By Dr. Eric Schiffer. Inside this issue:

Transcription

1 Volume 22 Issue 1 Apr 2015 Inside this issue: Romping on Woodward By Dr. Eric Schiffer Spring is trying its best...to breakout! Fortunately for a Detroit car guy, there have been several things for us to do since the first of the year. The North American Auto Show had some surprise unveilings and confirmed that the Detroit auto industry is alive and well. There was evidence and proof when looking at those entire concept cars from GM and Ford. The Ford GT will be available for $400,000 next year. GM will show off its all new Camaro in May. The Camaro will be pacing this years Detroit Grand Prix. Lingenfelter Open house I spoke to Ken Lingenfelter last week and he is having an open house on Saturday April 25 th. It will begin around 10AM. All are welcome. Parking at Pastiener s On Saturday March 28th, Pasteiner s (Formally known as Auto Zone Book store) hosted retired Pontiac Special Projects engineer Herb Adams for a book signing. There was a great turn out of Pontiac guys. In attendance was our website manager Mike Kidd accompanied by his wife, Aleta as well as Jeff Sawruk was there with his wife and 2-year-old son. Jeff now works for FCA and is on the Hellcat program. Soon the weather will be warming and hopefully we will see you there on a Saturday morning. I just cannot emphasize enough how great this morning gathering is for a car guy or gal. Romping on Woodward Club Winter Gathering Herb Adams Book Signing Grand Am Project Interior Vintage Article 1967 Royal Bobcat GTO Membership Application Club Calendar Upcoming Events: Detroit Autorama..It had to be one of the best I have been to in years! It was back to its roots. While I love all types of cars, I must say by having less muscle car clubs there allowed for a bigger variety of everything on display. Past Royal member, Bob Shork displayed his Pontiac Concept car. A what if Bunkie Knudsen had gotten the car that became known as the Buick Riviera. Checkout all of the pictures I took of the show. Bob Larivee, show organizer published a book called, HOT ROD DETROIT where it features many things about the Detroit Autorama, Detroit s hot rod shops, and Detroit drag strips and street racing. (cont d next page) Apr 25th Lingnefelter Collection Open House May 30th Points and Condensor Spring Dust off June 1st Drivers School at Waterford Hills

2 Page 2 Royal Pontiac Club of America Romping on Woodward (cont d) Dr. Eric Schiffer Royal Pontiac Date Night A nice time was had by all guests. Members and significant others were able to catch up on many subjects. Mike Kidd will post pictures. Points and Condenser Preservation Society.We have now heard the details of spring tour. It will begin in Ann Arbor with a continental breakfast ending at Ken Lingenfelter s collection. Look for details on the clubs website. Every tour has been well run with interesting and great destinations. Our pictures from past tours should be showing you what you are continuing to miss out on. Some venues do NOT allow us to take pictures so you cannot live through the posted ones. Greenfield Village Motor Muster Motor Muster celebrates one of the grandest and most innovative eras of American automotive history For the entire weekend, the streets and lawns of Greenfield Village will be filled with hundreds of classic cars, vintage trucks, motorcycles, military vehicles, bicycles even a fire engine or two. They ll all be here, from brawny muscle cars to the straight-out-ofthe-showroom cars you and your parents grew up with. Stroll the grounds and meet the owners who lavish attention on these wonders of rolling history. There s the Saturday night cruise, too, and a live early 1960s dance show with dancing in the streets til 9pm. June 20-21, 2015 (Open Saturday 'til 9pm). For those interested in entering your car in a great family event, now is the time. For $25.00 for your first car and $5.00 for the second and third car, additional cars are free. For this you get four weekend event passes for the first car and two for each of your other cars. The passes are good all weekend and allow you admission into both the museum and village. For more information go to 15 Minutes of fame!... Wow! Is all I can say?..i was very fortunate to have Muscle Car Review feature my 1968 Firebird a.k.a. Jim Wangers Black Bird in their February 2015 issue. Author, Barry Kluczyk interviewed Brian Ballish who built and maintained much of the car along with John The Cheater Politzer a.k.a.mystery Tiger who was the first driver of the Black Bird. Brian and John revealed a little bit more about the secrets of the car and their philosophy about racing without giving out the total truth about that car s potential. 15 Minutes more.acme Trader die cast company released a limited run of 948 1/18 scale models of the Black Bird in January (2015). The release coincided with the release of the magazine article. Coincidentally when I was contacted last summer neither company knew the other was honoring the Black Bird. I let each know about the other and the two marketing departments did the rest. A third 15 Minutes more How can one person be so lucky? Robert Genat who contributed to HOT ROD DETROIT acknowledged me in the forward of the book. I was also pictured in chapter 10 Detroit Cruising & Street Racing on page 272 in along side my 1957 Corvette and 1971 Nova street racers. (cont d next page)

