You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

[Lee Stewart]

Once again . . . off the normal postings (OK - way off) . . . I am sure you are familiar with the "Captain America" motorcycle from the movie EASY RIDER. Below is what I believe to be the bike before it's complete transformation with Peter Fonda sitting on it. Not sure who the two other men are in the photo

[Lee Stewart]

The real reason why Shelby agreed to help Ford get the Mustang ready for SCCA Trans Am was because he felt obligated as a thank you for the financial support he’d received from Ford for his Cobra program, after Chevrolet had turned him down. Originally Ford had gone to the SCCA and requested some rule changes which the SCCA had refused. Shelby had a good relationship with the SCCA.

[Lee Stewart]

OK . . . am I going off the "beaten path" again? Well . . . not really. The founder of Chili's was Larry Lavine. Who is Larry Lavine? He is the son-in-law of Carroll Shelby who just happened to have a passion about chili. Shelby owned 220,000 acres in West Texas near the town of Terlingua, where he co-founded the world’s first chili cook-off. Lavine had gone to a few cookoffs before opening the first Chili's in Dallas, TX (1975)

[Lee Stewart]

Carroll Shelby built two dual supercharger 800 HP 427 Cobras which he called the Super Snake. One he kept for himself and the other he gave to comedian Bill Cosby who after almost killing himself gave the car back to Shelby. The guy who ended up buying it after him did die when, while trying to control it, he went flying off a cliff on the Pacific Coast Highway, landing in the Pacific Ocean.

[Lee Stewart]

Motor Wheel Corp did make 15" Magnum 500 (with trim rings) wheels. But though Chevy put them on a few promotional Chevelles, they unfortunately were never an option. IMO they should have offered them as an option.

[Lee Stewart]

Curb Weight: All fluids installed and a full tank of gas.

Shipping Weight: No fluids installed and just a couple of gallons of gas

[Lee Stewart]

The moniker "GTX" did not stand for G T eXperimental. It was just a name Plymouth came up with to copy the GTO. GTX doesn't stand for anything.

[Lee Stewart]

The advertising agency that handled Plymouth in 1967 was given the task to come up with a name for their new youth oriented muscle car. After extensive market analysis the proposed new name was . . . LAMANCHA! Man of La Mancha was the hit musical of the time.

[Lee Stewart]

At the time he was inventing Road Runner, Chuck Jones was at his desk in his studio while one of his fellow cartoonists pattered down the hallway with a big armload of drawings. Not wanting to bump into people, he was going, “Beep, beep! Beep, beep!” As he walked past Chuck Jones’ door, Chuck turned and said, “That’s it!” So, that’s how the beep, beep was born.

[Lee Stewart]

From the time Plymouth decided they wanted to sell a youth oriented inexpensive muscle car to the final prototype (shown here) was a scant 2 months - an unheard of short time in the auto industry. This included choosing a name, negotiations with Warner Bros for licensing the name, which took just a single day, all the art work for the ads and getting the signature horn.

Though Jack Smith is considered the "Father" of the Road Runner he was not the person who originally thought up the idea of the car. That credit goes to Brock Yates, a writer for Car & Driver. Robert S. Anderson (vice-president in charge of the Chrysler-Plymouth sales division) asked Brock, “What do I do to get the kids’ attention?” Brock’s advice was, “Take a car and just strip it down. Anything that isn’t essential, get rid of it. And then stuff the biggest engine you've got into it, so that car will sit at a red light and go: Vroom, vroom, vroom. All the other cars will see it, and they’ll be so frightened that they will run up alleys and hide. Do that car and you'll get their attention.”