1966 Pontiac GTO - Don’t Call It A Funny Car

“The phrase ‘funny car’ was coined when racers saw the altered-wheelbase ’65 Dodges and Plymouths,” Beswick recalls. “Since my ’64 GTO Mystery Tornado was one of the very few GM racecars that was competitive against them, it earned the funny car handle as well, even though it was a completely stock-dimension GTO from the frame up.”

According to Beswick, “Match races were at the height of their popularity, and I was booked solid, travelling coast-to-coast taking on A/FX and S/FX Fords and Mopars, as well as Chrysler’s latest brainstorm, the altered-wheelbase, acid-dipped, super-lightweight funny cars.

Arnie “The Farmer,” had to look for the cheapest way to make horsepower, so he decided to try the supercharger route.

In December 1965, Beswick made arrangements with Pontiac’s upper management to take delivery of a pre-production ’66 GTO engineering car. Despite some very unfavorable winter road conditions, Beswick travelled to Pontiac, loaded the GTO, and promptly headed to Pelligrini’s Fiberglass Limited in Hillside, Illinois, to pull a fiberglass body mold from it. His instructions were to keep all of the stock body dimensions, with the exception of moving the front wheel openings forward 9 to 10 inches, which meant the hood and fenders would be lengthened likewise.

In January 1966, Beswick delivered his Mystery Tornado’s stock frame, Mickey Thompson blower intake manifold, GMC 6-71 blower, and Enderle Bug Catcher-type injector hat; a dummy motor; and the new GTO fiberglass body to Logghe Brothers in Detroit to have it graft a tubular front end onto the frame from the firewall forward. (Logghe Brothers also installed a Ford Econoline van straight axle and front spindles.)

Beswick recalls one mandate for his new car build: “I told them, ‘Put that engine back far enough so I can get as much traction as possible with the small tires I would have to run with the stock ’64 frame, and so the blower and injector hat don’t project through the hood or windshield. It needs to be as stock-appearing as possible when it’s sitting on the starting line and going down the track. I—as did many other spectators and racers alike—hated the look of those altered-wheelbase Mopar funny cars.”

Logghe bolted the fiberglass body to the frame and set up the steering, Beswick had the interior work designed in aluminum and installed by Al Bergler Fabrication.

With frame, suspension, body, and paint completed, Beswick began on the engine: a 421-SD with factory “980” heads, which were originally factory-installed in his ’63 Swiss Cheese Super-Duty Catalina and later raced in his Mystery Tornado.

The rest of the drivetrain consisted of a modified torque converter, a mostly stock Turbo 400, a stock, but shortened ’64 GTO driveshaft, and a Big-Car rear-end, which was stuffed with a 4.30-geared Posi unit that in turn rotated stock Super-Duty axles and 15x10 Cragar S/S mags shod in Goodyear Bluestreak tires (28x7.5x15, front/30x10.5x15-inch, rear.)

Did high-test gasoline power it? “No way,” Beswick says. “Though I used the highest-test Sunoco gasoline I could get my hands on in the ’64 Mystery Tornado [until mid-1965], I ran methanol in the ’66 from Day 1, and after I added forged aluminum rods, I began adding 10 to 15 percent nitro-methane to the mixture.

After some half-track test runs at Gay Pontiac’s Houston Dragway in Dickinson, Texas, Beswick’s first full quarter-mile pass in this ’66 GTO made the drag-racing news of the day with an 8.73 e.t. at 173 mph. He campaigned it throughout the ’67 season, and into 1968, eventually earning a best e.t. of 8.48 at 178 mph at U.S. 30 Dragway in Gary, Indiana. Later in 1968, he retired it from duty and introduced his first full-tube-chassis Star of the Circuit II ’68 GTO.

“In 1969, I sold the ’66 GTO to a drag racer in neighboring Indiana,” Beswick says. “From then, it dropped out of sight until Rick Johnson located it and I bought it back in the ’80s. I sold it for the second time in May 1991 to a good friend and neighboring farmer Russ Ottens (who applied the new paintjob), and then a few years later I helped Otten arrange the sale of it to my crew chief, John Holmes, in February 2003.”

Holmes, who started with Beswick as a Tameless Tiger crewmember in 1999, recalls that his introduction into the hobby was when he started as an oil changer and car washer at Jim Detcler Pontiac in Oswego, Illinois, in 1971. When he was 18 years old, he bought his first Pontiac: a blue, four-speed ’66 GTO. In the late ’90s, he re-entered the Pontiac hobby with his purchase of a ’67 GTO project car. Two years later, he hired Beswick for a personal appearance at his company Holmes Auto Repair’s open-house event. “I’ve been around Arnie ever since,” he says.

“When I first saw Arnie’s old Star of the Circuit GTO, I liked the car a lot, and expressed my interest in buying it,” Holmes says. “Ottens had already repainted the fiberglass body and freshened up the aluminum interior, and the frame and straight axle were still intact the way Beswick had raced the car.

Several engine parts for a motor rebuild were with the car, a Mickey Thompson blower intake, one of Beswick’s TSI Turbo 400s, as well as some wiring and fuel- and cooling-systems pieces.

Because Beswick raced the car with only rear drum brakes and a ’57 Pontiac rear end, Ottens upgraded the GTO to Strange four-wheel disc brakes, and a Ford 9-inch with Strange axles and spool to pacify the track tech people on the stopping and the axle-safety issues.

It didn’t take much work—“Basically just some rollcage updates,” Holmes says—to get the famous GTO to pass NHRA 8.50 e.t. certification and then get back onto the track.

“My goal was to bring it back out as an exhibition car, but not to try to break any e.t. or speed records,” John says. At our Pavement Pounders Shootout, he piloted the old warrior to a 9.28 e.t. at 144.40 mph. “It had more throttle to go, but I felt uncomfortable because of a front-end shimmy, so I let off,” he says.

Since then, Holmes did a rebuild of all of the major steering pieces. The GTO is now running about as quick as when Arnie had it in the ’60s, and posted its best e.t. to date—8.53 seconds—at Cordova Dragway Park in October 2011.

John Holmes wants to give special thanks to his personal assistant Mike Ehrhart for his help on restoring and maintaining the Star of the Circuit ’66 GTO.

Strip Specs

Induction System

Heads

Bottom End

Camshaft

Ignition

Exhaust

Drivetrain

Chassis and Suspension

The Rest

Back In The Day

Arnie dug into his personal collection to provide some great vintage photos.