celebrate the accomplishments of all those who dedicated their lives to making Mopars special

John Pointer

John Pointer may well be the single most important man in Chrysler’s NASCAR history. Pointer worked for Chrysler’s missile and space division before being laid off in 1963, then being rehired as an “aerodynamicist” in 1964. He immediately went to work solving problems with high-speed handling of Dodges and Plymouths in NASCAR, and he was the reason NASCAR began using templates to check for body changes on race cars because Pointer had figured out subtle ways to distort the bodies to make them slicker on the track. He solved the ill-handling problem of the 1966/1967 Chargers by placing a small spoiler on the back, and working with Larry Rathgeb, he largely designed the 1969 Charger 500, then when that still wasn’t winning enough, Rathgeb literally told him to do whatever it takes to make the Charger faster. He submitted a drawing of the Charger with a rocket-like nose and huge wing, and admittedly, never thought it would be approved. That drawing famously went all the way up to Dodge CEO Bob McCurry, who upon looking at it declared, “God, it looks awful. Will it win races?” When he was told yes, he said “Build the damn thing.” Pointer oversaw the real-world and wind tunnel testing of his rocket/car Charger Daytona, and when a Creative Industries stylist offered to make the car less obnoxious, once again McCurry had some colorful language, “I don’t give a shit what it looks like, it goes fast. If you can’t help, get out of the way.” And with that, the Charger Daytona went into production. Pointer worked on aerodynamics for Chrysler until he retired in the seventies, but the winged cars will forever remain the epitome of his work.

Jerry Rushing

Jerry Rushing will need no introduction to hardcore Dukes of Hazzard fans, but he likely will to the average Mopar fanatic. Jerry is the guy who the Dukes of Hazzard television series was based on. At the age of thirteen, Jerry drove his first moonshine runner car in North Carolina, and by sixteen he was operating his own stills making illegal whiskey. Rushing purchased a 1958 Chrysler 300D and extensively modified it, performance wise and for the sake of hauling moonshine. The trunk was reworked so it could hold 300 gallons of moonshine and he installed an oil-dump tank out back so he could slick down the road if being chased. He named the 300 “Traveler” after General Lee’s horse, and during its career, the car bested 140 mph regularly and carried over two million gallons of whiskey! It ran out of gas during a high-speed chase in the early sixties and was then seized by the police, and thankfully for us, it still exists and has been restored back to its glory days. Dukes producer, Guy Waldron, did a movie in 1975 called “Moonrunners” based on Jerry’s life, then developed that into the Dukes of Hazzard television show starting in 1979. The show is seriously based on Jerry’s life. Jerry was the inspiration for Bo Duke, his brother Johnny became Luke Duke, his Uncle Worley became Uncle Jesse, and his cousin Delaine became Daisy Duke; all worked with him in his moonshine business. And of course, “Traveler” simply became “The General Lee”, and the rest, as they say, is history. Jerry drove occasionally for several NASCAR teams after finishing his whiskey career.

Nord and Teddi Krauskopf

The Krauskopfs may not be a household name in the Mopar community, but their cars are, and you’ll likely recognize them immediately as the bright red K&K Insurance NASCAR racers. Nord and his wife, “Teddi,” started an insurance company for racing car drivers in Fort Wayne, Indiana way back in 1952. Highly successful, by 1966 they wanted more involvement with racing, so they teamed up with Harry Hyde and Dodge, and the first K&K Insurance sponsored fastback Charger hit the tracks with Gordon Johncock initially driving, but he was quickly replaced with the man synonymous with the team; Bobby Isaac. That began nearly a decade-long run that saw a whole lot of records fall! The K&K Insurance Chargers remained a serious threat on NASCAR ovals until they withdrew at the conclusion of the 1974 season, but as you already know, they also set a number of land speed records at Bonneville with the Charger Daytona and Bobby Isaac, and they won a host of events on smaller dirt tracks with a fellow named Bobby Unser driving a modified Dodge Dart Sport, and Unser won the 1974 Pike’s Peak Hill Climb event in a Dart Sport, setting a record in doing so. The company still exists today, and they remain very active in showcasing their historic racing past.

