Quote: Joe, When looking at the pictures of the Missle with the data collector, wheel speed sensors, airflow evaluation (strings), etc.. did the competition know the degree of testing that was going on and do you know if the competition was also testing to the same degree. When I first saw the pictures a year or two ago, I was in awe at the amount of information being gathered for the era.
Bill
Bill,
I am sure the competition knew full well that the Missile car was the factory test car from Chrysler. There was never any doubt about that. At a great number of the races we attended we were joined by Tom Hoover, Tom Coddington, Al Adam, Ron Killen, and John Baumann. It didn't take much to put two and two together... In the PS community, the secrets were few and far between - but we all managed to keep a few things close to the vest.
The Ford and GM teams all worked very hard to find an edge just like us but I think that their drag race programs were not as sophisticated, staffed, funded, or organized as was the Chrysler program.
That does not mean they did not exist, rather they existed on a different level. I know for a fact that Ford did wind tunnel testing at the Dearborn wind tunnels for the race teams back in the 60's and 70's. I had friends working there. The cars came in on the night shifts so as not to disrupt normal production development work. Also, I used to sit with a friend of mine from Dearborn on top of some schoolyard playground equipment at the elementary school located a the corner of Oakwood and Rotunda in Dearborn watching drag cars and road race cars go through their paces on the Dearborn Test Track.
Chrysler did limited wind tunnel work - mostly with NASCAR teams at Lockheed in GA and you saw how we did the poor man's version with our yarn tufts and documented our tests through photos. We later analyzed the photos and decisions as to the effectiveness of a change would be made.
