Vehicle Description
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5L Chevrolet V8*
475HP
Borg Warner T-10 4 speed transmission
8x15in American Racing Wheels
J56 Steel Calipers Disc Brakes
Holley 41 50 carburetors with Edelbrock intake manifold
<font size = "4">Class Winner, 24 Hours of Daytona, 1969
Third Overall, 24 Hours of Daytona, 1969
Carried Jerry Titus to his last victory
If luck plays any role in the outcome of an automobile race, that
good fortune also tends to grace those best prepared to exploit its
bounty. Jerry Titus, a seasoned and successful racer, knew this
dynamic well, and arrived at the 1969 24 Hours of Daytona with a
fully prepared Trans Am racecar - once a Camaro but now wearing the
panels from Pontiac's Firebird - ready to enjoy whatever luck might
accompany his entry in Touring 5000, one of nine classes and 63
cars that would form the grid for the run around the clock.
By the end of those 24 hours, Titus and co-driver Jon Ward would
demonstrate the power of preparation and perseverance - and benefit
from a whole lot of luck - to earn not only top spot in class but
third overall behind a pair of Lola T70s. That their roaring chunk
of American iron outlasted three score of faster, lighter and more
exotic machinery to reach the podium seems unlikely enough, but the
story of how this car even came to be makes it unique among retired
winners of the Florida classic.
Jerry Titus was at the apex of his racing career at the end of the
Sixties, having helped capture SCCA Trans Am titles for Carroll
Shelby's Mustang effort in 1966 and, more notably, in 1967, when he
won four rounds of the fiercely fought contests. The following
season, however, was not kind to Titus, as reliability issues
limited him to a single victory, and there was growing tension
between him and Shelby.
Titus was known as a tough competitor who could extract more from a
car than it had to give, but he was not simply a quick and
courageous shoe. His background as a student at Julliard (his
trumpet was good enough to jam with Jack Teagarden's orchestra) and
then as a mechanic and a journalist had broadened his ambitions,
and late in the 1968 season he announced he would be leaving Shelby
at year's end to partner in a new Pontiac race effort with Canadian
Terry Godsall. Shelby responded by firing Titus, but not before he
recorded a DNF at September's Riverside round in his last drive in
a Ford - and that is where this tale begins to take shape.
Pontiac needed to promote its Firebird, and there was no better
place than in the hugely popular Trans Am series, where the new TG
Racing team would compete against its showroom foes the Camaro and
the Mustang in Class 2 for cars with engines between 2.0- and 5.0
liters. The chief problem was Pontiac didn't yet have a properly
sized powerplant, and Titus had yet to procure a Firebird from
Pontiac's slowly developing effort, so he was left without a ride
for the final race of the year.
Godsall and Titus came up with a quick solution. The plan to fill
the gap was hatched at Riverside, where Titus had watched privateer
and friend Jon Ward take his self-built Camaro to an astonishing
fourth place in a field boasting such names as Donohue, Revson,
Follmer, