It is also very conceivable that you might be on your way home from the local drags with your favorite squeeze sitting next to you. Believe it or not, many a date night during that period consisted of an evening at the drags, as contrary to today’s emphasis on the Pro game the sport was primarily a local event, with the limited number of Nationals being the cherry on top of the Sundae. Finally, if you were at your local drag strip to witness a match race between two of the heavy hitters of the time, you would not have realized that you were witnessing the birth of a new race category, and a paradigm shift in what the sport of drag racing was about to become.

Somewhere around 1960, Ford and General Motors began to realize that there may be something to be gained by providing some of the stars of this up and coming sport with products to compete, and to gain notoriety, with. This all began at the first National Championships, which prior to being moved to Indy were held at Detroit Dragway. Some of the attendees at that event were GM and Ford brass, and when they saw the folks in attendance the old American idea popped up "Hey, we can sell cars from this".

In 1962 Chrysler became involved in a big way, with their cross-rammed 413’s, which was expanded to 426 inches in 1963. In 1964, the famed 426 Hemi was introduced, which catapulted the smallest of the big three to the front of the pack. The action was hot and heavy, and all of the manufacturers were having a jolly time, with the fans of each one going along for the ride.

In the winter of 1964, though, rumors rumbling from the Dearborn caused some concern over at Chrysler. It seems that Ford was about to introduce a new engine, the 427 Single Overhead Cam (SOHC), and dump it into the smaller Mustangs and Mercury Comets in an effort to regain supremacy. Chrysler was still geared to sell full sized Dodges and Plymouths, so the threat from the smaller Fords was very real. As a result, Chrysler decided to really stretch the rules (break them, actually) by drastically altering the wheelbase on eleven of the 1965 factory race cars to be provided to team drivers. They had lured Ronnie Sox to the MoPar camp over the course of the winter, and it was felt that with him, Dick Landy, Lee Smith, and the others, the advantage of the hybrid wheelbase cars would be too much for the competition from Dearborn to overcome.

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To make a long story short, when these cars showed at Pomona, intending to run A/FX (Factory Experimental), the Ford and Mercury race directors, Jacque Passino and Al Turner, took one look and cried foul. NHRA gave the cars the heave-ho, made the statement that they looked "funny", and the era of the funny car and match racing had begun.

The cars were illegal for NHRA competition, but the American Hot Rod Assocation (AHRA), NHRA’s largest competitor at the time, welcomed the cars with open arms, and they absolutely dominated. However, with no NHRA races to run, the cars became widely available for match racing at local tracks, which before the time of mass media was easily the biggest money maker for racers, allowing much greater exposure than could be gained by racing at the four NHRA National events per year.

In performance, the "outlaw" cars far outpaced their NHRA legal colleagues racing for Ford, with injected, nitro Hemis carding times in the low, low nines at over 145 mph. In August of that year, the Ramchargers injected AWB car turned a jaw dropping 8.91, with a heavy dose of nitro plus some other "additives".

The competition was so lopsided that Ford brass refused to allow their factory drivers to race the hybrid MoPars. Later in the year, Don Nicholson and others ignored the factory ban and modified their FoMoCo products to match, which did make things more interesting. The fact is that some of the Ford folks, like Nicholson, made their living doing this and were financially forced to get into the lucrative match race circuit.

The car you see here, owned by Tom O’Brien of Sewickley, Pa, is unique even among the original AWB cars. Chrysler originally built eight (or ten) altered wheelbase Belvederes and Coronets, depending on who you talk to, but they were all hardtops. These acid-dipped hardtops developed a nasty habit of twisting themselves apart, so the decision was made to sponsor one more, the "eleventh" altered wheelbase car. This is one of two known, documented, actual survivors.

This particular piece was originally a lightweight NHRA-legal cross-ram Hemi, the code A990 package, and was delivered to factory racer Bill Flynn. Flynn was a former US Army Paratrooper with the legendary 101^st Airborne, and was known as a tough, hard competitor. He was also one of the premier Super Stock racers on the East Coast, and had become a bit of a folk hero by upsetting the feared Arnie Beswick Pontiac the previous year at Indy in the A/Modified Production final. The A990 package cars were all post sedans, and to alleviate the twisting problem, Chrysler decided to use that platform for the eleventh AWB car. So, they made an offer to Flynn that he could not refuse.

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"Flynn had run the car only three or four times, and Chrysler offered to buy it back, do the modifications, and then give it back to him to race," relates O’Brien, "that made it the eleventh funny car." Tom continues, "It was shipped up to Dick Brastner’s shop in Detroit, where the wheelbase was altered and modified, and then returned to Flynn. It became one of the most successful of them all."

Flynn raced the car successfully for a couple of years before selling it to a New Jersey racer. "It went to Chicago and raced under the moniker "The Storm," then was lost "for about a hundred and fifty years," relates O’Brien. "No one knew where it went. To this day no one seems to know."

In the early nineties, though, the owner just prior to Tom O’Brien found it behind a building in Arizona. "It was the proverbial car in the barn story. The guy just happened to be driving by, and noticed an AWB mid-sixties MoPar behind a building. He stopped, and the owner did not seem to know much about it," Tom said. "The guy knew it was a sedan, which made it unique, and figured it may have some history. They struck a deal, and when the new owner got it home, he started to sand the paint off. After getting a couple of coats off, he realized that he had the Yankee Peddler. Then, he and his friends got excited." Bill Flynn himself was reunited with the car just prior to his death from cancer in 1998, and according to those present it was very emotional."

Tom obtained the partially-restored piece in 2001, and it was immediately sent to the shop of Hemi wizard Bob George of Eighty Four, Pa., to complete the flawless restoration. "Bob was like a little kid for a year," remembers Tom. This author personally remembers the evening my good friend Bob called and said "I am standing here looking at the original Yankee Peddler." He sounded as if Santa Claus had just visited Bob George Racing, and he and his son Curt were anxious to get started.

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For Bob George, an old factory racer whose shop still specializes in all kinds of Hemi and wedge MoPars, going through the vintage motor was a labor of love. He retained the original "K" heads, as well as the Hilborn injection, and took great pains to make sure the motor looked the same as it had back in the day. Like anything else that comes out of the Western Pennsylvania shop, it is meticulous and no stone is overturned in the effort to make sure things are completely "right." "We attempted to duplicate the original injected Hemi, using current MoPar Performance pieces," Bob said. "It is a good piece. If the car was right, and the tech guys would not have an apoplexy, it would easily go low to mid eights."

The car is used for display purposes, primarily, because to update everything to meet modern safety standards would take away from the car’s history. In addition, the aesthetic value of the car would prohibit it racing. It is simply too valuable, and irreplaceable.

One of the more intriguing facts is that the car is fitted only with rear drum brakes, with nothing on the front. Think about that for a minute. Forty years ago, Bill Flynn ran 145 mph on old, narrow drag strips, with nothing to stop with but a parachute and a set of Chrysler 11 inch drum brakes on the rear. That’s it. No Wilwood disc brakes, nothing. Despite the dated safety equipment, the car brought the crowd to their feet, stomping and yelling, at the 2003 MoPar Nationals in Columbus, Ohio when Bob George’s son, the late Curt George, fired her up to make a pass. Curt did his burnout, rapped the motor a few times, shooting fire out the headers, and then left the starting line on the back bumper just as the car’s original owner and pilot had in its heyday. Curt shut the car off upon its return to earth, but his display was, for many of the standing room only crowd, the most memorable moment of the event. It is truly one of the most vivid memories we all have of Curt, and we cherish it.