[retengw31]

Interesting way the stories have evolved. I was there, and worked for Bob Stempel. He hired me out of U of Mich. He used to give me a load of crap for driving Pontiacs instead of Olds..I had a 59 Catalina HT with a 3 speed stick at that time, many others soon after. First Olds (other than a 54 that I bought for the engine for my 41 Ford conv in high school) was a 65 convertible that I only kept a coupla months and then got my 68 Ramrod.

I really don't recall GM saying very much to either Pontiacor Olds back then, they didn't start tried to centralize things and micromanage their operations until they set up GMPD and GMAD in the 1969/1970 time frame. The 64 A car was supposed to be a common design across the divisions, and mostly was. Problem came in standardizing components as each division had their own preferred suppliers, with their own purchasing, marketing, finance, etc. etc. Like the engines, all divisions would have been happy to standardize with the others, as long as they used THEIR engine...there were 4 uniquely different 350's at that time.

I had heard that about who did the short stroke OHV for production first and who copied who...guess we heard it from two different sides. Olds got more notoriety since they put it in the lighter A body. Actually, Chevrolet had an OHV V8 in 1910, possibly Cadillac, too.

Lots of stories, I've told the one of the birth of the Ramrod at GMPG in the Fall of 1967 in a showdown match with a W31 prototype and Pontiac's new Ramair car....not sure which one.. it was brutal, but a setup all the way. Pontiac made the challenge to bring in an Olds 442's knowing how they could annihilate it. They agreed to let a 350 F85 since that was the "only one available there at the time". The Ramrod was running open headers and a 5.00 gear.Without the gory details, basically after 3 out of 3 Pontiac knew they'd been had and had fallen into the trap and said "that's not a production car!" Reply from Olds with a big smile was: "It is now".....released the next day and in production with the first 50 of the 500 build a coupla months later. Package was all done in 1966 as an engineering "project", just didn't need it until the 68 400 fell flat on its nose and the big $$$ teams were screaming for help. You would have never seen the W31 OR the 68 Hurst if the 400 had run like its predecessors from 65-67. Made too much money on the 442's and both the special runs of the 500 Ramrods and almost equal amount of 455 442's that were sent to Hurst at Demmer were way too expensive to process.

Sam Murray is still running a replica of the 67 Brainbeau car and setting NHRA records.......

Olds was furious at GM when they put out the edict that multiple carb systems would be no more starting 1967 (except Chevrolet...Corvette)...they only got one year out of their investment in 1966 as the 57-58 J2 parts wpouldn't fit the new family of engines.

Totally agree on the 59-63 cars, even though they did have some nascar cars then. They went a different direction from the others. Engineers rarely are good promo and marketing people...there are exceptions........

SISU