ICONSOF WOODWARD AVENUE

Words

NATHAN CHADWICK

PHOTOGRAPHY

JAMES HAEFNER/MECUM

IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE ‘SOCIAL media’ meant hand-written notes with coordinates for illicit street races, rather than a repository for internet bile. Or where ‘social networking’ involved lining the sidewalks of Woodward Avenue, the air filled with the sweet smell of tire smoke. Imagine a glorious symphony of V8 roars, working the baying crowd to ever-higher levels of excitement as heroes were made and legends were born.

It was a glorious era, when Detroit’s Big Three had a nudge-nudge, wink-wink approach to such activities. The suits could never officially endorse street racing, of course, but underneath lay the beating heart of genuine car guys. With a win on the street, they knew their sales figures would be hard to beat…

Woodward Avenue was the battleground for a four-wheeled arms race between Ford, GM and Chrysler, each determined to outdo each other with ever more powerful and extreme muscle cars. Petrol-heads would spend all week tweaking, tuning and perfecting their ride to take on the best local talent between the lights at the weekend. It was a time of great possibility. Put the right amount of effort in, and with perhaps a dose of luck, the win could be yours – the American Dream painted in large black stripes down the public road.

Out of these emotive times great stories abound – not just the cars, the triumphs and the tragedies, but the social history, too; lifelong love affairs formed in brake-light-illuminated parking lots – and not just for the motors.

It’s this passion – for the cars, we might add – that drives M1 Concourse today. The influence of those heady times lives on far and wide; the concept of street racing that was developed and encouraged by manufacturers in the 1960s has been taken up around the globe. Without the white-hot battle for Saturday-night supremacy in the center of Detroit, the entire car world, let alone its enthusiast angle, would look very different.

Such pride in our history is what forms the basis of M1 Concourse – and what better way to demonstrate that than to bring together three of the biggest legends from this magical time?

THE MOST FAMOUS PLYMOUTH BELVEDERE GTX wasn’t even silver to begin with – it was blue. Even more ironically, its early life as a Chrysler Engineering test mule was dedicated to boosting product durability rather than performance.

That all changed in 1969 when, testing duties at an end, the car was sold to Sunoco mechanic and revered Mopar guru James Addison. Chrysler was well aware of his activities; a core group of its engineers and marketing guys knew that winning on track wasn’t enough to win the hearts and minds of young buyers. The idea was simple – bring a seemingly stock car to the people.

Of course, Plymouth couldn’t outwardly endorse illegal behavior, so when it sold the car to Addison for just a dollar, it knew what would happen next. Although the GTX looked like any standard Plymouth by the time he’d finished with it, the doors, fenders and decklid were made from weight-shaving glassfiber. The need to keep the weight down extended to using A100 van seats, stripping off all undercoating and replacing steel fasteners with aluminum. At 3000lb, the car’s new weight was some 500lb less than standard.

The engine was truly special: a stroked 487ci Hemi with over-sized TRW pistons, 4.25in stroker crank, Racer Brown camshaft and ten-quart oil pan. The compression ratio was 12.0:1, while easy access to a Sunoco gas station meant that the car benefited from 260 high-octane gas…

There were ported 1965 A-990 aluminum heads, and Jimmy also installed a magnesium cross-ram intake and dual Holley 780 carbs. Yet it was the exhaust system that was perhaps the most fascinating part of the GTX. It would’ve been easy to let the car roar away into the night, but then it would have been obvious this Plymouth was a moonshot away from being stock. Instead,

Addison worked with a Chrysler dyno operator to come up with a bespoke system – big-tube Hooker headers feeding into two pairs of threeinch head pipes. Two mufflers sat where the standard dual exhausts would have been, and two sat under the driver and passenger seats for minimum back pressure and to keep noise to a reasonable level. What’s more striking is that they were Cadillac mufflers – all the better to prevent scaring away would-be competitors.

Addison wasn’t done yet; the 11in GTX drum brakes were junked in favor of lightweight teninch units, and to stop the car shaking over bumps, the lower control-arm rebound rubbers and the Soft Slant Six torsion bars were cranked down. The rear suspension, meanwhile, featured A-990 Super Stock leaf springs, long Imperial dampers and an adjustable pinion snubber. The rear axle was an 83/4in unit with standard shafts, with huge M&H slick tires. To hide all that extra rubber from the outwardly stock exterior, Addison carved vertical slices into the quarter panels to fit, and then welded over the gap. The trans, meanwhile, was a modified TorqueFlite automatic, and to finish it all off, the Plymouth was painted silver.

