My Pontiac Story

[Keith Seymore]

Dad buys his first Pontiac:

"Over the years now Dick Jesse and I had become good friends even if I had not bought a car from him. When the '63 introduction date came along I went to Royal to look at the new cars and I went down to talk about buying a car.

"The car I wanted to buy was a '62 Super Duty with the aluminum package and it was a red exterior with a black interior. Jesse and I talked about it and he told me to wait on a '63; that he could have to sell me a '62 but he might be able to get a '63 at a better price.

"We were standing in the door to the service department, by Charlie's stall talking and Jesse was telling me about the '63 cars and program when Wangers walked up. When he heard what Jesse was telling me he told Jesse not to talk about it yet, that it wasn't to be talked about.

"A short time after this Jesse called and said for me to come down that he had a car for me. When I went down to Royal and walked around the Service Department and looked at the white Tempest Wagon and [Lemans] coupe sitting at the end of the body shop there wasn't anything outstanding about either car and, until he started the coupe, I thought he was serious. When he started the engine and the fenders started to shake I knew there was no way he could get me a car like that. He laughed and said that those were 'shooters' cars* and that the wagon was his. The only thing I got on him was that they had to build an automatic so that he could drive it.



* [the coupe being discussed was George Delorean's car]




"He said there was still hope. He had a car at Engineering to show me so we went to Pontiac Engineering on Joslyn [Avenue in Pontiac Michigan]. Dick already had it cleared through Security and we drove to the back of the parking lot and there it sat. It was a Nocturne blue Catalina with aluminum wheels and white wall tires and most important of all 421 emblems on the front fenders.

"Dick said that Pontiac really wanted to get the 370 HP 421 out and in a Catalina it was in 'B' stock but it was in the bottom of the class. The car we were looking at was a regular Catalina (production body and frame) with what he called a 'carryover' aluminum package: aluminum hood, fenders, deck lid and bumpers but the inner fenders and braces were steel. The car was light enough to be at the top of 'B' stock. But they didn't want it in 'A' stock as it wouldn't run against a Super Duty [Swiss Cheese] Catalina.

"My first thoughts were 'well, this is another wasted trip because I would never get this car, either'. But in less than a week Dick called and said that the car was at Royal and in the paint shop.

"Somehow in the process of getting the car for me Dick even contacted Jim Wangers. This was the first car to receive the Bobcat [appearance] package and people at Royal said that Wangers took a very personal interest in it. The painter in the body shop was the only person able to paint body color on aluminum wheels and get it to stay. This car received the ultimate Bobcat paint, along the rain gutters, along the side spear, silver in the grille and on the deck lid. The wheels alone were a work of art - painted body color with the ribs polished aluminum and the loops on the rims painted white.



Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj0M4...eature=related (thanks to Mike Noun)

[Keith Seymore]

Royal at the races:

"Jim liked spinners and put them on all the center caps except for this car and I managed to keep the plain center caps. As soon as this car was finished Jim's 'green' car (which he used as a tow car for the race car) and Dick's white car were painted with the Bobcat scheme.





"As soon as the paint was dry my car was moved to the Service Department and Charlie put the full Bobcat tune on it. It also had the stock GM 'spaghetti' shifter in it, but Jack Watson had quit GM and was working for George Hurst so he brought over Hurst shifters for all three cars.

"There was a Mickey Thompson carrier made of aluminum with a 4.30 ratio in it there and Jesse had it put in also. This is something else I can tell Jim now, then he knew that the rear end was there but I don't think he ever knew what happened to it, or if he did he didn't press the point.

"The first Sunday out the car ran mid 14's and by the end of the season it would run 13.80 at any strip. The first Sunday at Ubly Butch Schmidt, who was the Service Manager at Bukoski Pontiac in Ubly, was running the drag strip. He teched the car and said 'B Stock?' and I said 'sure', and the car ran B/Stock all year. [Pontiac would often rent Ubly for test and press days].

"The car was a good running car from the very first and won every class run it ran. It was Stock Eliminator at several events in '63. We were at Ubly for the 4th of July "Great Lakes Championship" and Royal was going to run the Ramchargers in a 3 out of 5 match race. Jim was blowing a head gasket every run on the Catalina, which was about par for the course. Charlie ran out of gaskets and I had 2 Fitzgerald's that I gave him to save for the match race runs. Once while Charlie was changing head gaskets Jim and I made a run in our Bobcats and I ran a 13.70. After that Jim said 'better slow down or you're gonna get torn down'. Well - it didn't work, the car I ran for Stock Eliminator was the Ramchargers 'B' Stock automatic Dart. They protested me and I had to do a complete tear down. I was completely legal and Jim Thornton was really upset, especially when I told him that I would tell him everything that we had that was not stock if he would do the same, because I knew we were a lot more 'stock' than he was!

