[Keith Seymore]

How we lost our first Pontiac:

So, in relatively short order, Dad had gone from "John Q Public Ford racer" to a hotshot Pontiac racer. Although he started out as just another Royal customer, his ability to be down there during the day (since he worked second shift), as well as his budding friendship with Dick Jesse, could be used to their mutual advantage. He was able to hang out, attend press events and test sessions, and help them get some work done. By now the Bobcat package was starting to gel, and Dad was able to bring tripowers home five or six at a time - "Bobcat" them by rejetting, etc - and then bring the completed units back for installation on customer vehicles by Frank Rediker or Charlie Brumfield. Later, the same technique would be used in converting wide ratio 4 speeds into close ratio 4 speeds - again, five or six at a time. ( I should mention that if a particular unit came together especially well, either a tripower or a 4 speed, it might not have made it all the way back to Royal).


I don't know if it was conscious or not but eventually a plan evolved. Quite clever, actually; Dad would run the "sleeper" car: a factory car, with full sponsorship and technical support, but no visible indication to the casual observer other than a set of Royal license plate frames.* Ultimately Dad would end up with a Shell credit card to pay for all his fuel and an open account for any race car parts. A call down to Royal would result in parts being shipped to the Flint bus station via Greyhound, where he could pick them up (many of the parts had red paint on them, indicating "scrap"!). His familiarity with Royal grew and the car was quite successful: never defeated in actual B/S competition and even holding the NHRA B/S record at 13.42 until Art Noey ("Shaker Engineering") came along and bombed the record out of reach.*

However, this familiarity would also lead to the car's demise.



*There was one ocassion where, in an effort to be like everybody else, Dad had some decals made up of his name and had them applied to the side windows. Jesse caught wind of it and had him pull them off. They very much did not want anyone to know who Dad was at the time...

**I emphasize the car's success specifically in B/Stock....but there were some off days. "Farmer" Dismuke was the tech director for NHRA and was known for being pretty tough. He had a ring that he wore and on the underside of the ring was a magnet - specifically for finding fiberglass or aluminum where it wasn't supposed to be. As Dad was in tech for B/Stock Farmer laid his hand on one of those aluminum fenders and said conclusively "B/FX". Instantly agitated, Dad said "I can't run B/FX; this car is a national record holder in B/Stock". Farmer said "I don't care if you are Santa Claus, you're not running that car in B/Stock unless you can show me 49 more just like it!". Dad knew he couldn't be competetive in B/FX, and didn't want to ballast up to C/FX (because Doug Nash was running his Bronco in that class) so he, along with the boys from Royal, decided to park the car for the day. For a discussion on how the rest of the day went see this attached thread: http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...d.php?t=549309