TUNNEL PORT RA V

[Charles]

Milt Schornack tested the prototype GTO Judge at Miami Dragway. This car was painted orange. With half a tank of gas the car weighted 3640 pounds. The 800 CFM Holley was a major improvement on the old quadrajet carb. Though the intake manifold was a poor (tuned for 5000 RPM plus) design as a result of the low hood line requirement. Doug Thorley provided custom headers and the car was equipped with an M-21 and 4.88 gears. An aluminum flywheel did not prove up to the task however. The half dozen passes made started out with a 12.42 @ 113 run. The times continued to improve with a best time of 11.86 @ 116 MPH. A production run of 1500 cars was suggested and these would have the better M-22 transmission and heavy duty rear end parts.
"CARS" magazine wrote about another RA V car, tested in Florida with mfg. plate (GM 0750). This GTO was said to be the prototype for the line. They made excuses about it's poor performance saying the motor was tired but said it had 11 second potential.
There were even more exotic engines that Pontiac was testing and looking at for production. Included were SOHC and DOHC versions of future Pontiac engines. The energy crisis helped to kill those ideas.