3 Page 3 Romping on Woodward (cont d) Dr. Eric Schiffer Ames Performance Merges with Performance Years Pontiac (PY). The two Pontiac suppliers have merged to help bring the Pontiac enthusiast the best possible products and prices. From now on to order parts either call AMES (800) or on line All Performance Years number will route you to AMES. PY s forums will remain the same. Bad info out there..i just received a call from an owner of a 1967 GTO from Bowling Green, Ohio. He was trying to follow up and on all the documentation that came with his car. The original owner had kept every receipt. Two of the receipts were from George Delorean s Leader Automotive. George had installed a Jr. Bobcat kit for the original owner in September Then a few months later, George installed a complete Bobcat Kit for $ The problem this current owner is having is that self proclaimed experts have told him that Royal Bobcat kits where never installed on an air conditioned car. Don t you love it? Aside from explaining yes they did, I referred him to Amazon to purchase, Muscle Car Supercars by David Newhart and Pontiac s Great One by Darwin Holstrom and David Newhardt. Both books picture Jim Gannes engine compartment of his 1967 GTO Convertible 428 Ram Air with air conditioning. I also told him that in Dave Snyder s artwork called Royal Pontiac pictured in the back ground is Ace Wilson Jr s triple black 1969 GTO Convertible Ram Air III with air conditioning. The Ace Wilson car is now owned by Glen Craigie of Florida. Speaking of Internet bad information, caveat emptor Buyer beware! To follow up on the above topic. Please excuse me as I vent for a moment. Unfortunately, with the internet comes a ton of inaccurate information from self proclaimed experts. It was after the Barrett Jackson Auction and receiving s and texts that I could not hold it in anymore. I spoke to Jim Wangers, John Polizter and a few others, who you may or may not know about a certain Pontiac that crossed the block. These people would have been involved with the preparing of Pontiac program cars, engineering proposal cars, and press cars before the press got a hold of them. I am also not going to address a particular car or the name of this self proclaimed expert from the Midwest that I came across. From what I have seen he has no ties to Ace Wilson Sr or Jr., McMannis, John and Adams, (PMD s advertising company), Jim Wangers or any one else affiliated with or groupie of Ace Wilson s Royal Pontiac or George Delorean s Wynn Automotive or Leader Automotive or the off site engineering program called the Royal Racing Team. I found him all over the PY forum and the internet. It appears he has collected old magazines and some internal PMD pictures and documents. From these limited sources he has put himself out as the PMD and Ace Wilson s Royal Pontiac expert. A few years ago I thought it would be fun to take a peek at the Performance Years (PY) forums. Without knowing this person on one of the PY forums he told me I was wrong and challenged me on how I knew certain things. This was even after I unselfishly added information to help them out. I naively posted pictures of myself with well know friends from the industry along with articles on the topic to confirm my sources and to substantiate my information. Boy, he and his followers didn t like that in the least bit. It was like I attacked their Messiah and the followers were going to burn me on the cross. After that uncomfortable experience I avoided getting involved in any forum with self proclaimed experts. Recently while googling Royal Pontiac he popped up with a science fiction version of the history of Ace Wilson s Royal Pontiac. He described the original Royal Bobcat emblem as being embossed paper and the (cont d next page)

