Notes on the Quarter Million Quarter Mile

[markjohnson]

Another interesting note: If you've ever seen the movie "American Gangster" with Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe, the character that Denzel plays, Frank Lucas, was a drug lord in New York. It's been reported that he had a Joel Rosen-built Motion 427 car. I wanna say a Camaro, but I don't remember. He said it was so fast, it scared the crap out of him and he gave it to one of his relatives. Would love to know more about it. Anyone?

[cammer427]

That's pretty interesting. I'd sure like to know more about that too!

[cammer427]

Here are some scans lowmile sent me out of his May '87 issue of Muscle Cars which also published (as well as Cars magazine) DeFeo's story!











(courtesy of lowmile)

For those unfamiliar with ImageShack, the thumbnails above will bring you to the image which I uploaded to ImageShack (a file hosting service). When you get to ImageShack, click on the image again to see it at full size.

[flyingn]

I remember reading that article in Cars when it came out and it too was one of my favs. Defeo was a great writer

[markjohnson]

Agreed! Tony Defeo was a great writer. I was a big fan of his writing for a long time. He was hard core.

[cammer427]

Another inconsistency seems to be if Jake King really did "tune" the Mutt Bros S&K Hemi Dart for the big race.

In the Quarter Million Quarter Mile story, Bobby says they had Jake King tune the Hemi. At the end of the story, DeFeo also mentions Ronnie Sox himself admitting to it: "(I also called) Ronnie Sox and he confirmed the connection as he remembered doing some subcontract work for the Mutt Brothers for that race."

Eugene Coard (one of the Mutt Bros), on the other hand, states on RonaldLyles.com that "there were rumors going around that the Dart was tuned a few times by Jake king from the Sox and Martin shop, that is not true the car was never out of Brooklyn. The way the car came from S&K that the ways we race that car just plugs valve and clutch adjustment."

So Ronnie Sox himself remembers contracting Jake King to tune their car specifically for that race, while Eugene Coard says it was just a rumor. Somewhere along the line is a little bit of . I wonder if anyone will ever know what really happened?

[cammer427]

I was talking to Tony DeFeo on another site about the story and he cleared up a few details. They published the article with some of the names of people/groups changed (i.e: "Mudd Brothers", etc.) as a liability concern. "Bobby" in the story was actually Barry Pittard, who was friends with the Mutt Brothers and Tab Talmadge. That's all I could really get out of him.

[442w30]

Do you really think anything written in Cars Illustrated was done without a wink of one's eye?

Sometimes the legend is larger than the truth.

[Kim_Howie]

Shawn, The 69 camaro was not sold to the Big John with a alum 427. Just a cast iron motor. Glenn Powell delivered the car to Big John. Ask him he is a member here. He has a picture of him and the car on the truck when is was getting ready to take the trip.

[Kim_Howie]

The 69 never rec. an alum. motor from Dick Harrell. The car was sold with the Iron motor to Big John. The car was a junk yard dog to start with, just pulled out of junk yard and built. According to Glenn.