{"id":6751,"date":"2014-07-10T14:41:57","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T21:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=6751"},"modified":"2015-11-11T10:09:50","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T18:09:50","slug":"gunners-classic-corner-door-slammers-the-original-1960-pontiac-hot-chief-ii-poncho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/gunners-classic-corner-door-slammers-the-original-1960-pontiac-hot-chief-ii-poncho\/","title":{"rendered":"[Gunner’s Classic Corner] Door Slammers: The Original 1960 Pontiac Hot Chief II Poncho"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hot<\/a>
Hot Chief No. 2 was raced by Royal\u2019s performance salesman Dick Jess<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to Milt Schornack, it was in 1959 that Pontiac dealer Ace Wilson approached the GM division in hopes of turning his Royal Oaks, Mich., franchise into the company\u2019s high-performance headquarters. Pontiac Motor Div. (PMD) was all for the idea and Milt was the guy who did a lot of the performance tuning.<\/p>\n

With Royal Pontiac established as PMD\u2019s hi-po outlet, Wilson had Schornack build a Tri-Power \u201959 Poncho called the Hot Chief that put out 345 hp on the drag strip. In his book Milt Schornack and the Royal Bobcat GTOS<\/i> (co-authored by Keith J. MacDonald), Schornack says, \u201cThe Hot Chief traveled to Florida in February 1960 and by the time the Royal Racing Team left the Winter Nationals, the Daytona Beach dragstrip was but a smoking hole in the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following year a pair of race-prepped 1960 Catalinas went to bat for Royal Pontiac. Jim Wangers drove the red Hot Chief No. 1, which had a 389-cid 368-hp Super-Duty V-8 and a four-speed manual transmission. He cleaned house at the NHRA Nationals in the Detroit area taking both class and Top Eliminator titles with a 102.04 mph 114.14 sec. run. The Hot Chief No. 2 was a white 363-hp Royal-tuned Super Duty Catalina with automatic transmission.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis car is the only known surviving 1960 Super-Duty that was raced by Royal Pontiac,\u201d says the white car\u2019s current owner Bob Knudsen, Jr., of American Falls, Idaho. \u201cThe red car was probably crashed or crushed\u2014no one really knows.\u201d Dick Jesse piloted the white car and made it to the final run in the automatic class before Al \u201cLawman\u201d Eckstrand beat him with a \u201960 Plymouth.<\/p>\n

Bob Knudsen, Jr.- who collects Royal Pontiac race cars, Super-Duty cars in general and \u201cSwiss Cheese\u201d (drilled frame) cars in particular-says he likes the Pontiacs because they were winners. \u201cIts simple, \u201c he said. \u201cWhen I was a kid I loved drag racing in my \u201959 Bonneville. I\u2019d go to Pocatello Dragway all the time, but I always came in second and never won a trophy. My buddy had a \u201959 Super-Duty and always beat me.\u201d Today, Knudsen\u2019s race car collection is hard to beat.<\/p>\n

Hot Chief No. 2 was ultimately purchased by Ed Shafer, the Governor of North Dakota. In 1990, he had a frame off restoration completed by Chuck Simpson in\u00a0 South Carolina. It went from there to a Pontiac club (www.poci.org<\/a>) convention in the Chicago area where Knudsen saw it. \u201cI remember he loaded it on the trailer and I looked up and saw it and told myself I loved that car,\u201d says Knudsen. Then it wound up in Floyd Garrett\u2019s muscle car museum in Tennessee.\u00a0 He ended up selling it to another collector and Knudsen traded a 1962 Chevy 409 Bel Air Z11 car with an aluminum front end for the Poncho.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that right here you are looking at the only original 1960 Super-Duty around,\u201d Knudsen told Racing Junk<\/i>. \u201cIt has the right Super-Duty intake, the right heads, the right exhaust and everything else. It has the right tank, the right crank and the right cam and the rest of the parts like the special air cleaner with the oblong holes that came in the trunk of Royal Super-Duty cars. The package was sold only as a dealer option, so only a few were delivered and right here is the only original one I know of to be around.\u201d Knudsen has only exhibited the car a couple of times. \u201cI think it\u2019s been shown twice at the POCI shows,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n