This is a photograph taken in 1964 of a 1963 split-window Chevrolet Corvette Stingray drifting around a hairpin corner during a hill climb race in Pennsylvania.

Let that sink in.

This is one of the most collectable American sports cars of all time being driven flat-out in its day. Put on some Dick Dale music and look at that photo some more.

John Bolton

I recently sat down with the former owner and racer of that '63 Stingray, John Sterling Bolton. Bolton is a tall gentleman with an easy voice who raced in The Pennsylvania Hillclimb Association from 1964 to 1966 and was the association's president in '64. He ran factory production class with the Stingray and modified class in a Devin Mongoose.

Hill climb events still exist in Pennsylvania and around the east coast, but not at the numbers they once did. Nowadays, Hill climbers are lumped in with Sports Car Club of America (S.C.C.A.) rules. Races are still run in Reading, Pennsylvania (search "Pagoda Hill Climb" on YouTube and you'll find plenty of GoPro videos). But these races are still nothing like they were during hill climbing's glory days in America, which is exactly what I wanted to talk about with Bolton.

"By 1965, there were twelve hill climb races every year just in Pennsylvania." Bolton says. "Whole towns would come out: Hershey, Green Mountain, Weatherly, Fleetwood, and Jefferson Hill. It was a boon for the local economy, restaurants, motels, gas stations [laughs]. Everyone would make money when the racers came to town."

Bolton isn't exaggerating when he says the whole town came out. "It really was free family entertainment," he says. "Folks would line the sides of roads, especially the corners, and watch us go by. That's me smoking all four tires around the corner in that photo."

Bolton's 1963 Stingray had a 327 cubic-inch (5.35-liter) V8 that produced 360 hp (old rating system) with a Rochester Pneumatic Mechanical Fuel Injection. This was mated to a Borg Warner four-speed manual transmission with a 2.20 first gear and 1-to-1 fourth. Behind the wheels were drum brakes with center metallic shoes. The car also had a rear roll bar and an "aircraft-style" racing harness (recommended but not required for P.H.A. rules).

What the car did not have, however, was power steering, which meant conquering hairpins like the one pictured here took effort. "You shuffled your hands a lot on the wheel," Bolton says. "Corvettes with power steering had faster steering, but mine had manual steering. You just had to get your hands ready for the corner."

In the grand tradition of industrious racers finding ways to sneakily gain advantage (cheating, some might call it), Bolton and other Corvette owners found creative ways to modify their stock tires, which were only 5.5 inches wide on the '63 Vette.

"That wasn't much, so what we would do is, we would get Buick wheels which were six inches wide," Bolton says. "You would cut out the inner wheel from a Buick wheel and do the same with the Corvette wheel. Both wheels had the same inner diameters, so the Buick's six-inch-wide wheel [barrel] would fit on the Corvette spinner-inner wheel. You could run wider tires that way and no one could tell. Even if a race inspector said something, I could argue that it was still factory because it was all GM parts, and six-inch-wide wheels were available for a 'Vette, but they were very expensive. It was cheaper to make your own instead."

As for the type of tires that went on those modified wheels, Bolton says he preferred Atlas Bucrons made by Essa. "They were rain track tires, and after 5000 miles they would be toast," he says. "We always ran rain tires because you got a little longer life out of them, and they had tread that could handle un-prepped roads."

John Bolton

Corvettes with 327 Rochester fuel-injected engines were popular with racers, but according to Bolton, once Chevy's 396 and 427 big blocks came out, the old Rochester 'Vettes just didn't make sense.

"Those big blocks made so much power from double four-barrel carburetors, that the extra hassle from maintaining pneumatic mechanical injection wasn't worth the extra 10 hp," he says. "And then the AC Cobras started showing up for hill climbs in '63 and '64, and that was the end. They were too light and made the same power as my Stingray, but only weighed a little over a ton."

