That's when Steven Siegel bought it. If you've been reading car magazines for a while, you'll recognize Steven as a former staffer for Mopar Muscle and a hard-core Hemi fanatic. If anybody would catch on to the Landy surprise, it'd be him, right? But Steven was likely focused more on his growing collection of B- and E-Body Street Hemis, so he sat on the car until 1989 before selling it to our man Pat-this being the first time he'd own the car.
Pat had owned a few legitimate Hemi A-Bodies and knew it warranted a restoration because it was-if nothing else-a real Hurst Hemi Dart. So he torched the 10-point rollcage and replaced the butchered firewall, floorpan, and massive tubs with stock sections sliced from a rust-free 10,000-original-mile Slant Six Dart. Then he lost interest and sold the semicorrected car in 1995 to Steve O'Neill of Worcester, Massachusetts.
Steve was involved with Gene's Speed Shop, a legendary Massa-chusetts speed merchant that campaigned a '65 Dodge A990 Race Hemi in the '60s (a car that's recently been restored and is making the car show circuit). Surely, he'd catch a whiff of Dick Landy's famous unlit cigar. No dice. Steve held the car for a year and a half before selling it in 1996 to our Canadian hero Daryl Klassen, who finally identified the car. On a mixed note, it was Daryl who added the minitubs and inboard leaf springs seen on the car today. Even though Pat untubbed the car a few years earlier, Daryl wanted to actually race it in sanctioned competition, so out came the torches. But as we've noted, Daryl never completed the car, and the rolling shell was once again reunited with Pat, its present owner.
When asked if he was freaked out by how his careful floor, firewall, and chassis restoration efforts were partially undone by Daryl, Pat laughs and says he can live with the modifications. "Heck, if it weren't for Daryl, the connection probably wouldn't have been discovered. I sure missed it. Plus, I can get enough tire under it now so it'll really hook if I ever decide to run it down the track." So that's the story of how this famous stick car fell through the cracks, only to be saved from obscurity by a sharp-eyed Canadian. As for the rest of you guys, now is the time to say it: D'oh!
Tech Notes
Who: Pat Goff
What: Dick Landy's '68 Hemi Dart
Where: St. Paul, Minnesota
Engine:
It's not the original 426 Hemi installed in the car back in 1968, but Pat's done a thorough job of replicating a '68-specification Race Hemi, right down to the date-coded block and iron heads. Unlike the '64 and '65 Race Hemis, Chrysler stuck mild (0.484/0.475 lift) Street Hemi solid cams in the '68 Race version and let racers take it from there. A magnesium cross-ram manifold mounts a pair of 735-cfm Holley carbs, and 12.5:1 J&E pistons match the OE slugs. Pat says the horror stories of cross-ram jetting aren't true; he's got box-stock jets in the carbs, and the car runs great from idle to full-throttle.
Ignition:
A super-rare Prestolite blue box transistorized ignition fires platinum-tipped points inside the cast-iron tach drive Race Hemi distributor. That light blue coil might look disco, but it's the real deal.
Exhaust:
Then as now, the car runs Hooker headers. But because the original 13/4 primary size is out of production, Pat settled for the 2-inchers Hooker sells today. Pat didn't bother with the original Hurst-supplied dual-swizzle-stick straight pipes and glasspack bullet mufflers. That stuff was just for show anyhow, and racers junked it before hitting the strip.
Front suspension:
To situate the 700-pound mass of the all-iron Hemi lower in the chassis, Chrysler placed 1-inch-tall spacers between the K-frame and body. To restore factory suspension geometry, Hemi A-Bodies use hand-fabricated extra-length upper control arms. You can see where they were patched together by Hurst back in 1968.
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Here's a look at an as-delivered Hemi Dart in action. Chrysler shipped 'em sans paint to f
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