Hello, It’s Me Again!

1 year ago Gallery Owners + Clubs

There was a reunion of sorts earlier this month at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals (MCACN) event in Chicago. It may not have been with a long-lost cousin that you just located on the internet or a sibling you never knew you had. The reunion was between a man and a machine. The two travelled the country together in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the height of drag racing’s factory wars. Over time, the man moved on and his priorities changed, similar to what many of us go through. The story of Jerome Williams, business partner Thornton Hall and their 1968 Super Stock HEMI^® Dart is not unique. If you’re over 50 years of age and have owned a muscle car or racecar, you’ve probably had to sell it for one reason or another. School, kids, bills, maybe even just trying to get out of debt. Whatever the reason or reasons, we’re sure you’ve had seller’s remorse as the new buyers loaded your pride and joy on a trailer and disappeared into the distance. You felt upset and lonely, and assumed you’d never be reunited with the machine you shared so much with. While street cars back then suffered a slow death being driven daily on roads coated with snow and salt during the winter, racecars also had a hard life. From backyard surgeries of cutting open the wheel wells and hacking them up for even more tire clearance, to dented firewalls and trans tunnels from when the clutch exploded at 7,500 rpm. It’s a fact that old racecars were ridden hard and put away wet only to be pushed in a garage, never to be seen again. But Jerome Williams got to see a very special car he was very familiar with returned to its former glory during the 2022 MCACN show.

To better understand how this reunion came about, we need to go back to the late 1960s when Jerome and Thornton were just two avid Mopar_® guys living in Cleveland and looking to go drag racing. They were both regular readers of all the major performance car publications back in the day like Hot Rod, Car Craft, Super Stock, and other magazines whose content was geared toward Detroit’s muscle car offerings and drag racing. The two friends got wind that Chrysler was going to build a limited number of HEMI engine-powered Dodge Darts and Plymouth Barracudas for drag racing competition, so they partnered up and ordered a Dart from Ed Goldie Dodge located on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. Both Jerome and Thornton were just regular blue-collar working-class guys, but if they put their money together, they could afford to go racing with the latest go-fast machinery to come from Chrysler in 1968. After securing their order from the dealer and financing from a local bank in Cleveland, Jerome and Thornton had to be creative when meeting with the loan manager as the car they were financing was not meant to be driven on streets, even sporting a warning label stating “Sold as Is” and “Without a Warranty.”

Once the paperwork was completed, signed and the dealer had his check for $4663.00 plus tax, Jerome and Thornton headed north to Detroit to pick up their freshly acquired HEMI Dart at the Chrysler marshaling lot located across the street from the Lynch Road Assembly. Even though the HEMI Darts and Barracudas were turnkey cars, the engineers recommended the new owners limited the run time on the engine before they could be fully checked out. That included removing the intake manifold and inspecting the internals. Even though some of these Super Stock racecars were shipped to dealers, Chrysler encouraged the new owners to come up to Detroit and trailer their new HEMI Darts and Barracudas back home. It made more sense than risking these limited production racecars being damaged while being loaded and unloaded on transporters, or over-eager car porters winging the finicky 426 Race HEMI engine-powered vehicle into the stratosphere and blowing up the engine.

Once Jerome and Thornton got the Dart back to their garage in Cleveland, they immediately went to work and yanked the 426 HEMI engine to have it blueprinted per Chrysler’s recommendations. While the engine was out, and since these cars were partially finished when they left Hurst, the guys had a coat of Candy Apple Red paint sprayed over the shabby-looking half-primed body shell. Once everything was complete, Jerome, who had the driving honors, and Thornton, who tuned the wild HEMI engine and sorted out the chassis, headed to the drag strip. The two friends raced their brand-new HEMI Dart in AHRA and NHRA competition at tracks across the Midwest in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

During this period, the Dart was constantly being refined and modified to race in the heads-up AHRA Super Stock/Experimental class or NHRA’s new Pro Stock class for 1970. The look of the HEMI Dart also changed, as a new paint scheme that had hues of Purple and Pearl paint along with a really cool “cobweb” design was applied late in 1969 prior to the 1970 race season. While having some on-track success, Jerome and Thornton were just two independent racers with no factory support. Occasionally, the contingency sponsors would throw a case of oil or a set of new headers their way, but the two friends ate most of the expenses racing in a highly competitive “heads-up” class.

By 1973, the cost of staying competitive was increasing and Jerome’s partner was going through a divorce. Those factors and others were a sign for Jerome to sell the HEMI Dart. He didn’t want to, but it was time, and the car was sold to a gentleman and fellow Cleveland resident Bob Porter late in 1973. Porter ran the Dart for a few years and painted it black and yellow around 1974. By 1975, Porter eventually retired the Dart, but before he set it off to languish in the garage, he pulled the potent HEMI engine and installed it in a 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda. Here, the Dart sat for decades almost forgotten until lifelong Mopar gearhead and former shop teacher Dave Dixon heard about the HEMI Dart.

“I’ve wanted one of these cars for a long time and we found it five miles from my mom’s house in Ohio,” laughed Dixon. It was one of Dixon’s former students, Mark Janaky, who happens to be an expert on these rare and historical 1968 HEMI Barracuda and Dart Super Stockers, that actually found the car back in 2004. “Being a racecar its whole life, it was in decent shape. It had only been ‘mini-tubbed’ and had lots of modifications, but it did come with a HEMI block, the trans was in box, and the DANA 60 rear axle was blown. For over a decade, I chased parts for this car all over the Midwest, but I met a lot of nice people and even some of my drag racing heroes who raced these cars back then. But it was Mark Janaky that made all the connections all the way down to the original owner and we’re now good friends!”

After the bulk of the parts were amassed, Dixon chose Troy Angelly Restorations to handle the chore of this extensive restoration. “We’ve been restoring vintage muscle cars for 19 years, but this was the first Super Stock we’ve ever restored,” said Angelly. “There’s a lot of different things on these Super Stock cars that aren’t on regular production cars. The big challenge was figuring out the correct finishes and what these cars had and did not have.” Undaunted, Angelly is already working on another Super Stock HEMI Dart in his shop.

For Jerome, the reunion with his rare HEMI Dart was somewhat bittersweet. His former partner, racing buddy and friend, Thornton Hall, will never see the team’s racecar restored to its former glory, as he passed away years ago. But Dave Dixon, the Dart’s current owner, will continue to show this wonderful example of Dodge’s determination to dominate Super Stock while the names “Hall & Williams,” proudly painted on the doors, will let world know the car’s true heritage