Al Vander Woude

Al Vander Woude (often spelled Vanderwoude) is better known to all of us as “The Flying Dutchman.” Perhaps no one in the world of professional drag racing ever did more with less than Al did. He was never a fully factory-backed racer, preferring to remain an independent and not be obliged to do as he was told. He began racing in 1957 living in California, and by 1963 he’d managed to get a Max Wedge Dodge which he ran in Pure Stock, and there was no looking back after that. Addicted to Hemis, and building all of his cars himself (each named “The Flying Dutchman”), Al progressed through cars rapid-fire match racing coast-to-coast. He had an A/Gas Willys coupe with a Hemi in it that gave way to an altered wheelbase A/FX injected Hemi Plymouth, which quickly gave way to his famous green ’66 Dart funny car, which was then replaced with two versions of the Dart as a convertible funny car – a rare breed indeed! In 1968, Al built his most conventional funny car, a gorgeous ’68 Charger in green with a white roof, and that car dominated the match race circuit with a stroker 392” Hemi in it for the better part of two years. Then came Vander Woude’s most famous car – his Charger III “Corvette killer” funny car. The Charger III had been a concept car from Dodge in 1968, designed to compete with the Corvette but it never went into production. Only three bodies were built, and Car Craft magazine said in 1970 that Vander Woude saw this Charger III body hanging from the rafters at Mr. Norm’s in Chicago, bought it, and built his newest and wildest funny car around it with a 426 Hemi for power. That car achieved international fame and model kits of the Dutchman’s Charger III flew off the shelves. After the Charger III, Al had a brief flirtation with Ford funny cars before hanging up his spurs in the mid-seventies, but even then, they still used Hemis for power. You’d be hard-pressed to find a harder working driver/team owner /builder than Al Vander Woude, and for more than a decade, he carried the Dodge banner and garnered more publicity than most professional drag racers could’ve ever dreamed of. Al passed away in 2001 at the age of sixty-seven.

Wild Willie Borsch

Willie Borsch became famous virtually overnight in 1960 after teaming up with Al “Mousie” Marcellus to create the “Winged Express” Fuel Altered roadster. Powered by a fire-breathing 392 blown Hemi, the car immediately won national acclaim, not only for its performance but because of Willie’s driving style. The ultra-short wheelbase tied to a nitro supercharged Hemi made the car very hard to drive and Willie had a habit of hanging onto the side of the body with his left hand to steady himself while blazing down the track – thus the nickname. The Winged Express became the first AA/FA to better 200 mph, and in 1967 it set the all-time national record of 7.29 seconds, which was actually faster than Top Fuel dragsters were going at that time. When the NHRA banned the class due to safety concerns, Borsch was sponsored by Revell Models and began driving a ’71 Charger funny car, which he campaigned for several years before retiring from the sport. Interestingly, the funny car featured a fake hand and arm hanging onto the driver’s door.

Jimmy Addison

Jimmy Addison is a unique individual in the history of Chrysler; a man who didn’t actually work for Chrysler, but probably did more for developing performance parts for the 426 Hemi than any other “civilian” out there. It was in late 1966 that Chrysler’s Hemi team decided to take a mundane blue ’67 Hemi GTX and see how far they could push it as a street racer. This machine rose to international fame as “The Silver Bullet” GTX. For a brief time, we actually had factory performance engineers street racing this thing, primarily on Woodward Avenue, with plain wheels and blue paint. The higher-ups thought better of that quickly – it would be bad publicity if a car company was actually participating in, and condoning, illegal street racing. With a lot of fiberglass parts on it, a big 487” stroker Hemi, and widened quarter panels for bigger tires, repainted silver metallic, the GTX was handed over to Jimmy Addison, who was known throughout Detroit as a seriously good Hemi mechanic who worked at a local Sunoco station. For the next decade, Addison and the Silver Bullet GTX became the undisputed “King of Woodward Avenue” and appeared in countless magazines, and all the while, Chrysler’s engineers were working directly with Addison to develop and test parts on the street with the car, effectively making him the only factory-backed illegal street racer we know of. Thanks to Addison and the Silver Bullet, a lot of experimental parts ended up in the Direct Connection and Mopar Performance catalogs.