RAIV and RAV more continuation....

[DarrenX33]

Damn pack rat. Dig out some more!!!

[Steve_Hoog]

At least you didn't call Mr.70 a sausage.

[DarrenX33]

I think Belair has that copyrighted.

[Steve_Hoog]

I meant post this yesterday instead of the double post of the pic before.



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[olredalert]

Steved,

-------Love these assembly line pics. I keep thinking the next one will have my 64 Grand Prix 421HO/4speed in it. Im keeping my fingers crossed!!!!...........Bill S

[Steve_Hoog]

Sorry, I was swamped today and didn't get time to do more. I don't have many more pics with the cars in them, and too bad they aren't as good a the color pic posted with the Monte's.



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[Belair62]

Too cool...8 lugger comin down the line !

[GOAT72]

Steve,
I spoke with Milt Schornack at length about the RAV last night. He was stuck @ home with the flu, so he was a captive audience.

Here what I gathered, and this is MY opinion and not necessarily Milt's.
Also remember that this is from Milt's memory - nothing recorded from the factory - and my OWN interpretations.

There were a number of RAV/tunnel port rams built in early 1969. Milt believes the numbers were in the dozens. However, because the project was cancelled, Milt relayed that he was involved in the actual scrapping of tunnel port ram heads and intakes -- into a Royal Pontiac dumpster!!!

Now, Mr. Wangers has "made reference to"- but has not readily admitted to any RAV cars going over to Knafel, (this fact is from you, not him) and I think he knows the answer to this, but why would he keep it a secret?

Schornack claims that because Bill Knafel was close friends with DeLorean that it is probably more than likely that Knafel got his mitts on several (if not more) RAV engines and components, however, Milt adamently denies that Knafel could have received a factory RAV car. If Wangers and Schornack couldn't get a hold of a factory RAV car, how could Knafel?

Friends or not, (DeLorean/Knafel) I would be willing to bet my "left one" that Wangers had just as much "pull" with Johnny D. as Knafel did when I came to getting cars out of engineering.

In fact, you will see that Wangers pulled a TON of cars off the line @ PMD in the 6-7 years that I cover in my Schornack/Royal book.

Today I plan to give Dave Warren a ring again. While Dave will be just another opinion from Royal Pontiac, I think he will have an opinion and some memories of this as well.

I already have a major surprise in the book about the RAV test cars, and I hope to find more. But since the book is about Schornack and Royal, I don't plan to delve into that whole Knafel scene - save for the 1/4-mile strip competition between Knafel and Royal.
(They were the automotive equivalent of Sox vs. Yanks!)

But I do plan to publish opinions from the Royal side concerning the RAV.
I met Jim Wangers in Pontiac this past summer and he was very nice to me, however I doubt he would help me out with any info concerning RAV lore, as this is a Schornack tome, and unfortunately the two men have not exactly been "buddies" for the past 35 years.

Steve, I applaud your continued persistence and resolve in finding the truth about RAV cars, and while I hope someday you'll prove everybody wrong, for now I'm staying with the standard belief that only the engines got out of PMD.

.... can you imagine throwing away RAV intakes and heads??????


Mac

[Belair62]

Personally I would think that Knafel got as much or more from Pontiac since they were both racing Dealers...especially if he was buds with John D...JMO...

[Steve_Hoog]

I know without a doubt Mr. Wangers was right in the middle of all that went down, and that he knows much more about several things than he has told to date. Publicly anyway.

There will probably never be paper documentation on the two Knafel cars in question, either if the went to engineering or what happened there.

But you never know.

I would very much like for Mr. Schorr to expound on his accounting of Milford, I sure hope some one that has access to him will point some questions about it. I would think his remarks on Milford have some profound implications.

At least people are thinking and looking now, right?

Steve