[DeTomaso] Some Jr Wilson history

[JDeRyke at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/10/08 8:54:20 AM, kenn_green at yahoo.com writes:

> I think there were two Junior Wilson Silver State cars?  This one and one a 
> lot closer to stock? 
> 
THere were several. I used to visit Jr regularly in Salinas CA. He built 
three different engines and three different cars that I know of. First came his 
street Pantera. He built a sprint-car Fontana block out to 427 cubes w/SVO A-3 
heads. That combination never satisfied Jr whose ambition was to beat JR 
Gottlieb's phony 'record' of 199+ mph average in a NASCAR-style Z-28. Turns out that 
'record' was never actually timed- there was a glitch in the setup of the 
timers so the organizers guessed at the ET and thus the avg speed. Gottlieb was 
never able to repeat his time and Jr was 'only' able to do a real 177+ mph 
average in his black Pantera. 
Then he bought a Pantera that had caught fire & burned in FL. Jr bought the 
scrap and repaired it strictly for racing. He built a monster-motor 572-inch 
Boss 429 engine of some 860 horses, for it. The giant engine was not pushed back 
in the chassis, so the entire front of the longer block protruded into the 
cockpit behind an extended bulkhead cover. Good thing Jr was a small guy! 
In the final iteration, Jr cut the whole floor & chassis out of the Pantera 
and had a tube frame built locally at   a shop not far from Tony Harvey's old 
home. This Pantera was somehow still street licensed (CA license- 55 HE HE). 
Interestingly, all the Panteras had stock suspensions, calipers & solid rotor   
brakes. Jr wasn't much into slowing down..... His big problem was, the big 
block machines weighed over 4200 lbs without driver and navigator and all the 
tires he could find were unreliable on pavement at those enormous speeds with 
that much weight. The dirt track wing attacled directly to the rear of the ZF 
further loaded the rear tires. Bonneville salt is cool and moist but blacktop 
heats up rubber. 
After 5 rear tire blow-outs above 200 mph (without serious damage!) in 
Panteras, the last car he built was a GTP-style single seat fiberglas body, on a 
different tube frame with an even more powerful version of his Boss 429. This 
thing's only real relationship to a Pantera was the DeTomaso tail lights and a 
couple of cockpit switches. It's ZF ran a 2.65 ring & pinion- stock is 4.22. Jr 
once tested this frightening machine at 265 mph on the interstate near 'Vegas 
very early in the morning... The GTP car was totally destroyed in Jr's only 
serious crash that ended his SS career. He was self sponsored and told me the 
GTP version was 'what you get if you spend $10,000 a month for 3 years on your 
Pantera....' Last I heard, Jr still had the tube framed Pantera with a bored & 
stroked 460 in it, but it was for sale for about the cost of the engine. 
J DeRyke


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