The final car could crack the quarter mile in 10.50 seconds at 132mph – fast now, astounding at the time. Pretty soon the GTX became known far and wide as being unbeatable, with Addison regularly featuring in magazines of the era and challenged to races across the US.

James, who it is claimed took to street racing to supplement his household income, became a legend, as did the car. Its Silver Bullet nickname was coined in September 1971’s CarCraft; and despite the violent moniker and huge thrust, Addison refused to use a seatbelt, let alone fit a rollbar. He sold the Bullet in 1973 just as he was working on its likely successor, a Hemi-powered Plymouth Duster. Sadly the thin-gauge steel didn’t survive the acid dipping – and then the fuel crisis hit. Ultimately the Bullet had no heir. Addison sold his Sunoco garage in the late ’70s and, later in life, enjoyed a second career as a cab driver.

The Silver Bullet, meanwhile, languished with several keepers before it was brought back to life by current owner Harold Sullivan, who watched the car compete in period. There have been some spec changes: Dart aluminum heads, Stage V roller rockers and a wider camshaft grind, plus a new Hemi block. With these tweaks to the original recipe, be in no doubt that the Silver Bullet is still as deadly as it was back in the day.

Silver Bullet

Black Ghost

OPPOSITE With its 426ci Hemi and four-speed manual transmission, this 1970 Challenger R/T Special Edition was a true one-of-a-kind car.

IN THE EARLY 1970S A MYSTERIOUS DODGE Challenger used to roam Woodward Avenue, Telegraph Avenue and Stecker. A low burble from its 426ci Hemi announced its arrival, and a flash of white from the bumblebee stripe was all that most street racers could see as it rocketed away into the Detroit night, leaving them in its wake.

And then… nothing. The car would appear for a few runs and beat those who were brave enough to take on this mysterious machine, and then it would vanish for months at a time, earning it the name Black Ghost.

The reason for this would only become clear many years later. Its owner was Godfrey Qualls, a former paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division and a recipient of the Purple Heart. He was also a Detroit cop…

However, Qualls was an avowed Mopar fan as well, inheriting his love of the brand from his father, Cleolous, who had moved from Tennessee to Detroit two years after Godfrey’s birth, to take a job at Chrysler’s Warren Truck factory. His dad loved racing – even taking Godfrey to the Indy 500 – and ran a black-andpink 1955 Dodge Custom Royal four-door with a 270ci Super Red Ram V8 under the hood.

There was inter-brother rivalry with Godfrey’s brother, also called Cleolous, who upon his own discharge from the army ordered a 1968 Dodge Charger R/T complete with a 440ci V8. Not to be outdone, when Godfrey left the military in 1969, he went to the very same dealership and meticulously ordered a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T Special Edition. There was no messing about – this was a 426ci Hemi with a four-barrel carburetor, four-speed manual transmission, AM/FM radio, Gator Grain roof, right-hand mirror and locking gas cap. Godfrey also opted for cloth/vinyl seats, because he felt that leather would be too sticky for toasty Detroit summers. He ended up with what’s believed to be a true one-of-a-kind Challenger.

The Dodge certainly made an impression in its rare appearances, and it was notable for avoiding the usual burger-joint and gas-station hangouts, preferring instead to stalk the shadows. After all, if Godfrey was found out, he would be fired from the police department. The car’s last sighting would be in around 1975, and it wouldn’t be seen in public again for decades. The reason? Godfrey had become a father, and with even more on the line if he ever got caught street racing, he mothballed the Challenger in a garage. Just before Godfrey’s death on Christmas Eve 2015, the Dodge’s title was passed to his son, Gregory. He’d bring the car back to running condition with the help of Dean Herron, who’d been one of very few people to know the true story of Godfrey and his Challenger. In 2017 it made its public debut at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois, which started a love of car shows for Gregory. It would later win the HVA National Automotive Heritage award at the Chrysler Nationals, and become the 28th National Historic Vehicle Register inductee. Soon the Black Ghost will be put up for auction – it is due to be the star lot at Dana Mecum’s 36th Original Spring Classic, which will be held this May 12-20 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis.

