Quote: How close was she to original?? You can tell a few cosmetic changes and by the ET's you can tell theres been some drivetrain changes???
Chris,
The Missile was fairly original from the pedal box rearward. It seems that sometime in the 70's the car was damaged in a racing incident whereby the front of the car took a substantial hit. It sat in storage for about a year until Ben purchased it. In order to fix the car, the front clip was removed and replaced with what is presently on the car. There is a slight wheelbase difference (now shorter than the 108" wb normally found on the A body) and the suspension and K member are much different. It also looked like the engine had been repositioned slightly rearward - possibly due to the shortened wheelbase. The nose of the car was not narrowed or dropped like we had done and the car had been updated to '75 or '76 model year - I think. The removable firewall was replaced by a welded in piece.
From there back, most of the chassis was intact. Ben had added a number of tubes under the existing chassis to strengthen the chassis and to make it legal for current rules. The roll cage was also updated but most of the original bars were intact. Ben mentioned that he had the original bars checked and they were in excellent shape and actually exceeded current NHRA thickness guidelines! The rear suspension was still intact and the only modification there was a diagional track bar replacing our original parallel track bar. A fuel cell now resides where our original tank originally was mounted.
The gold and orange and yellow in the paint scheme are as good as I can recall.
The best thing that I observed is that should Ben wish to restore the car to it's 1973 livery, it would be relatively straightforward. All it would take is some cash and plenty of work. The car is pretty much intact and I believe in doing the modifications that he did, Ben made an effort to preserve as much of the original car as possible.
