Top Banana

Ratman ......check your photo collection and see if you have any photos of the IROC Camaros that we had back then. Mark Donohue, the Indy 500 winner had some Camaros made up for us, just like they used in the IROC series for the street. Aronow and I had silver ones and Magoon had a red one with a turbocharger. Another of Don's friends had a yellow one that ended up with Byng Goode.

They had front and rear spoilers and blowout straps on the rear window. They all had Mini Lite wheels with bigger tires on the back than the front.

glassdave

iTrader: (1)

holy cow is that cool. so you guys had IROC Camaros long before they were production cars. Man somebody's gotta find a pic of those

is there any chance any of them survived and are tucked away smewhere?

Top Banana

Dave, there is a small shot of mine at the Banana Boat factory. If you click on the website and look under the section titled ....factory...scroll down past the Cigarette factory and you will get into the Banana factory shots. Three photos up from the end of that is the photo of me backing out of the shop. You can see my backup,lights on. The car was silver, if you enlarge the photo you can see on the left side of the license plate was a yellow banana inside a circle. On the right side, harder to see was the number 6 inside a cirlce. 6 was the racing number I used most of my racing life. Don had a 1 on the back of his, naturally. In the photo you can see the straps on the rear window and the spoiler on the rear.

If have some other photos somewhere I will try to dig out, but this can give you some idea of what they looked like. Mark Donahue had a company called Race Mark and they did all the prep work for Roger Penske who had the IROC series concept that he sold to the racing bodies.

Originally they used Porsche 911's but wanted to use American cars and switched to Camaros. The front of th car had a cold air duct that replaced a turn signal lamp and went right to the carburetor. 4 speed trans, disc brakes, and the seats were an early version of what now would be a Recaro type seat.

glassdave

iTrader: (1)

your pretty high on my list of people I'm gonna visit in the 70's when they invent the time machine . . . .

Top Banana

LOL......glad to have you aboard. Now we end the 70's on a high note....

March, 1979 new design boat and we win the Bushmills Open class, 1st overall. John Wayne comes down to congratulate us from his dock as we return from the race.
April, 1979 Back to California and we place first overall diesel power in the Cannonball outlaw race.
Cannonball competitors are invited to take a Parade Lap at the Long Beach Formula 1 Grand Prix and we attend the drivers party the night before.
Just think .....the promoters of the Grand Prix think that all of these people who just broke every traffic law while crossing the country.....are now going to take one easy parade lap and come in quietly. After about five laps, they blocked the track and forced us off.

Almost forgot about the meeting with Betty Cook and Howard Arneson as we tried to establish a drivers safety group, that would respond to rescue a boat that sinks on the course.

Just three months before, we raced in Argentina and Bill Elswick's boat sank and they climbed in a life raft....they were finally rescued by a freighter at dusk.

How we doing so far?

Pat Ousborne

I stored my red Pachanga there 1997-98 and the performance boats in there were awesome. They even sold 100 octane fuel! I remember the old guy who owned the place, Norval, had a red 47' Fountain "The Dealer" with triples and an exotic car collection of about 30 to die for. I often enjoyed watching the launch ramp across the canal on Sunday nights for fun. Exciting times they were!

tommymonza

Great Stuff as always Charlie.

So what was your diesel entry?

Any good cannonball stories from on the road?

Top Banana

Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread. New Mercedes 300SD Turbo diesel with a fuel cell in the trunk.

Sure plenty of stories, but I will let the thread get back to cooler things like Ratman's photos.

Ratman. Don usually had that Camaro parked in front of his office at Cigarette, that is why I asked if you had any photos that might show it. He liked the car so much it became his daily driver for much of the time he ran Cigarette. Later he got a triple black Porsche 911 turbo.

glassdave

iTrader: (1)

cool stuff Charlie, i wouldnt worry about a highjack heck thats what these threads are for.



I did some work to the iconic Don photo and converted it to a single color monochrome. As for now it just hangs in my office but hope to use it in a graphic on a Cig or something someday, maybe ghosted on a hatch or ???. Came out pretty cool, I'm sure somebody will have a use for it

Ratman72

Charlie come on, your stories are always brilliant and I love reading them. I was just a young kid when all this was going on, and I was living in a different country, you on the other hand were a major part of the history of the sport, both building and racing boats. If guys like you hadn't lived the life you did, there wouldn't be an OSO......!!!

I can only dream of what a fantastic time it must have been to be such a significant part of!

The scene in the UK was absolutely brilliant but everyone looked up to what was happening in the US and totally loved it when boats from the US came over to compete, it was never the same when that stopped happening. People like Tom Gentry, Betty Cook, Richie Powers, Billy Martin came over and made it super special.

It was brilliant to get Bobby Saccenti over last year and I do recal you saying that you'd come one year......so we may need to hold you to that, you are always welcome!

I'll take a look through the photos but I don't think I have anything of the Camaros.

Please keep the stories coming Charlie! Oh yeh, what's the latest update on your Cary? Perhaps you could bring that with you when you come over please!!!! Poole has been elected to host European Maritime day in 2017, I know some guys trying to orginise some powerboat racing for the event, it would be amazing to get some of you guys over.......