a good tale

[rt green]

as told by pete mc nicholl.   
it was the summer of '57, and the wife and i had been fishing in the mt clemens mi area. we're on our way home, cruising south on gratiot ave.  i'm in the far right lane pulling a 16 foot chris craft out board with my 55 plymouth that i had stuffed full of 354 hemi.  anyhow, i'm in the rirht lane, see, and this 57 chevy pulls up along side me. 'course , he doesnt give me a second look, with me towing a boat and all. he's paying attention to the 55 olds thats just pulled up in the left lane.
the lights aboutm to change, and the chevy starts rapping his engine, and i get alittle excited and say to the wife "hey, they're gonna race".  course the wife gets upset and she starts yelling and hollering about " now dont you go racing. your pulling a boat, and theres a time and place for racing and this isnt one of them and your gonna get both kilt", and all.

[rt green]

anyhow, the light changes and the chevy and olds go at it. i'm on the gas sort of moderately, and i'm right on their tail. i know i can beat these guys, boat and all, and the temtation is just too great. i tell the wife, "hey i can beat these guys", and she starts yelling and hollering all over again how not to race and how i'm going to ruin something.   we all catch the next light on gratiot, and the chevy and olds still dont give me a second look. the chevy is rapping his engine again, but this time i'm ready.   

[rt green]

i punch the low button on my torqueflite, brake torque it to get a good launch, and when the light changes, i actually pull a holeshot on those guys. you've got to appreciate the sene. here are these two hotshoes going at each other full bore and they look over and see themselves being passed by a boat!
anyhow, the chevy waves me over at the next light, and of course i play dumb. the plymouth looks bone stock on the outside, and the guy asks my what i'm runnin. i say i dunno, i just bought it off the showroom floor.

[JB400]

 

[rt green]

this chevy guy gets all excited and tells me about his other 57 chevy that runs out of a local drive-inn thats never been beat, and carries a hundred ddollar bill for the guy that can beat him. well, i say, i dont do that sort of thing and all. but in the meantime i'm thinking about that hundred bucks. hey, back in 57 that was big time money.
when i get home, i call a buddy of mine, hank, who has a 54 olds. i tell him about this 57 chevy thats never been beat and backs his mouth up with a hundred bucks. we decide its someting worth checking out.

[rt green]

we show up at the drive-in the next night and we spot this guy with a real bad looking black 57 chevy. the guy knew the deal , cause he sees my plymouth, walks up to me and says matter a factly, look, we'll take 'em out to 14 mile road and run 'em.
"okay," i said "i'm pretty new at this , and i don't know much about racing and all."  'coourse i'm lying through my teeth, see, as i'd been racing since i was a little kid. 

[rt green]

There are four guys in the chevy, and me and Hank in the Plymouth.  We drive out to the area which is pretty remote and desolate at the time. It's all homes now, but back then it was farm country.  All three guys jump out of the chevy, and Hank says, well, what do you think?  I tell him that the Chevy sounds pretty healthy, and maybe he better climb out too. 

One of their guys acts like their flag man.  I'm thinking about that $100.00 bucks.  He lines up and we get off.
By the time we've run the quarter mile, I beat the Chevy, but not by very much -- maybe two car lengths or so.  We turn around and drive back to where the guys are standing, and the Chevy guy says, Hay how about two out of three ? 

[rt green]

Well, ok, I guess !!  Then the chevy guy says, how his engine loaded up driving out here and he has to open up the pipes to clear it out.  So he bends down and starts to uncap his exhaust.  Now, I new I was in trouble when he started doing that, so I say, wait a second guys-- I gotta loosen mine up too.

Of course, this blows the Chevy guys mind.  The Plymouth looks totally stock, and I have the exhaust caps tucked way up under the car where you can't see them.  I think that right then and there they knew theyd been had, cause that hemy has a sound totally different from anything else when it's opened up.  Well, we line up again, and this time I literally blow the Chevy's doors right off. I musta had him by about 15 car lengths by the end of the quarter mile.  What can I say, you really put it to me.  Come back to the drive in.  I'll buy you guys a malt and give you your money.

