Bryan ...... Did you ever get to hear the famous Speed Sport II Roadster at
the drags back in the Sixties ? They didn't call it "Old Noisy" for nothing
! Most anyone who ever heard its' exhaust thundering out of those 8
parallel pipes peeking out from under the '27T turtledeck will tell you it was
quite
an earful !!! Possibly it was just the right combo of compression, nitro
percentage, blower( 6-71 )drive ratio, and the placement of those pipes that
made it such a unique sounding blown Chrysler. I first heard it in October of
1960 at the Sanford, Maine airport drags when it was racing the legendary
Chizler A/FD of Chris"the Greek' Karamesines ........ their last run was after
dark and the sound reverberating through the still of the night must have
really startled a vast amount of wildlife in the surrounding woods.
For decades afterwards, I asked a lot of longtime dragfans if they
ever heard a wilder sounding car, and they all said the roadster was the one
car they best recalled as far as its' awesome exhaust tunes ! The roadster,
with an earlier unblown 354" hemi with six Stromberg 97s, and on nitro, once
set the all-time record drag speed at 169 + mph, in the late '50s at Davis -
Monthan AFB, down there near( or in ? )Tucson ........
Bruce ~ recalling the only racing engines I never really enjoyed
hearing were the oval track small-blocks with the 180 degree headers ..... it
only took a handful of those cars to set your ears ringing ! I went to a
100 lap feature once where quite a few folks actually left early because of
those harsh buzzing sounds .......
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