Here is Mickey with Challenger...
Here is Mickey with Challenger I in 1959. Note this is before the superchargers were added to the Pontiac engines, as evidenced by the lack of scoops to accommodate them.
As Mickey and Judy Thompson pulled into the half-moon driveway of General Motors Vice President and former Pontiac Division GM Semon "Bunkie" Knudsen (who had just moved to Chevrolet), Judy couldn't help but admire the giant white columns surrounding the home's beautiful main entrance. She pictured a perfectly dressed, manicured, and well-mannered butler standing in wait to open the door. Her knees knocking and her palms sweating, her nerves were getting the best of her. The only wealthy people she had seen were in the movies.
"I had never been to the house of someone so important before," Judy said. "I really felt like I was going to pass out. I had no idea how to behave or what to say."
But as the door opened, a smiling Knudsen, dressed in strikingly loud Bermuda shorts and an even louder flower print shirt, welcomed the Thompsons inside. No butler. Just Bunkie. Having recently returned from vacation, the powerful auto exec put his arm around Judy and pulled her away from Mickey.
Goodyear organized the grand...
Goodyear organized the grand unveiling of Challenger I at the Beverly Hilton before it first took to the salt in 1959. According to the "hero board" next to Mickey, Challenger I weighed 4,650 pounds, and was 19.7 feet long and 59 inches wide. Each of the four 13:1 410 (4.00-inch stroker crank) cubic-inch Pontiac engines was stated to have 500 hp (normally aspirated). HPP has seen varied published reports of 410ci, 414ci, and 415ci for the engines' displacements. Most likely, two of the engines were 414.68 (4.063 x 4.00 bore/stroke) and two were 440.60 ci (4.062 x 4.25 bore/stroke), based upon Chief Mechanic Fritz Voigt's recollection that two of the engines had a 4.00-inch stroker crank and two had a 4.25-inch stroker crank.
It was 1962, and Mickey and Judy had just each scored division victories in the famed Mobilgas Economy Run, Mickey behind the wheel of a Pontiac Tempest and Judy piloting a Pontiac Star Chief. The Economy Run, a cross-country fuel-efficiency exercise to determine how typical American passenger cars performed in ordinary driving conditions, was carried out for more than 30 years from 1936 until 1968.
Mickey's Pontiac Tempest averaged 27.30 mpg to capture the title in Class C (Large Engine Compact; 161-200 cid), covering nearly 2,500 miles over a six-leg trip from Los Angeles to Detroit. Judy's Pontiac Star Chief averaged 19.48 mpg in Class G (Medium Price, Standard Size, Eight-Cylinder Cars).
Shortly after scoring their victories in Detroit, word came that Knudsen had extended a dinner invitation to the Thompsons. He invited them to his home in the appropriately named Pontiac, Michigan.
"As soon as we walked in the door, he put me right at ease," Judy said. "He said, `I've wanted to meet the woman who would put up with (Mickey). You have to be a very special woman to put up with this son-of-a-bitch.'"
Leaving Mickey, Knudsen took Judy directly to his garage to show off his custom Pontiac. With a tremendous amount of almost boyhood enthusiasm, Bunkie lifted the hood of his pride and joy and showed off the engine. "He told me to get in the car and start it up," Judy said. "He wanted me to hear the engine. He told me all the cops in Pontiac knew who he was so they never gave him a speeding ticket."
Enjoying a lighter moment...
Enjoying a lighter moment at Bonneville are, from left, Darrell Droke, Judy, Mickey, and Fritz Voigt.
Challenger I
The relationship between Knudsen, a son of privilege and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Mickey Thompson, a high-school-educated son of an Irish cop, began a few years earlier, as Knudsen had taken on the challenge of spicing up Pontiac's image by diving headfirst into the racing world. First, he got the Division into NASCAR on the East Coast and then the California drag racing scene on the West Coast with Thompson, who among other things, was managing Lions Drag Strip and standing atop the heap of go-fast hot-rodders.
Mickey, along with friend and mechanic Fritz Voigt, had put together a twin-engine effort for a National Hot Rod Association race in Oklahoma City in 1958. On the way, the pair stopped at the famed Bonneville Salt Flats and ran their rig to a record-setting 266.866 mph. This run did little more than fuel Mickey's desire to be the fastest man on earth. The entire car ride home from Bonneville to El Monte, California, was spent dictating rapid-fire ideas to Judy, who took notes in shorthand. Most of the talk was about what it would take to build a four-engine car--not only how they would do it, but how they would pay for it.