4 Page 4 Romping on Woodward (cont d) Dr. Eric Schiffer thinner embossed aluminum one as a later fake. Really!!. On another forum from around 2011, I found he could NOT identify Milt Schorneck who was laying under a car. On even another forum he criticized the front end assembly method as an early 60 s Chevrolet went down the line as something he had not seen before and it couldn t be right. He described how Leader Automotive was started by a bunch of ex Ace Wilson Royal Pontiac guys! I thought that was a good leap too. There is so much more this guy has posted including a completely inaccurate history of Ace Wilson s Royal Pontiac. He makes so many poor assumptions. After reading his stuff I spoke and said that I know what is true and I spoke to and forward this self proclaimed expert postings to the REAL experts, like Jim Wangers, John Politzer, Brian Ballish, Alton James and others to confirm my knowledge and personal experiences. I got mixed responses from; blow him off, ignore him, to nail him hard and challenge him etc. After receiving the phone call to help the guy from Ohio with his 1967 GTO Royal Bobcat I have chosen to just vent to you. It is too bad that a lie will make it around the world before the truth can get its boots on. After all we know the rest of the story. Well, time to burn rubber Eric Former member Bob Shork displayed his Pontiac Concept car. A what if Bunkie Knudsen had gotten the car that became known as the Buick Riviera.

5 Page 5 Club Winter Gathering at The Library Pub Mike Kidd We had a nice turnout at the Library pub in West Bloomfield for the winter gathering. We had 15 members and significant others in attendance to discuss Pontiac projects and plans for the coming season. It was a fun night out with good food and good company.

6 Page 6 Herb Adams Book Signing Blood, Sweat, and Gears by David Barnes Mike Kidd The Cars and Coffee event hosted a booked signing on Mar 28th for Blood, Sweat, and Gears. The book details the story of the Gray Ghost, a 1964 Lemans that raced in the Trans Am series. The car was actually Herb Adams wife s car. When Pontiac pulled the plug on racing support Herb lead a team of Pontiac engineers that turned the Lemans into a serious race car. The selffinanced team was very innovative. Despite it s limitations the old Pontiac was good enough to challenge the well financed factory teams, and quickly became a fan favorite. Herb and author David Barnes were both signing copies of the book. Herb was very gracious, spending some time talking with everyone. I asked him about the possibility of a reunion of the Trans Action race team at Waterford Hills this summer (including the ghost). Herb was open to the idea, so I am in process of contacting some other members with the help of Mike Nyberg. It would be cool to have a vintage track day with some vintage pony cars at the same time,. If you would like to help or participate, please let me know. As you may know Herb was also involved with many other projects after Pontiac. Please click on the links below for more info: Pontiac Nascar Effort Interview with Herb Previous newsletter with vintage article on Ghost Above: Herb at Waterford Hills Left: Racing in the rain at Lime Rock in 1971

7 Page 7 Grand Am Project Update: Interior Mike Kidd With my planned Route 66 trip rapidly approaching, I started an interior update project on the Grand Am. The plan was to install the carpet and get the seats re-covered over the holiday break as I had two weeks off. While part one went alright, the carpet and mats arrived, the seat covers were nowhere to be seen. It seems the supplier lost the order and generally was incapable of following up. I did not get the covers until late February. If your unfamiliar with the seats in the 73 Grand Am, although they look VERY similar to Trans Am seats, they recline and have a lumbar adjustment. Which means you have one choice for seat covers. (note: issue was with a sub-supplier, not PUI the manufacturer) When the covers finally arrived, we called around to find who could work on them. Seems this is a busy time for them with spring approaching. Aleta found the Seat King in Pontiac could get them done in a timely manner. Nice guys, but they had no idea what the car was. The conversation went something like this: SK: Do you mean a Trans Am A; No, Grand Am it s an A-body SK: Grand Prix? A: No, do you know what a Can Am is? SK; Yes A: Well think of that without the shaker scoop I got the seats back. and they did a good job. They even dyed the seat backs to match the new upholstery. Of course, none of this matched the rest of the interior. I found out over the next two weeks just how many shades of tan vinyl dye there are! What a PITA, I later found Ames carries dyes that are color matched to the PUI (seat cover mfr) vinyl. While their sprayers leave a little to be desired, the color match is good. (cont d next page) Left: Spring Finally!

