I just scored a January 1960 Hot Rod magazine on ebay that has an article on the original Ramchargers High and Mighty 1949 Plymouth and was hoping you all might be able to help me find any other mags that have articles on the original car from 1959 - 1960. I already have Rod & Custom, January 1960 which has a small picture of the car and a short blurb about the high mounted carbs for the ram effect, and that it turned 109.75 mph in the quarter, as well as a copy of High Performance Mopar, June 1993 which has a great article on the car. Any information as to what Mags / year / editions the car is in would be greatly appreciated! Cheers!
There is a picture with caption in the August 12th, 1960 edition of 'National Dragster'. Caption reads "The Ramchargers 'High and the Mighty' C/Altered hiked its class record to new 12.62 at 115.23 mph. Ply coupe gets punch from Chrysler.' This was at a Toledo, OH meet, July 21st.
Thanks BrerHair... I'd forgotten about that one! longram60 thanks for the info, i'll start looking for that edition of National Dragster right away!! Anyone else able to help out?
I rember the car from the 1961 Hot Rod magazines I bought as a kid, still have them along with earlier ones I picked up over the years. The one question I've always wanted to ask was, why? Why did they pick that car to turn into a drag car? Did it have some feature that made it fit in the class better than others? Bob
The car was light and bought cheap! You wouldn't be able to look through your collection sometime and let me know which ones had articles/pictures in perhaps?
The Ramchargers was a group of young engineers at Chrysler. They set out to build a drag car that would beat the Chevs. They started by building the engine, what car they used didn't much matter as long as it was a Chrysler product. One of the guys neighbors had a 49 Plymouth coupe for $50 bucks. Nobody got excited but it was cheap and it filled the bill. Remember this was an 8 or 9 year old, second hand car at the time. Like picking up a 2004 Neon for cheap today. The fact that it was heavier than the early 30s cars others were using, was an advantage because the 354 Chrysler hemi they were using was bigger than the Chevs that dominated the class. Since the class was divided on a cubic inch per pound basis they needed a heavier car but not too heavy. This led to other innovations. The car was heavier and more powerful than others in the class but all used the same tires, 7" slicks that were all that was available at the time. To get the traction they stretched the rules, raising the engine and moving it back as far as possible and raising the whole car for more weight transfer. And designing a unique rear suspension adjustable for perfect traction. Eventually they moved the rear axle forward too. These became the hallmarks of the gasser or funny car but they were done for a scientific purpose.
Great response Rusty... I've never read up enough to get an understanding of how the rules worked in regards to the weight and cubic inches, so thank you for shedding some light on the subject! Thanks so much for your input! Hemifried
Can't help with magazine articles, but here's a couple photos I've...uh...borrowed from the internet. Mick
If you haven't checked out the book 'We Were the Ramchargers', there is a whole chapter devoted to the High & Mighty car.
Haha... Thanks Mick! I've bought and "borrowed" a heck of a lot of pictures of the car but always looking for different ones that I haven't seen before, I've got two poster sized photo's on my office wall at work that I purchased from a photographer that was at the Nationals at Detroit Dragway back in 1960... wicked cool stuff! Check out my facebook page if you want to see some more! https://www.facebook.com/TheHighandMighty Thanks for the heads up Longram! I've been meaning to order the book but never got around to it until you confirmed for me... I should have it in my hands in a week or so! You'd probably like my Fathers 61 Polara 4dr D500 car with a name like Longram!
The pics show a class of C/A for the car so it ran in the Altered class. Incidentally C class for 1958 meant a weight of 11.00 to 12.99 pounds per cubic inch. If the High and Mighty had a 354 cu in engine, it would have to weigh 3894 to 4598 lbs. This seems way too heavy, still confused.
I've not been able to get my hands on a copy of the 1959 or 1960 rules to try and figure out how the classes broke down (I've never really had a great understanding of NHRA's classes to be totally honest) I am under the understanding that they ran a 354 with 392 heads for the 1959 season and then for 1960 they put a 392 shortblock assembly under the 392 heads.
The 1960 Hot Rod Magazine article just listed the weight as 3050 lbs. Assuming a little clean up bore, that works out to about 9 lbs/cu. in. with driver, or 8 1/2 lbs/cu. in. without driver for C/A class.
Thats pretty heavy but I could see it, probably in the class so they could put some ballast in the rear too. Cool articles and pics too guys, I love this car, is there any clones? Original still around?
The original car is long gone, however a bunch of members from the CEMA club (Chrysler Employee Motorsport Association) built a clone of the car as it was in 1959 using some parts that were saved off of the original car. My goal is to build a clone of the car as it was raced in 1960, Thats why i'm looking for magazine articles on the car, research research research! Original 1959 car, Cloned 1959 car, Original 1960 car, Original intake back in 1959, Original intake present day, My project High & Mighty
There sure is! Thats one of the reasons for this post actually, I'm trying to find more details and pictures of the changes that where made to the car for 1960 besides swapping from a 354 to 392 bottom end, adding fenders, and painting the car. In the Hot Rod article I had posted earlier if you look at the interior picture closely you can see that the tach was mounted to the right of the steering wheel on the dash above the protruding firewall area and in later pictures its hanging in the windshield. (notice the differences to the interiors from the 59 car and the clone) You might not even notice it but in the 59 car is running a rear license plate in the stock location while the 60 car has had the recessed panel filled and smoothed and supports added to protect the bumper. I'm also look for a similar style gauge that I could convert to a tach if anyone has one similar! I'm just guessing but its probably 8" - 10" square.
Just to add I got some of the pictures from this guy http://www.joestevensphotos.com/DragRacing/DetroitDragway-1960sLegends/i-jLmRp84
Here's an article from Rod & Custom, January 1960 showing a photo and a small photo of the High & Mighty car (Ram Rod at that point in its life) I'm still looking for more articles if anyone can help out! Thanks!
The Jalopy Journal
