Dick Landy

["Gary H." <62to65mopar@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The sight of guys like Landy in one of our favorite year Mopar B body 
cars is what brought a lot of folks to appreciate the '62 to '65 B body 
Mopars. 

Here's a section of an interview Landy gave that sums it up for a lot of 
us:

Dick Landy: I got started drag racing in 1956. I was racing one of the 
four-letter word cars -- Ford - up until 62?. But in the middle of 1962 
Chrysler came out with the 413 cube dual quad crossram wedge, what?s 
come to be known as the ?Max Wedge?. At that time we were doing pretty 
well with our Ford but it was obviously not going to be competitive for 
much longer, we could see the handwriting on the wall - and the Mopar?s 
times! In the middle of the year as soon as they came out with the car I 
switched over to Mopars....In 1962 people from Chrysler, like Bob 
McDaniels and Ronnie Householder saw that I was doing pretty good here 
on the west coast and offered me a car and parts and pieces, to race 
their Chrysler because not many people were racing them. I said ?Well, 
let?s try it out, let?s see what the deal is.? I had heard a lot about 
it. They brought a car out and I ran it, and I realized that in 
dead-stock tune it was going almost as fast as we were going with our 
highly modified "stock" cars at that time. I was just shocked. I had to 
switch. The performance is what I liked. At that time, I said ?Yeah, 
let?s do it.? So, they furnished me with a Plymouth, and I raced that 
all through ?62. Then in ?63, I got the 426" Wedge, I believe they 
called it the Stage 2 at that time. I raced that all through that 
season. Then Dodge came along in ?64 and wanted me too, because I had 
mainly raced on the west coast, so the Dodge dealers up here in Orange 
County wanted to sponsor me and they switched me over to a Dodge. I 
raced the Dodge Wedge that whole year. It was just fabulous. We were 
doing great! We were just kind of whipping everybody, you know, it was 
just remarkable. Chevys and Fords were dead meat, you might say--it was 
great.

Then, in February 1964, they pop up with this Hemi® engine, a creation 
of Tom Hoover and the boys - they have always been my heroes through the 
years. The things I?ve learned from them is just unbelievable and we had 
a good relationship at that point going over to the Hemi. By mid-year, 
we switched over to the Hemi two-door sedan with the aluminum front-end. 
It was fabulous. You know, we really, really dominated out here on the 
coast and it worked out really well. We went back east once with it, ran 
a few exhibition match races, raced at Indianapolis and we qualified, 
and did really well.

Soon, they came back to me and said we?re going to build these real 
odd-ball cars. They had looked at my car and already noticed some of the 
things I had been doing such as moving the wheelbase around a little 
bit. The rules weren?t very strict at that time; they didn?t watch very 
closely for the wheel-base. They decided to build a radical A/FX type 
style car. We didn?t call it an A/FX but the sanctioning bodies did. We 
raced a ?65 Dodge, and man, that was just a killer car. We just totally 
dominated everything that was out here. Unfortunately, NHRA decided that 
they had no stock class for it -- we?d have to run it in a class they?d 
created called A/FX. The people there at Chrysler said they didn?t want 
me to race, they wanted me to go out and go across the country. We?d get 
exposure for the vehicle and not worry about running the NHRA because it 
wasn?t getting enough exposure that way. We could get a lot more 
exposure with these cars, get a lot more exposure for the dealers and 
their parts program at the time. So, we took the car out and did match 
racing, just up and down everywhere. Racing AHRA, which was far more 
lenient with their rules or left the rules the way they were, they 
didn?t change them when they saw the car. Because it was highly 
modified, it had some 15? wheelbase adjustment. So we raced all through 
that circuit there. It was probably the best car I had. Probably the 
most profitable car because of all the match racing we could do with it. 
It was such a wild looking car, everybody wanted to see it. 
[the rest of the interview continues on
http://www.dodgeforum.com/m_117310/tm.htm]


Also, there is a Web page on the 62-65 site about Landy's '64.
http://www.1962to1965mopar.ornocar.com/landys64.html

Gary H. 


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