The Royal Switch
Woodward Avenue was Motor City’s Mecca of street racing activity. This famous thoroughfare stretched, four lanes per side, from about The Totem Pole on the south to Ted's Drive Inn on the north end, where most of the street racing emanated. In between, regulars will remember such hang outs as Paul's and Maverick's, complete with carhops and speaker boxes to order hamburgers and fries.
Wangers worked for PMD's ad agency, named MacManus, John, and Adams, then. (Now, it's called DMB & B for D'Arcy, MacManus, Benton and Bowles.) He was also a famous drag racer and street racer, and originally proposed the GTO concept, but that is another story. Royal was more than a dealership. It was a creation of PMD where cars were modified to amaze the magazine testers, but that also is another story. Royal was out to win on Woodward. Beating other cars meant a lot to their image.
In the fall of 1967 Pontiac introduced their new GTO. The disappointment was no more Tri-Power. In reality, GM’s famous Quadrajet could flow as much air, but it lacked the image of three deuces. As a result, one of Royal's well to do customers and street racers decided to swap his '66 Goat for a new street Hemi instead of going with the new '67 Pontiac muscle machine.
"The days of the GTO are over", he proclaimed.
One day he shows up at Royal's hangout (where street racers and drag racers met) with a new '67 GTX with the dual quad 426 Hemi engine, ready to take on a Royal Bobcat '67 GTO 400. A night was set up to meet at Ted's.
Wangers and the Royal boys knew their automatic 400 Bobcat could take the Street Hemi. There was no need to get out the stick Goat.
The match muscle cars met at Ted's, and for the really big races like this one, and headed out to the freeway interchange of I75 and M59. There, more than 200 people lined both sides of the road to watch the face-off. (Imagine such a scene today.)
The Hemi was the underdog due to Royal's reputation, and everybody liked to see the underdog win. Wangers wasn't driving this night. Behind the wheel was a Royal Pontiac team member who was young and a little too aggressive. He dusted off the black Hemi GTX by a couple cars lengths, but on the way to the turnaround two miles up the road, he started "punching" (Wangers words) with a well tuned, bright yellow '66 Corvette.
Finally, there is a face off from about a 40 MPH run, with the Vette shutting down the Royal Bobcat. Back at Ted's, the Vette driver is enjoying the excitement from blowing off a Royal car. Wangers is pretty upset because the Hemi win is all but forgotten, and the Vette owner is crowing, "I was toying with you guys. I can blow that piece of XXXX Royal Bobcat car away anytime I want to." To top it off, the Vette guy wouldn't let anybody look under his hood.
"That's for me to know and you to find out", he would boast.
Wangers and the guys at Royal were sitting around the next day bench racing. They decided the Vette owner had to be taught a lesson. Based on the way he had pulled the AT car, they figured it wouldn't be much of a problem for their stick shift Goat to blow away the '66 Vette.
Their plan was simple. They knew of a Royal mechanic who lived close to Ted's, so they planted the stick Goat in his garage. Then, they baited the wise-guy Vette owner to show up at Ted's for a rematch. His head was even bigger the next week. He gladly agreed to rerun 'em, but said it would take $200 for him to fire up his Vette.
Wangers agreed, although it was a strict Royal policy not to run for money. He just couldn’t afford for the owner not to race.
The cars showed up just as before, but when they headed out to I75 and M59, a 5 mile drive, the automatic Goat sneaked off to the nearby garage for the quick and evil swap. Nobody noticed the change because night had fallen and the cars were cosmetic twins. In the interim, the street racers from Royal spread the word among the crowd that their Goat had lost due to a loose rocker arm adjustment. The setup was complete.
Word spread through the underground network of a really serious race, and this time, M59 was lined with more than 500 of the curious. The Goat versus Street Hemi run was small by comparison. The stick car, with 3.90:1 Saf-T-Track gears, was a 12.70 runner at the strip at about 113 MPH, which is what really counts on the street MPH. The AT Poncho had been a 108.5 to 109 MPH car at 13 flat.
Here's how Wangers recollects the run: "We lined up with this guy and of course, we had a little better launch with the stick shift car compared to the GTO with the automatic. We had the traction down pretty well for the street. We came out pretty even with the Vette, and sure enough, when the Goat got into 2nd, it began to pull away a little bit. And when it got into 3rd, it actually pulled about a car and a half of daylight on him and continued building a lead on through 4th. By the time the run was over, it probably had about two and a half cars on the Corvette.”
On the way back to Ted's, the Royal driver didn't test any other cars this time. He made the switch back to the automatic Goat and pulled into Ted's where the waiting crowd was none the wiser. Nobody had detected the three shifts into 2nd, 3rd, and 4th from the 4speed, which was supposed to be a 3speed THM.
Three months later, the pair of white 1967 GTOs were featured in a "Motor Trend" magazine article, and then the hoots began about a possible switch. Naturally, it was denied playfully by the guys at Royal.
Did Royal take the $200? That was the best part of the whole evening. They turned it down and told the once mouthy Vette owner to invest the bucks in some more speed equipment for his car so he could run with Royal some day.