I bet someone that has the car they came from would love to have them....but evidently there is no way to prove that???
Dan Gurney Road racing 409 in the UK
- Thread starter johnnyriviera
- Start date
I'm 100% sure the car doesn't have it's original motor, just not sure if it has a 623 block or a later model motor. Verne had documented the car somewhere because he had the vin number in his records and I remember him saying that he could not figure the second tag out.
Carl 1962
Well Known Member
The Dale Armstrong car with "that" extra tag had been the subject of lots of discussions between Verne and myself before he died. The cowl tag has also been modified or replaced and the color and interior changed. The tag doesn't have the code that is usually on there for a super sport and the original tag didn't have it either, but did have a code that didn't make sense. Here's a photo of the rubbing of this tag which shows the same original body number VN 16819 but the paint code has changed from 915 (twilight turquoise) to 905 (arbour green) and the trim code has changed from 852 (turquoise) to 825 (green). The engine badge code after the trim code looks like a C on the original tag, but that's nonsensical (maybe it's actually a poorly rubbed "8" meaning 283), and it's clearly not an F (for flags) which is the the usual code for 348/409 on a Van Nuys car, and there's no code for super sport either, so the original cowl tag is a bit strange, but this might be because it's a test mule as Verne believed.
In January of ‘61 Bill Thomas and Dyno were working at Mead Chevrolet in Pasadena CA. Mead Chevrolet’s owner was a Corvette guy who catered to fuel injection 283 owners. Bill Thomas was the service manager and Dyno the fuelie specialist who ran a mean green 348/335 4-speed Biscayne fleet master. Bill Thomas had tight connections with Bunkie Knudsen at GM and had access to order a few ‘61 409 crate engines. I believe 5 engines were ordered through Don Steve’s Chevrolet and swapped out the 348’s in Gurney, Dyno, Tom Sturm, Frank Sanders and Bernie Partridge new 1961 Chevrolets. Dyno did the heads on them from what he told me years ago.