The one, The only 1967 IPC

[Vern B]

In March of 1967 I purchased a new GTO that had Firestone Redlines, Wide Ovals, as I remember. By the time I had 3000 miles on the tires, the sidewalls were cracked so bad that they were leaking air through the cracks. They were replaced under warranty and the story at the time was Firestone was on strike and employees had sabotaged tires during production.

The tires above may be recaps, but they appear to have multiple cracks similar to what I remember on my tires. It looks to me there is a crack just below the redline and another row of cracks about an inch below the upper one. Mine had multiple rows of cracks and were cracked so severally, I’ve never seen a tire as bad before, or since those tires.

If Firestone was having production problems, they may have had concerns with tires for the Pace cars. I bought my car in mid March 67, so by the time I had the problems at 3000 miles it likely would have been about the time in May when Indy qualifying, practice, etc was going on.

Just a thought.

[70 copo]

X2 on some Firestone production runs and associated sidewall cracking. The original wide ovals on our 73 Z28 saw little use, virtually no sun and the sidewalls cracked pretty fast back in the day.

[70 copo]

Firestone was on top of the 1967 INDY image game for sure.

Here is 1966 race winner's parade car (replica #116) with the factory D size wide ovals shown crayon highlighted to drive home the point that "Winners ride on Firestone"

[70 copo]

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