Who could forget? The thread about Jimmy Addison for some reason brought him to mind, or more specifically, his Hemi 'cuda. We were on vacation and I ran across him at a car show in Florida after the Big Race and he had brought the 'cuda. He had just painted a Moulin Rouge car black, IIRC. I have (had) pics of the car but Lord knows where they are.
My question(s) are was it a real Hemi car and does anyone know what became of it?
I do remember he wasn't very talkative after I asked where the GTX was.


Tim

I felt kinda sorry for Badie. I was racing a Buick then and was a member of the GSCA. Lassiter snookered him good. His car was nowhere near "stock" as he claimed.

Lasseter never claimed it was stock, as evidenced by the magazine write-up at the time.

Here's Badie more recently:

https://www.motortrend.com/news/hemi-killer-buick-gs-vs-gtx/

I have seen the GTX recently, belongs to a major collector in Illinois. I still laugh at the write-up, nobody I knew was "shocked", we all knew the Buick was a ringer with a better driver, and relatively stock street hemi's don't run well anyway. They should have switched cars and driven each other's on the final run...

Who could forget? The GTX wasn't stock, either, BUT Stage 1s were something special and Lassiter had his dialed in and had something like 15 years experience racing THAT car. I'm with Rhino, nobody I knew was surprised...

That's cool to know the GTX is still around.

So, is anyone familiar with the 'cuda? Real Hemi car? Still around? Restored maybe?


Tim

I just read that article a few days ago. I was born in 81, but a family friend gave me lots of old issues. I have the " annual" issue with the best stories of the year and it is one of them. Small world

Back from the dead.

Does anyone know if his 'cuda was a real Hemi car or not and what became of it?


Tim

In a video of Nick Garage- Nick mentions decades ago he took his stock restored Hemi B body to a race shootout that was supposed to be truly stock cars. He said a Buick in the competition ran deep in the 12s and so Nick put his Mopar back on the trailer and left. Seems it was obvious there was some mods to at least that car.

When I was in the GSCA after a Buick lost to a (I believe) Landy prepared Hemi car, they sent out a "prep sheet" of everything you were supposed to do to your GS to compete in "Stock" events. It was a full page of things like steel shim head gaskets, carb, cheater cam, etc..

I never took that whole deal as being gospel from either side. I street raced a hemi bee and a six pack runner in the early 80-s and there were cars to watch out for. One being the GS-1s and likes of the W30 olds and some of the higher end pontiacs and one to always never under estimate was a 340 a body car tuned right. And of course the sneaky 427 tri power chevy cars but they were sorta rare. The fords in my area just sucked all the time.

Many times some cars ran better then others with all being the same and that was no different then the 5.0 stangs or even the grand nationals. One of my Grand Nationals off the lot was just faster then any others I raced when all were stock, same with the 5.0s. But the GN was a two car length winner over another stock gn day in day out night after night before mods.

And that was also the case with the older cars. Later in life I learned some factory motors were just built with a lil more care then others. Like on the blocks and pan rails the letters for the bit sized different pistons... some that were marked c got a d and so on. Some I knew before looking by how scored the skirts were that the assembler did not care. Rods with flash from the machining process torqued with a thousands gap on the end of the cap. We all know why people "bluprinted" factory motors and some ran very well with just that. We all have seen some blocks that would never make a good performance build due to extreme core [censored] all over. Bottom edges for the deck a thousands high because they skipped the small bevel cut. Cam bearing oil feeds 80% off. Lifter valley core shift so bad it amazing a stock cam lived and one with high lift would never fly, ect.

But it was good magazine hype but I thought most who street raced knew it was all over hyped... like a form of old school clickbait was on every cover. I bought it, read it and thought it was simply good entertainment.

I do find it sorta sad and bothersome some of the BS the mags pulled just to sell a copy.

People get upset when you run fast.

We go to a little Nostalgia race every year. We teched in the night before for the Superstock class. The next day the promotor of the event said people had seen the car run elsewhere and was complaining it was "too fast". Nevermind we are all steel, all glass and not even a hood scoop anymore! I like him and I like the event so I agreed to be put in Gas Coupe Sedan. (it's just for a $20 trophy!)

That's okay, we went ahead and won Gas Coupe Sedan that year and another taking down BBC's with blowers, etc.

I recall about 20 years ago that drag race was being discussed. A member here on Moparts said the heavy hitters all ran about the same- Stage 1 455 and the Hemi specifically. But if you installed $500 worth of go fast goodies to each car (Were taking 1970- $500 was alot) the hemi revealed its advantage with those High flowing heads.Same with the 454 and its canted valve hi flow heads.