rules and then disappeared to quietly prepare their machine. The Pontiac people notified us that their car would be equipped with the special Royal Bobcat conversion which includes special carburetor jetting, thinner head gaskets, blocked heat risers and advanced ignition timing. This left us somewhat less than ecstatic because the Royal kit is available only through a single Royal Oak, Michigan dealer and can therefore hardly be described as universally available. However, Pontiac was perfectly candid about the alterations which did involve stock parts and could be made by any GTO owner in his own garage, so we decided to let them run. We heard nothing from Buick, other than a letter acknowledging that they would participate and matter of -factly-stating that their car would conform to the rules. The alarming news came from the south. We heard that Holman and Moody, the world-famous stock car and drag. racing car builders were 11 preparing" the Fairlane GT/A and checked with Ford for confirmation. "Yes," said a jaunty voice, "but only because the Fairlane is being built in our Atlanta, Georgia plant and we want Holman and his boys to cheek it over to be sure all the nuts and bolts are tight before we send it north." This was followed by a throaty chuckle and we knew the fun had started.

  A few days later Lincoln-Mercury told us that Bud Moore, the Spartanburg, South Carolina stock car wizard, was setting up their Comet Cyclone GT. Thanks to a rather effective underground, we were aware of the fact that Moore was doing considerably more to the Comet than "tightening nuts and bolts," but all we could do was keep our fingers crossed until the car arrived.
ON THE STRIP

 You don't flirt with winter in the northeastern United States, and we were therefore genuinely concerned that we get the Bridgehampton evaluations completed before eastern Long Island was enveloped in the fog and rain that precedes the snow. We had set aside one day for technical inspections and drag strip runs and two more for the road circuit trials. As it turned out this was not sufficient, but everything got underway on a bright, if somewhat chilly day at Westhampton. The CID staff arrived at the strip with several cars, including the SS 396 Chevelle that was Chevrolet's entry. We had picked the car up in Detroit a week earlier and, after a 688-mile trip to New York and regular duty in traffic, were absolutely assured of its stock condition. Several others inspired less confidence. The GTO, decked out in an eye-popping coat of "tiger gold" metallic paint, was pulled from Detroit to New York via tow bar behind an identical stand-by machine. A third car in the Pontiac entourage was pulling a trailer full of spare parts. But it was on the way to the strip that we encountered the most startling sight. There it was, parked in front of a motel-a gigantic red transporter bearing South Carolina license plates, with a shiny red Comet Cyclone GT chained down on the
   ramps that were normally occupied by one of Bud Moore's famous NASCAR Grand National Stock cars. We didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

  We arrived at the drag strip to find that the Oldsmobile 4-4-2, the Fairlane GT/A and the Buick Skylark had been driven out in normal fashion and we immediately commenced the timed runs. Because stock car drag racing technique is highly specialized and, we might add, not particularly related to what one normally considers either street or circuit driving-Masten Gregory was not involved in the Westhampton tests. He spent the day at Bridgehampton, learning the course (which he had never run before) while others more adept at the rev 'em up, slambang business of dragging took his place. It had been agreed beforehand that representatives from each car would drive with times being recorded without regard to who was driving. While the runs were going on, each car was systematically pulled out of action and run through technical inspection by the Hurst group. This involved, as we mentioned, displacement and compression cheeks, weighing and a visual examination of the engine, drive-line and suspension components. In the meantime, the Comet had arrived in the company of none other than ol' Bud Moore himself, and he and his crew set about unloading the machine and taking it for a few shakedown cruises on the slightly bumpy Westhampton quarter-mile.

  Both the Comet and Fairlane sounded fierce. Their mufflers had been unbaffied to reduce back pressure-though the Holman and Moody mechanic who had driven the GT/A north on one hand, and Moore on the other, both firmly maintained that the exhausts were dead stock. It was apparent from the start that considerably more than routine bolt-tightening had been done to these automobiles. For openers, they sat approximately 11/2 inches lower than showroom versions which we had examined prior to the test-due primarily to some clever work with the spacers that separate the rear leaf springs from the axle housing. It appeared that both machines had also received considerable attention to their front and rear shock absorbers and springs, though Holman Moody and Moore are both such acknowledged experts in the area of "super-tuning" stock cars that challenging them on specific points was absurd.

  Meanwhile, the Chevelle and the Oldsmobile were showing signs of being underprepared. Several of the Hurst crew made runs with each car and returned to complain about the way they ran. A cheek of the works indicated that the Chevelle needed its valves adjusted and the Oldsmobile had a spark plug lead that needed replacement. At the same time the two engineers who had brought the Skylark Gran Sport were standing around looking a bit baffled by the entire drag strip procedure so both the CID and Hurst staffers pitched in to make sure the Buick got a representative number of runs.

 Within an hour of running, the pattern of the test became apparent; we had three stock

CONTINUED
 
CAR and DRIVER   MARCH 1966
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