Remembering the Stone, Woods and Cook dinner Dim Horse 2 Amusing Car or truck

In 1967, a lot of drag racing lovers were being surprised to find out that the team of Stone, Woods and Prepare dinner were swapping their well-liked AA/Fuel Willys coupe for a Mustang humorous automobile. The staff dominated the A/GS ranks with the Swindler A Willys, and numerous individuals expected them to carry on competing in the gasser ranks.

Amusing auto match racing was in which all the income was, nonetheless, and the “Pebble, Pulp and Chef” gang was prepared for a new obstacle. So they established aside the Willys in favor of a blown Mustang they christened Darkish Horse 2.

Even though the fiberglass flip-best style funny cars had been starting up to appear into their individual, the SWC Mustang was not a flopper. Instead the workforce mounted a steel Mustang entire body shell on a gentle weight tubular chassis, with a lengthy fiberglass front clip. Driver Doug Cook entered the motor vehicle by opening doors, while the clip could be removed to get the job done on the engine.

Adhering to the exact sample as their famous gassers, the SWC staff chosen a blown early Chrysler hemi for electricity. Simply because Stone, Woods and Cook dinner ended up so thriving in the fuel lessons, some people mistakenly refer to the Mustang as a gasser. At 1st the motor vehicle ran alcoholic beverages, with a splash of nitro. As time wore on, the team tipped-the-can and applied an at any time increased percentages of nitromethane.

The Mustang funny car immediately adopted in the footsteps of the Willys gassers, winning the 2400 pound class at the famed Bakersfield March fulfill two times in a row. From there, the workforce set off on a blistering barnstorming tour that has rarely been equaled.

It seemed that every drag racing admirer preferred to see the Stone, Woods and Cook dinner Mustang in action, and every single monitor owner wished to fill the stands by reserving the match racer. Select up any duplicate of Drag Information from 1967, and you will probably come across a lot of tales recounting the exploits Stone, Woods and Cook dinner at different tracks.

In addition to racing at most of the 5-star tracks, Dark Horse 2 also showed up at modest hole-in-the-wall venues dragstrips with ragged asphalt, dim night-lighting and inadequate shut down places. The admirers wanted to see Doug Prepare dinner in motion, and the staff was far more than ready to grant their want.

Racing quite a few moments a week, SWC ran against most of the well-known humorous cars of the period, having on the lighter pounds, injected flip-major vehicles as well as other metal-bodied blown entries. Cook was not constantly victorious, but he racked up an extraordinary gain/reduction tally.

Just when the Stone, Woods and Cook dinner crew appeared to be on leading of their video game, tragedy intervened. A crash destroyed Darkish Horse 2 at Alton, Illinois. Doug Cook, one particular of the most common and revered drag racers of all time, sustained back again injuries that finished his racing career.

Stone, Woods and Cook were being not completed, nonetheless. They developed a new Mustang that was a in the vicinity of duplicate of the first. The Ghost of Dim Horse 2 ongoing the torrid match-race speed, with a variety of hired motorists changing Prepare dinner guiding the wheel.

By 1969, even the SWC group could not continue to be competitive with a metal bodied auto, and they designed a Mustang flopper, assigning the driving chores to Dee Keaton. In the early ’70s, Tim Woods crafted the to start with Pinto amusing vehicle and ran it beneath the Stone, Woods and Cook banner with Mike VanSant as the pilot. Nonetheless later on a Chrysler driven Corvette gasser toured less than the Stone, Woods and Cooke banner. That is not a typo on the ‘Vette the title Prepare dinner was spelled with an e on the stop. Reportedly, none of the first trio was actively involved with the Corvette.

Eventually, all three members of the colourful team retired from racing. Doug Prepare dinner passed absent in 1999.

The Dim Horse 2 legacy continues, even so. Mike Cook dinner, son of the well known driver, is reconstructing Darkish Horse 2. Pictures of the car’s building can be found on Cook’s web-site, as properly as pics of the entirely restored Swindler A and Swindler B Willys coupes.

Four decades have handed because the Darkish Horse 2 Mustang barnstormed its way into drag racing history. It is awesome to know that Mike Prepare dinner isn’t going to intend to enable the famous funny auto be neglected.