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Hirschfeld - old time rally pics ...

72K views 119 replies 38 participants last post by  Lou Smarbles 
#1 ·
I was poking around for some pics of weird Yank rally cars for another thread (http://www.specialstage.com/forums/showthread.php?p=201337#post201337)
and ran across this site - http://dan.hirschfeld.googlepages.com/motorsportstuff

Go there and you'll find Dan has some pics from the 1979 NARRA 20 Stages Rally in Michigan - http://dan.hirschfeld.googlepages.com/someselectedpicturesfromthe1979narra20stagesrally

I've posted him an invite here but in doing so it dawned on me that THIS MONTH I celebrate 35 years of rallying! Yup, thirty-five years ago this month I embarked on my first rally contest, a benefit gimmick rally ("Who is the tree surgeon?" Answer was a rusty Dr. Pepper sign nailed to a dead oak tree.) in San Angelo, Texas! Talk about afflictions ... :eek:
 
#78 ·
It's still at my father's place in California - sans engine. The engine was "donated" to a replica of the 1968 Shell 4000 winning Barracuda. Look up Ralph Beckman's version to get an idea. Dad's is not prepared to anywhere near that level - but it is still a pretty nice slice of history.

I was offered the car a few years ago. "Come and get it, if you want it". Unfortunately, I had neither the time or cash to put toward such a trip. Would be nice to get it restored to its former glory though. I have too many other projects though. So that one doesn't even make the list.
 
#82 ·
The red, white and blue Z-28 was John Townsends. It was a shell of a 67 or 68 and dropped on a cage that he designed and had the Wonder Muffler guy do the tube bending. The rear end was his design from a dirt car specks. It had something like 22" of travel. The engine was a short block 350 right out of the crate. He tweeked the motor according to Smokey Yunick's book on engines. It was quite light as it had no glass except the windshield. All the rest was plastic. The side windows were on draw strings to save weight.
The first time he rang out the motor was at a rally-cross type thing at a gravel pit in Jan. When we were heading back to town and getting on I-94 he said lets see what it will do and promptly blew-up the clutch on the entrance ramp. He drove the thing the 40 miles home to the shop in Taylor, MI in traffic with no clutch.
The car was very fast BUT had little or no bite out of the start line. He tried the wide BFG's and hanging one off the rear and then the skinny Sportmasters to no avail. John designed a Porsche type "whale tail" like the Le Mans cars. His calculations were an extra 2000lbs at 55mph. I don't think it ever got built.

Here it is at the Allegro Rally

 
#84 · (Edited)
I would have loved to have heard that puppy thunder through the woods. While looking at the pics I also saw the yellow Cutlass. I have a neighbor with one of those that has just been sitting there for years. Drop a GNX turbo 3.8 in it and...ok I gotta stop.

A museum would be cool, even if it was just a virtual one for now.
 
#92 ·
Open and stock were the two groups. I think it was the third event he entered and there were rumors that it had a truck frame. That got shot down by having someone crawl under the front end. John would push the edges sometimes but I don't recall he ever was set down for anything. I think the item that worried him the most was his rear sup. design. If you looked in the car it had one of those blue tarps tied down over it.
Other than lack of traction the other problem was the power steering belt coming off. Then it was a REAL handful. The car ranks up there with all the cars I have driven. It takes a second to Walkers yellow Volvo for sheer thrill to drive.
 
#95 ·
First P car we were next to showed up at POR. A couple from California in a Colt (?). We dubbed them B-o-o-b-s (did you know there is a "bad" word censor here ? - Grimshaw never would have made it) and Bones for obvious reasons. P rules were so strict at the time that you had to run OEM everything - down to the oil filter. We thought that was the dumbest thing to come out of SCCA.

Boy were we wrong.....

press on,
 
#106 ·
VW usually molds or casts the part number or at least a VW in almost every part they use. I still defy anyone to find a VW emblem or VW part number anywhere on the Vilemure's Beetle with the exception of the transmission case.
For the non-greybeards, it was basically a Baja car ( Class 11?) with a replica Beetle body on top.
Bruno ran a 911-powered Beetle before the 911 and then to an A2 Quattro.
 
#107 ·
Speaking of run what you brung... Their were 2 borthers from Marquette that owned a skating rink that had a shortened and modified olds toronado.. If I remember the exhaust was out of the hood and over the roof ??? lol

Sadly they were killed rollerskating across the us in texas I think... Dan and ___ ???

 
#115 ·
I've pretty much ignored this forum until Mad Mike revived it a couple of weeks ago. Since its reawakening the great contributions have continued to be posted.

Just to remind folks, I snapped the photos with my little Kodak Pocket Instamatic camera that Mike initially based this thread on.

After reviewing all of the posts since this thread's beginning I notice an early comment I made now seems rather pretentious. That comment stated something to the effect of my not being able to contribute much about the current rally scene but being able to "fill in the blanks" about the pictures I took.

After reading the posts on this thread quite the opposite is true. You folks have filled in a lot of blanks for me. I thought I was fairly plugged in to the rally scene of the mid to late `70s but I've gotten insights from this thread about people and events of the period I had no idea of. Very, very good stuff!

One other thing I've noticed is the idea that many contributors to this thread have expressed interest in the relatively large V-8 powered cars in a number of the pics. While taking nothing away from my admiration of the smaller, more traditional rally cars of the time I also got a kick out of seeing the "big iron" cars being slogged around.

The sound of tweaked-up four cylinder engines screaming around the hills of southern Ohio was stirring and incomparable to me, but as a guy who's formative years were spent around souped-up V-8 street cars and Super Modifieds being thrown around our local short track bullring I must admit having had a soft spot for the big rides. (That made John Buffum's old Triumph TR8 that much cooler to me. It was a small car but with its -- albeit small displacement -- V-8 it sounded like a fugitive from an oval track.)

Thanks to Mad Mike for bringing this thread back to life yet another time!
 
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