Sat, 10 May 2008, 12:52 PM Two Guys Having A Lot Of Fun

By Bob Frey Photo copyright 2008 Auto Imagery, Inc.

Jerry Bennett

I'll never forget the first drag race that I even attended. It was in 1964 and it was at Atco Dragway in New Jersey. Since we had heard about how exciting this new sport of drag racing was, I got a couple of my friends together and we went to the track. I will also never forget the first car that I saw go down the famous Atco quarter-mile. It was a 1962 Plymouth that had the name "Hollywood Perkins" on the side. To this day I don't know if that was the driver, a nickname, a Plymouth dealership or what, but that's what I remember being on the side of this beautiful car. And I'll also never forget my impressions of that run. To put it bluntly, I was in awe. I later went over and took a close look at the car and, while I don't remember what engine it had, (I think it was a 413), I do remember the quality of the car was magnificent and it had those classic Mopar push buttons to switch gears. Now, forty-four years later, I'm still excited when I go to the drags and I'm still impressed when I see a beautiful 1962 Plymouth.

As the Stock Eliminator cars rolled into the staging lanes for the 12th annual O'Reilly Midwest Nationals at Gateway International Raceway I was struck by one particular car. It was a fire engine red, 1962 Plymouth Savoy. Unlike the "Hollywood Perkins" car, which was the top of the line Sport Fury body style, this red gem was the basic Savoy, and you could tell how far up the food chain the '62 cars were based on how many tail lights they had. The Savoy had one while the Sport Fury had three. Anyway, this car was classified as a D/SA so I naturally assumed that it was a 413 cubic inch engine. You can imagine my surprise when the driver opened the hood and told me that it was a 383 cubic inch engine with two, four barrel carburetors. "They didn't make many of these," said Jerry Bennett who gets to drive the car. His partner, George Widuch, followed up by saying that the two of them did all the work on the car themselves and they were getting ready to make their first run down the quarter-mile with it when the rains came. "It's been about two and a half years of work and it's been a real labor of love," George said. "We have an idea what it will run and, of course, we have high expectations but we won't know until we actually get to run it." They had to wait out the rain delay but they finally did get a shot at the quarter-mile and they weren't disappointed. And neither were the fans.

Bennett's '79 Aspen

Jerry and George have been more than partners for a long time. "We've been racing together for about twenty years now," George said. "We're more like brothers than partners. He had a 1979 Aspen and I had a '78 Volare that we raced together. I did all the mechanical work on both cars and we both wanted to build a car like this that we can retire with. It was kind of natural to go together and build this car because we both had one of them back in the late 1960's and early '70's. So when Jerry said let's build one I jumped on the bandwagon and we sold both of our cars and that's when we began this project." Selling both of their cars couldn't have been an easy decision because they had a lot of success with their Mopars. Jerry has been to the final round at seven national events, recorded four wins and has finished as high as second in the national championship points chase in 1998. "I started in 1963 racing at the local tracks and then in the mid 1980's I started running the national events. I had a Chrysler LeBaron that I ran for a while and then, in 1993, I built the Aspen and I had a lot of success with that car." His partner, George, has been to three divisional final rounds in recent years but his history and success go back a long way. "I actually started by driving my mom's Buick at the track in the late 1960's. I was supposedly on a date because I wasn't supposed to be racing and I thought my parents didn't know what I was doing." But, as most of us discover sometime in our lives, our parents were always one step ahead of us. "I came home one night and my dad asked me if I won and that's when I knew that he was on to me." From mom's Buick George stepped up to a car that is reminiscent of the new Savoy. "The first race car that I built was a '62 Plymouth Sport Fury. I built it in 1967 and it had the same engine that this one does." A station wagon was next and George set the national record with that car at 12.22 at 112.50 in G/SA. "I had a lot of success with that and then I bought a '71 Barracuda with a 440 six-pack and I won class with that at the Summernationals in 1972 and at Indy that same year." George takes a lot of pride in those wins, especially since a lot of the factory cars, like the 428 Cobra Fords, were also in the class. "I was kind of proud of that since I beat all the California cars, Ron Mancini and guys like that." Beating a group like that would make anyone proud. George also went to a pair of final rounds on the national event level and he won the 1993 Mid-South Nationals in Memphis, Tennessee.

'93 Mid-South Nationals Winnerr Circle

As you can imagine, finding a car like a '62 Plymouth can't be that easy. "We were out in Las Vegas and I got talking to a guy who wanted to but my Aspen and I said that I'm looking for a '62 Savoy and he told me that he had one of them," Jerry said. Finding it was one thing, buying it was another thing. "He didn't want to sell it at first but when I got home I called him and he said that we could have it. It was an old yellow car that had been sitting for about twenty years." After getting the car home the two set out to restore it to vintage condition. "We're still having as much fun as we ever did and that's not bad for a couple of guys who are sixty-three and sixty-eight years old." George and Jerry also take a lot of pride in the looks of the car, especially since they did most of the work on it themselves. "We sent it out to get it dipped and painted but we did most of the work. We did the interior, the carpet, all the hardware and things like that." They were quick to add that finding a lot of the parts wasn't easy. "We actually found a lot of them on e-bay and there were some parts that were available at local junk yards," George said. One look at this car and its hard to believe that the word "junk" could be used at all to describe anything that's on it. And, as fate would have it, Jerry said that he had two sets of the carburetors and intakes for an engine like the 383 and they had been sitting around his shop for about thirty years. "Believe it or not, right after we bought the car someone broke into my shop and stole them so we had to go out and find a new set."

Widuch & Bennett

>From start to finish it took the pair about two and a half years to complete the car and they loved every minute of it. "It's been a real labor of love. In fact, it's been a lot of labor and we have a lot of love for it," George said. When they rolled the car into the NHRA tech lines in St. Louis they said that the tech guys really liked it. "Travis (Miller) liked it a lot. And we were kidding with him about the job we did on the carpets since that's what he does for a living. And the first thing he did was roll down the driver's side window to see if we put the light weight glass in it." They didn't and they left the tech area as one of the favorites to win the best engineered car at the event. Now that they have debuted the car the pair intends to race at about ten races this year. "We'll split them between the division and the national races and we're looking forward to it. After all this work it's nice to finally get it out to the track."

Right now the national record in the D/SA class is 10.52 and that's something the pair has their sights set on. They also have a performance mark in mind about how quick and fast they could go, but at this time they were just waiting to make that first pass down the track to get the proverbial baseline run. A low eleven-second pass was up first and they followed that with a pass of 11.06 and that brought smiles to their faces. And for Jerry and George, they were just the first of many runs in their new 1962 Plymouth. Like they said, "we're just a couple of guys having a lot of fun. We like to think that we're twenty-three and twenty-eight instead of our real ages." It's a good thing for them that a car like this can keep them both young at heart.