[rt green]

The Chevy guy is leading the way, and he knows the streets around there and I don't.  Hank and I are laughing about the whole deal and not much attention.  All of the sudden, the Chevy makes a quick right.
I jump on the brakes, but by the time I back up to make the turn, he out of sight.  We went back to the drive in many times after that but we never saw the Chevy guy again or his car again.  Probably he still has the car hidden in his garage.

the deal was so much fun, though, that me and hank used to do this thing on woodward ave.  what we did was take a 3x5-foot utiity trailer and torck the springs to make it look like it was carrying a lot of weight.  then we'd tie empty boxes to it, like from aa refrigerator or washer or dryer. it reallt looked like it was heavy. then we'd run up and down woodward-always in the right hand lane, looking for guys that were racing in the center and left lanes. they would be going all out, and we'd just drive right by 'em looking like we were moving half a house. i think those were some of the best times i ever had.   

[charge69]

That's a great story and I would've loved to see the look on the Chevy guy's face when you blew his doors off!  Back when I was a teenager, I ran around with a good friend who had a '55 Chevy 2dr. post 210 with a fairly stock 283 we put in it. This was before I had a car to drive, by the way. The Chevy just had a 3 speed tranny converted to floorshift but he was pretty good at launching it. He won more than a few dollars betting people he could "jump" a coke bottle with his front wheels. Cannot remember the size coke bottle but it was a regular coke bottle sold everywhere then. Probably a 6 oz bottle.

He would manipulate the clutch and brake and get the car "hopping" I guess is the best way to describe it but he would make the front wheels lift off the pavement and move just a little ways forward. More often than not, he would actually jump the coke bottle put on the ground a foot or so in front of the passenger side (I think) front wheel. The car was pretty quick but could never pull a "wheelie" just dropping the clutch. Funny to watch him do it and profitable too !

[Ghoste]

Pete was one of the originals.  Great story!

[F8-4life]

 love these old stories!

[hemigeno]

McNicholl didn't know that a Plymouth was never equipped with a Hemi engine of any displacement until 1964?

[Ghoste]

It was a swap, there are pictures of the car in that Rmachargers biography.

[hemigeno]

It was a swap, there are pictures of the car in that Rmachargers biography.

Ahh, my bad.

Carry on!

[FlatbackFanatic]

Great story.

[bakerhillpins]

It was a swap, there are pictures of the car in that Rmachargers biography.

Ahh, my bad.

Carry on!

Yea, I didn't pick up on that either... must be insider info or sumpin.  

Great story all the same! 

[Ghoste]

Maybe depends how close you are to the Detroit area?  I hardly think of myself as an insider.

[rt green]

he said he had the plymouth  "stuffed full" of 354 hemi

[bakerhillpins]

Maybe depends how close you are to the Detroit area?  I hardly think of myself as an insider.

It was more of a tongue in cheek type of explanation more than anything else. Just a poor attempt at humor while trying to convey that I didn't get it either.

he said he had the plymouth  "stuffed full" of 354 hemi

Yea, read that as artistic expression not that he had swapped it that's all. It's obvious now.

[Ghoste]

It wasn't a poor attempt at all, I got it and my reply was also meant to be tongue in cheek so more likely mine was the poor attempt.

[Finn]

Great read!! Would love to hear more.

[70redbee]

That was a great story. Anyone else have any stories of the bye gone era?

[warpspeed]

Don't you just love the "good ole days" when you could get away with it AND not worry about whether the cops could catch you?

[charge69]

It was the fall of 1976 and me and my best friend, Larry, were just cruising around in my fairly recently acquired 1969 Charger R/T HEMI. The car was still untouched as far as engine enhancements were concerned but ran very well even though it had around 80k miles on it by now. The previous owner used it for a daily driver in and around Pasadena, Tx since early 1971 when he bought it from the original owner.

We found ourselves sitting at a light about to go under the freeway and turn left back toward my home. I had let my friend drive as he had begged me to drive it and I let him. After all, he let me drive his 454 equipped 1972 Vette. We realized we probably had to move one lane to the left to turn but there was a car there by us at the light. Two women were sitting in the car just having a conversation. The windows were down on both their car and the Charger as it was a nice cool day to be out and about.

My friend, Larry, prepared to get the jump on them so he could turn left and as the light turned, he floored it! The Charger had blown out cherry bomb mufflers on it and it was "LOUD" now and the car just leaped forward without stumbling at all. All hell broke loose as the motor screamed to life with a loud,loud roar!

The look on the women's face was priceless as we, obviously scared the total Hell out of them and made the turn under the freeway easily! We laughed and talked about how bad he scared those poor ladies for years!