OPPOSITE The Dodge lurked in the shadows, earning its Black Ghost moniker. THIS PAGE Its policeman owner hid it away after the mid-1970s for more than 40 years.

IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE PONTIAC AS EVER being considered somewhat stodgy – the groundbreaking GTO set up a line that drove the brand to the heart of many a muscle-car fan. However, in the mid-1950s the brand was known for producing solid and functional automobiles – not something to stir the soul of young petrol-heads.

The introduction of the powerful 347ci V8 engine in 1957 went some way towards addressing this – but there was a need for more verve, as called for by Pontiac’s freshly installed general manager, Semon ‘Bunkie’ Knudsen. He put together a racing program that would include NASCAR and the NHRA, and which necessitated a healthy repository of special factory racing components.

While all this did wonders for the brand’s image and sales figures, some enthusiasts believed that even more could be done. One such person was Ace Wilson Jr, the youthful owner of a Pontiac dealership in Royal Oak, Michigan.

As a huge race fan, he saw the potential in bringing Pontiac’s racing know-how and performance to dealerships’ service departments as a way to boost sales and

Royal Pontiac

profits at the showrooms themselves – in doing so, literally bringing power to the people. Pontiac management loved the idea, and encouraged him to develop the project.

By late 1959 Wilson had trained his staff on the craft of making high-performance components available to customers, and he’d also established a special service department to install the parts for customer use. He put together a Royal Pontiac-branded Catalina S/S, too, which boasted 345bhp – enough to crack the 13-second quarter mile at a heady 100mph, which was blisteringly quick for a stock car at the time. Royal Pontiac soon tasted success at the 1960 NHRA Nationals, and would keep winning across the country right up to 1963.

The Pontiac factory pulled out of racing the same year, leaving Royal as the go-to guys for pumping up your Poncho – whether you were a track racer or, more pertinently, a street guy looking for the edge between the lights.

Soon Royal Pontiac was mail ordering parts across the US, while dealership-prepared cars became known as the Royal Bobcats. These could boast up to 38 different upgrades, options and tweaks, and were typically identified via

Royal Bobcat badging along the flanks.

Pretty soon the Royal Bobcat kit was added to the mail-order parts list, and comprised rocker-arm locking nuts, new rocker-cover gaskets, thinner head gaskets to increase compression, a blocked heat-riser gasket, carburetor re-jetting package, distributorrecurve kit with Mallory points and condenser, new advance stop with lighter weights and springs, plus, of course, Royal Bobcat decals.

At the time you could also order a dragstripready car direct from the Royal Pontiac mechanics – a fully legal NHRA C/stocker. The garage’s gurus would strip down the powerplant, then blueprint and balance the rotating assembly and rebuild it to racing specification. They’d also fit four-tube equallength headers, electric fuel pump, weighttransfer suspension upgrades, Hurst competition shifter and M&H slick tires.

So many Pontiac owners came to Royal that the dealership set up the Royal Racing Team to offer advice and newsletters with the latest tuning tips and performance options. So potent were the Bobcat cars that Pontiac itself turned to Royal to prepare its press demonstrators. The most notable of these was the ‘ringer’ used in March 1964’s Carand Driver test between a Pontiac GTO and a Ferrari 250GTO. To the outside world, what lay under the Pontiac’s hood was a normal 289ci – instead, it was a Royal Bobcat 421ci tri-power engine punching out an estimated 400bhp. That was enough to beat the Maranello machine in a sprint to 100mph. Have that, Enzo…

All this performance potential filtered down to street racing, with the Pontiac GTO proving to be immensely popular – more than 1000 Bobcat conversions were sold in 1966, the model’s most successful year. The quest for power would continue, however, with 428ci engines sourced from the largest full-size models in Pontiac’s range finding themselves in the smaller confines of the GTO and Firebird, and thus tearing up Woodward Avenue.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and by the late 1960s GM’s appetite for street racing had waned, while Wilson’s own family and colleagues had never been great fans of his work. He sold the Royal Racing Team in 1970, and eventually the dealership itself in 1974. However, the legend of the monster GTOs lives on…