8 Page 8 Grand Am Project Update: Interior Mike Kidd RHS Awaiting Prep/Paint LHS Just sprayed After converting the garage to a makeshift interior restoration shop and a couple long days the interior was complete. I m pretty happy with the results, and can offer some advice. 1) Vinyl repair kits don t make the cracks in the dash look better 2) 0000 Steel wool is very good for scuffing trim, and leaves the graining intact 3) Rust oleum Tar & Wax remover will also remove silicone (i.e. armor all), but is hell on your hands 4) SEM adhesion promoter works great, and one can covered all the interior pieces, including the dash 5) You need LOTS of Vinyl dye, at least 4 cans to cover everything. Next up A/C repair! P.S. I f you sick of hearing about this car, submit an article! Below: The Finished Product

9 Page 9 Vintage Article: Super Stock Magazine Tests the 1967 Royal Bobcat GTO Here is the backstory (as told by Eric Schiffer) to the article detailing the test of the 1967 Royal Bobcat 4 speed car. The car in this article is the twin from the Jim Wangers' story about the 1967 GTO switch. A forgotten Royal driver (Maybe John Kosmala) drove the automatic twin to beat an ex customer who bought a '67 Hemi because he had said a Bobcat could not run as fast as a Hemi. Feeling good about the run they then lost to a modified Corvette owned by a big mouth guy who bragged that he had beat Royal. This pissed off Wangers. To save face, the Royal guys put word out on the street that Dave had broken a rocker arm after beating the Hemi and running the Vette. They wanted a rematch with the Vette. The Vette owner agreed to run again. Wanger's showed up at the drive in with John Politzer driving the automatic car. They lifted the hood of the GTO but the big mouth owner of the Vette said it will cost you to see under his hood. (cont d next page)

10 Page 10 After losing to the Vette the Royal guys decided use both the automatic and the blue printed 4 speed car in a switch. They put out the story that a couple of rocker arms feel off after the run with the Hemi. That they wanted to rematch the Vette. They set up the race by meeting at an east side drive in. After meeting they were to meet on I94 to race. (not I-75) Then Dave Warren (not John Politzer) drove the automatic GTO off course to his home nearby where the blue printed 4 speed GTO was waiting. Dave meet the Vette on I94 and they ran from a roll. After beating the Vette Dave did not switch the GTO's back but returned to the drive-in with the 4 speed GTO. Dave even opened the hood of the 4speed car for everyone to see. Someone asked just how fast was the GTO. Dave said a guy with a Cosley which was faster then the Vette answered, "that GTO is as fast as those guys want it to be." The Big Mouth Vette guy handed over $ bucks but Wangers would not except the money. He just told the guy he should think twice about mouthing off about beating Royal. The guy never realized the extra shifts of the 4 speed GTO. It was not until the Motor Trend article came out showing the two 1967 GTOs, both white with black vinyl top and red interiors that he saw that he had been had! Eric

11 Page 11

12 Page 12

13 Page 13

14 Page 14

15 Page 15

16 Page 16 Royal Pontiac Club of America

17 Primary Business Royal Pontiac Club of America Address P.O. Box West Bloomfield,Line MI Address 2 Address Line 3 April ROYAL PONTIAC MEETING, Denny's Novi 25 Lingenfelter Collection Open House May Annual Bearing Burners Car Show and Swap meet, GM Tech Center Warren, MI 14 ROYAL PONTIAC MEETING, Denny's Novi Detroit Grand Prix Belle Isle 30 Points and Condensor Spring Dust off June SAAC-MCR Open Track Day & Drivers School Waterford Hills Clarkston, MI 11 ROYAL PONTIAC MEETING, Denny's Novi Quicken Loans 400 Michigan International Speedway Brooklyn, MI 20 Eastpointe and Roseville Gratiot Cruise Motor Muster at Greenfield Village 21 Eyes on Design at Edsel and Eleanor Ford House th Annual St. Ignace Car show St. Ignace MI Sloan Museum Auto Fair Flint, MI July ROYAL PONTIAC MEETING, Denny's Novi18 19 USMA Nationals Blackwell Ford Plymouth, MI 26 Concourse d'elegance Inn at St. John's Plymouth, MI Looking for Articles!!! Pasteiners (Auto Zone) Book store, Woodward Ave north of 14 Mile Rd Every Saturday morning from 8AM 10AM Weekly gathering year round Have you done any cool car events lately? Maybe a great tech tip? Why not share them with other club members? Would you like to share your pride and joy with other club members? Write a short meet the member article introducing you and your car. Be sure to include some pictures. We can also add pics of your ride to our members tab on the website. Please Mike Kidd with ideas or anything you d like to share in the newsletter. kidd101400@att.net