Vehicle Description
Original owner, Mike Rutherford had planned to buy this GTO and
have his good friend Arnie Beswick replace the stock Ram Air 400
engine with a 428/425hp unit. Because of his busy racing schedule,
Beswick advised Rutherford to order his new GTO from Ace Wilson's
Royal Pontiac, whose elite crew would handle the transformation.
Word of the project apparently spread, because the car's arrival at
Royal coincided with a visit from Popular Hot Rodding magazine
photographer Lee Kelley, who took the now famous cover shot of
Royal's Milt Schornack and Dave Warren hoisting the 428 into the
car's engine bay. Rutherford, who owned the car until 1999, raced
it extensively on the street for the first couple of years, with
Beswick tuning the car for the occasional foray to the drag strip,
where the two shared turns at the wheel. Beswick's search for more
performance in the GTO began even before its arrival at Royal, when
he secured a pre-production set of Ram Air II cylinder heads, which
were bolted to the 428 short block prior to its installation. He
took the car to JR Headers, who installed a custom-fabricated set
of tubes, and he modified the front and rear suspension for
improved launching, always respecting Rutherford's caveat that the
car not be cut. As Beswick recalled in a feature article on the car
in the June 2009 issue of Muscle Car Review, Even though it was
more of a street car than a race car, it did make numerous trips to
some Midwestern drag strips, including Cordova, IL, and Kahoka, MO.
The "Boss Man" lettering was put on the car when Rutherford felt it
had paid its dues and earned the title. The Boss Man Royal Bobcat
GTO was eventually acquired by noted muscle car collector Mike
Guarise. A frame-off restoration was performed using primarily
refinished parts original to the car, including the 4-speed manual
transmission and the 428ci V8 engine that appeared on Popular Hot
Rodding cover photo. In fact, that shot was re-created for two
magazine articles when Schornack and Warren flew in to help install
the engine to complete the restoration.
