W-Engines in NASCAR

[Tom Kochtanek]

Aha!

Richard seconds the driver, noting "It may be listed as a Chevrolet in the race program."

So this is a Canadian racing Pontiac???


Just kidding! Thanks for the personal background details, and for the pictures. My life was wayyyyyyy too boring back then to have any such fun. Time to make up for that!

Cheers,
TomK

 

[real61ss]

"Pretty sure that's the #0 Chevelle of Bobby Allison on the outside, though"


I don't remember Allison driving a #0 car. He may have but I don't remember it, I do remember him driving a 1965 Chevelle that I believe was number 2. I remember him being at Manassas Va for a Grand National Race with that car. It was the first car that I remember having a fuel cell and Norris Friel (competition director of NASCAR) took us over and used Bobby's car as a guide to how they wanted the fuel cells installed. Funny how you remember little things like that from 40 years ago but I can't remember what I did yesterday.

 

[MK IISS]

I did some more NASCAR research. Roy Tyner is listed as driving a # 9 1966 Pontiac in several of the 1968 season races. I just didn't look far enough past the 1966-67 seasons in which he drove a Chevrolet.

Sometimes NASCAR records can lead to incorrect assumptions or conclusions. For example. Smokey Yunick is listed as entering a few 1965 and 1966 season NASCAR races with both 1965 and 1966 Chevrolets. It would be easy to assume the cars were Chevelles because of his famous 1966 Chevelle. However he also built both 1965 and 1966 Impala race cars. I have found photos of both year Impalas being raced with the familiar black/gold paint jobs.

Smokey was also involved with Chevrolet in the construction of a 1964 Chevelle NASCAR spec. race car in the fall of 1963. The 1964 chevelle had a 396 cubic inch MK II (Mystery) engine. The 396 version of the Mk II had the same large cyl. bore as the 409 Mk I and Mk II 409 and 427 versions but had a shorter stroke.

 

[Bob Core]

Arghh!!!

I'd like to save face by pointing out that the "#0" was a typo as I meant to type "#02" (true), but THAT was wrong too.

Maybe I should explain myself before I really get embarrassed - this stuff happened way before my time. As a point of reference, I was exactly one month old to the day when that picture of Rex White's '62 Chevy was taken, after he won the Atlanta race.

I'm a big racing fan and love old Chevies, so the place where the two worlds meet is NASCAR, NHRA, etc. when these cars were new AND they actually raced production cars. So I should be careful being too confident with some of my facts.

My mission is to collect and share as much info as possible about the cars and the tech that went into them. The best way to do that, I've learned, is to find folks who really were cognizant of the racing scene at the time and get them stirred up and talking about it. No detail is too trivial for me. Since I'll be on the recieving end way more than the giving end of the info exchange, I can only say -
Thanks!

Here's a shot of one of the Smokey Yunick-prepared Impalas.

 

[MK IISS]

Bob: Thank you for the picture of Smokey's '65 Impala. I believe the car is being driven by James "Bunkey" Blackburn who passed away in February of this year. I too love old NASCAR history but Tommy is the expert here.

 

[SS425HP]

Richard, you are not far behind.

 

[MK IISS]

Thanks Fred but Tommy's knowledge comes from actually being there. Mine just comes from a book.