fullsize Chevys had four-on-the-floor in 1959, Pontiac waited an extra year. A few days later Brown said they couldnt sell the car, and Chrysler may be coming to pick it up. He came up to me, mad, and asked if I'd let him win the next pairing. It had the right suspension geometry for high-speed stability. Z was drivven for several years by Charlie Schnep & sold for street use. Consulted with Lee Iacocca at Chrysler. The strip organizers canceled further racing after that accident. All of the positive race publicity undoubtedly helped Chevrolet remain the premier U.S. automaker, selling an average of 1.7 million new cars every year in 196062. Here's a late-1967 matchup between my 1966 and Doug Cook in the Stone, Woods, and Cook Dark Horse 2 Mustang at Green Valley Dragstrip in Texas. The hulk of Petty's Hemi Barracuda was later junked but exists today after being exhumed by a collector in the 1990s.). I wouldn't do it. The Star of the Circuit name stems from a dragstrip announcer who loved the paint, and also due to the fact I toured the car all across the country, from Cecil County, Maryland, to Bakersfield, California. Notice the carbureted Chevy big-block and International Harvester radiator shell. The RA-V program was an outgrowth of the Trans Am 303 engines that were considered for SCCA use. And then it all came crashing down. My 1966 Star of the Circuit Gee Tee O match racer was completed in mid-October of 1966 and featured a Fiber Glass Ltd. body mounted to the lightly modified framerails that were taken from my 1964 Mystery Tornado GTO. Scot Carr on August 9, 2014 at 7:12 pm said: ~ Another outstanding article and pictures, thanks Bill. I was 34 at the time, and Hot Rod magazine gave the car a nice four-page story in the May 1965 issue. I raised Cain and hired one of Roger Ward's Indy-car mechanics to measure the bore again. Theres A Blower, Unique Parts, And A Questionable Past. These are the two oldest, Arnette and Paula, sitting on the aluminum fender of my new 1963 Swiss Cheese Catalina. The wagon is one of six, along with seven coupes, built before GM shut everything down in March of 1963. Despite their use of Hemi heads and overhead camshafts, my "obsolete" Pontiac gave them all fits. I won the Stock Eliminator title and actually drove the car to the race from Illinois, and back again pulling a U-Haul cargo trailer. Don's 409 had new heads and carburetors since its Winternationals victory and beat me in this race, then the Ramchargers Dodge for the win. My first ever pass in the car was made during eliminations, and I was eliminated by Tom Grove in one of the 2 percent Plymouth altered wheelbase cars. But when not planting (April through May) or harvesting (October and November), Beswick traded tractors for traction as one of drag racing's most popular personalities, bagging his first big win at the 1955 NHRA Nationals in Great Bend, Kansas, where his B/Stock 1954 Oldsmobile took class honors. I won, but it was close. They had even-spaced exhaust ports and huge intake ports, more like tunnels. My 1961 Ventura hardtop was named the Passionate Poncho and is seen with permanent painted lettering I had applied after I got it home from the 1961 Daytona races, where the paper sponsor banners I stuck to the car blew off in the wind. This car usually rode on a trailer towed behind the ramp truck. It was my first true flip-top Funny Car. A $1.5 million lawsuit resulted, lawyers settled, and Petty continued running an updated version of the match Barracuda through 1965 before returning full time to NASCAR track racing. Bureau Of Land Management Recognizes Bonneville Salt Decline - Hints At Short Course Only Speed Week. Site designed by, Is This 1982 Dodge Charger The Shelby-Backed Drag Racing Prototype? For several years, I raced the Tempest against Dyno Don's 1962 Impala. Thanks to Arnie for giving Elapsed Times access to his personal scrapbook and sharing some wonderful memories. With 76 million American kids born between 1946 and 1964 (38 million of them were hatched before 1954 alone), smart marketing teams knew it would take exciting, youth-oriented models, as well as racing, to attract them to the showrooms. Aug 9, 2019 - There was a time when the vehicles that tugged, towed, and carted racecars to the track were often as interesting as the racecars themselves. A little bit later, I was at Alton Dragway in Illinois coming back down the return road when I saw Doug's Mustang get airborne going through the lights. The year 1963 was the high-water mark for my direct involvement with Pontiac. 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