"We ran the Ramchargers 3 more times that year and the car held the 'B' stock record at 13.42 before Art Noey and Jim Stephens at Shaker Engineering bombed the record out of sight.

[Keith Seymore]

The inside "scoop":

"This was also in the days when NHRA couldn't keep up with the factory part numbers. When Jim wanted a hood scoop for the Catalina he got a Ford truck scoop and put a Pontiac part number on it, and it was now a 'stock' scoop for the Catalinas and Tempests, too."



[I'm told they also released a GM part number for the "hole" in the hood! ]

[Keith Seymore]

More shenanigans and the Cat gets a rep:

"In August Jim jack knifed the Catalina and bent the front bumper, brackets, valance and right front fender. He also sold his green Bobcat and had a red one done for the rest of the year. All the aluminum parts had been used and nothing was available for the Royal Catalina so Jim went to the Nationals and took B/FX with a bent car. Wangers was sure that one complete set of aluminum had been put back (for a Catalina and a Tempest) but it had disappeared. It is ironic that I was to read in 1991, 28 years later, in a Pontiac magazine about a Pikes Peak car that was built in May of 1963. That must have been the extra set of aluminum and I don't think the car made it to Pikes Peak, either.




"As I said before, there was so much going on: Pontiac sent a set of HO heads to Joe Mondello and had them ported and polished and after they got tired of looking at them they said 'we should see what they will do'. So they told me to put them on and run them. The way NHRA was checking and people protesting there was no way anyone could run a set of heads ported to gasket size and then polished, so I took a 'carballoy' scribe and cut a casting line in the ports and then took the heads to Marsh Monument [a local business that engraved headstones for the cemetery] and had them sandblasted to look 'as cast'. By buying an aftermarket gasket at Kustom [Speed Equipment] it looked stock and I ran all year without anyone protesting the heads.




"When I got the car it had the HO cast iron exhaust manifolds on the motor, they were new for 1963 and a nice manifold for the street, but I managed to get a set of the aluminum manifolds and drove them on the street. It didn't take too many highway miles to burn holes in them, especially the #1 and #2 bends at the very front. They were repaired several times but it just got worse. Pontiac had a set of stamped steel manifolds, but they were used by the Super Duty Tempest and the stock cars. Jess Tyree made headers for the Super Duty Tempest and was sent a mule (Tempest 2 door) and he raced a Super Duty Tempest -was it the mule or was it one of the five Super Dutys? If it was the mule was there five or six coupes? [We now know there were six white Lemans coupes and six white Tempest wagons, plus a blue Tempest coupe and a Silver Tempest coupe].

"After welding the aluminum manifolds several times and not being able to get another set of headers, a friend of mine, Frank Bakos, and I made a set of headers. We made them as short as possible, you could look up the collector and see the #7 or #8 exhaust port. Everyone, except Mac McKellar, said that they would never work, that you needed length, backpressure, long collectors, etc. Mac said 'I like it. I'm going to grind a cam for them'. He did and I was afraid of getting caught, but the Ramchargers tore me down at Ubly on the 4th of July. They put the cam in 'V' blocks with a degree wheel and an indicator and the cam checked ok for lift and duration.

"At the start of the season I bought a set of 9.00x14 M&H slicks from Kustom and they were a wide white wall and I had them mounted with the white wall out. This far into the season my car was becoming known as the car with the big white wall slicks as well as a 'Royal Bobcat'."

[Keith Seymore]

Milt comes on the scene:

"In late July or early August Wangers talked Joe Kay into hiring a young guy that was working for George Delorean as a 'go-fer' to be a mechanic at Royal - his name was Milt Schornack. Again, I think it was ironic that 7 &1/2 years later when Royal was sold that he returned to Leader Automotive."

[Keith Seymore]

A "high performance" option for the Lemans:

"In early August Pontiac was getting ready to start 1964 production so we got to see the 1964 Tempest and to hear about a high performance option for the Lemans, and that it would be next year's race car and run in B/Stock.