To take on the Cobras, GM-loyal hill climbers found new ways to stay competitive. "We had the answer, and it was The Mongoose," Bolton says.

The Mongoose, also called the Devin Mongoose or just The Goose, was a small-volume kit car produced by Jack Chapple from Ashland, Pennsylvania. Think of a Devin Mongoose as a shortened Corvette C2 with a sourced body. The small race car used a Devin body shell from California, but underneath that 90-lb fiberglass body was a 1962 Corvette front end; a 1964 Corvette independent rear end; 4.11 gearing; and a 350 cubic-inch Chevy V8 with a roller-cam, Hillborn fuel injectors, and a 7000 rpm redline.

The car had no speedometer.

At one point in our conversation, Bolton launches into a story that perfectly encapsulates how popular hill climbing was at the time and just how much freedom racers were given on public roads.

The event was promoted very heavily by a congressman. He went to the police and said, 'leave my hill climb guys alone.'

"One race weekend, our tech area was in a city park, but the designated race road was outside of town a few miles," Bolton says. "So, we had to drive back and forth. The event was promoted very heavily by a congressman. He went to the police and said, 'leave my hill climb guys alone.' With our race cars, which had no license plates or anything, we got to drive on any road in the area! Oh, did we draw a crowd doing that!

Not having to worry about police came in extra handy on this day. Bolton was going to run the Mongoose, and he had a timing issue. The builder had set the timing for 3000 rpm, but that was in the tech area while the car was standing still. Bolton was worried about whether the car would run right going uphill. "So the builder said, 'let's go for a ride'," Bolton says. "So we went out on the main highway with The Goose, and he had nothing to hold on to because he was in the passenger seat, and he said, 'take it easy, Bolton!' I was up around 3000 to 5000 rpm in fourth gear, and we were sailin' and running good. That's just an example how we were running on public streets and the police didn't bother."

John Bolton

Since he had no speedometer, I ask Bolton if he knew how fast The Goose was going.

"Hmm. Well, The Goose's gearing got us 19 and ½ miles per hour for every 1000 rpm, and we were turning about 5000 rpm at the highest . . . " he says as he trailing off in thought.

I start to offer the calculator on my phone.

"97.5 miles per hour," he says before he needs it.

The sky was dark outside of the gas-station eatery where I'd met Bolton for the interview. I knew he had a long drive home and a big snowstorm was coming. I didn't want to keep him, but I had one last burning question.

"That 1963 split-window Stingray you owned . . ."

"Yes?" Bolton says, cutting me off while smirking, as if he knows what I'm about to ask.

"Do you still have it?"

Bolton looks down at the table and then out through the window and into the dark, mostly empty parking lot. His mind appears to be weighing two possibilities.

"I sold it at the end of 1964 to buy an engagement ring," he says, looking back at me.

I simply nod. So does he.

Imagine what it would have been like to be at a hill cimb event in 1964. An epic one, where the racers were free to drive anywhere. Picture all classes of race cars driving through Saturday morning traffic in springtime while families are getting ready to go to Wanamaker's Department store, or have a barbecue, or walk to a church event—very Norman Rockwell.

Then, from the city park, like an earthquake, rumbles the sound of lopey hot cams. Kids run down stoops and front yards to watch magnificent beasts breathe fire right next to family cars like Ford Fairlanes. For these youngsters, this would have been their first encounter with real race cars, and here they were on the street, not on a newspaper or postcard from Nevada. They were right in front of you; you could reach out and touch them if you had the nerve. Their hoods shaking, straight pipes spitting errant flames as drivers pumped accelerator pedals to clear out fuel from gushing carburetors.

The kids, confused at first, knew they were seeing greatness—something so beyond them and their mathematics homework. AC Cobras, Stingrays, and oddballs like a Devin Mongoose pause at the stop sign on the corner and then go booming out of town toward the mountains.

I wonder how many future gearheads John Bolton made that day.

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