[Keith Seymore]

September 1963:

"It was now September and time for the Nationals. Because Pontiac had pulled out of racing the Super Duty cars had to run FX [ie, "Factory Experimental"] and they put ballast in the Catalinas to run B/FX. My car was entered in B/Stock until [NHRA Tech Inspector] 'Farmer' Dismuke walked by, but he had a ring with a magnet in it that he would use to check cars for aluminum or fiberglass. When he put it on the fender of my car he said 'no way. This is an FX car'. If I ran, it would be B/FX and I sure didn't stand a chance against a Super Duty, and I think that was the year Doug Nash ran C/FX with his Bronco so I couldn't add ballast and run C/FX. So my car sat on the sidelines and didn't run.



"Our other car was a 1960 Corvair, so we did all our traveling in our Catalina, for trips I would switch to a 3.90 rear end, we went to Indianapolis for the 500 in May and made a couple trips to Missouri in it and my wife drove it through the week....

[Keith Seymore]

November 2009 - Inaugural MCACN:

Just got back from Chicago, where I was able to participate in the Nickey "Muscle Car & Corvette Nationals".

One of the displays was a collection of "significant" Royal GTOs. Tenney Fairchild (owner of the Red Car&Driver '64 GTO) asked if I could bring my car. Thank you, Tenney, for the inivitation (I was honored to be numbered among you all) and thank you, Bob Ashton, for putting on a great show!

Got to hang out and swap stories all weekend with Tenny, Scott Tiemann and his Dad, Bill and Rita Shultz, Big Injun Dave and Mr Wangers. My side still hurts from laughing so much.

K














Complete set of photos can be found here:

http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...91#post3829591

K

[Keith Seymore]

You're Van Seymore, aren't you...



One of the old stories Dad liked to tell...


He was at the track, somewhere, and there was a lull in the action - so he was napping under a shady tree (where he always liked to park - and something he very much liked to do).

Off a little ways in the distance he can hear this young man, entourage in tow, loudly evaluating all the other cars in his class and issuing his verdict: "....we'll have to watch out for this guy..." or "...this one here will be no problem", etc.

Dad watched, one eye half open, as this young man and his fans approached Dad's pit and surveyed the situation: Dad leaning back, apparently dozing, Mom changing my sister's diaper in the back of the tow car. A little black GTO with no lettering or apparent sponsors, sitting quietly and passively nearby.

"We don't have to worry about this guy!" the kid loudly proclaimed. They laughed and slapped each other on the back as they wandered off to continue their tour of the competition.

After the kid was out of earshot, Dad said to Mom "...I'm gonna run that kid for the trophy... and I'm gonna hurt him!"

"VAN!" she scolded. "Don't you get too cocky!"

"Wait and see" he confided, watching the kid walk away.

Sure enough, as the rounds went by, Dad was clicking off the wins on his side of the ladder (launching lazily and chasing his victims down, or "sandbagging" just enough to take the stripe) and this kid, in his '65 GTO, was knocking 'em down on the other side. Eventually, as predicted, the two GTOs met in the final round.





The tree came down and Dad launched hard and moved first. He shifted cleanly one time, two times, three times and kept it floored all the way through. Crossing the finish line several car lengths ahead of his competition, the kid was not only soundly beaten but surely must have been totally humiliated.

Dad putted back to the pit area, went to the tower to pick up his trophy (...or exchange it for free admission the next week...) and started loading stuff up. As he worked, he noticed out the corner of his eye, the kid approaching: alone - and obviously humbled.

The kid spoke first: "You're Van Seymore, aren't you?".

Dad chuckled to himself and said: "Yes....why do you ask?".

"Well" the kid continued "My uncle is Frank Bakos*. He's always telling me about you and your racecars but I didn't realize that was you when I was here earlier".

They visited a little bit more, about the cars and about mutual friends, and then went their separate ways.

I don't know what the rest of the conversation was but it seems the kid got a "spanking" he didn't soon forget - since Dad heard the same story come back around when Frank starting telling him about it!

K

[Keith Seymore]

"...Didn't you used to be Van Seymore?..."



Ok - so that made me think of a funny one:

After Dad got sick the medicines (steroids) caused him to retain water. During his growing up years and in young adulthood he had always been quite thin, but the medicines caused him to puff up a bit, especially making his face a little rounder than it had been previously.

Dad was always running into someone he knew, whether it was in an expressway rest area in Phoenix or a shopping trip in a local mall. One time we were out and someone thought they recognized him:

"...Didn't you used to be Van Seymore?" the man asked.

Dad paused for a minute and said "....I thought I still was...."

K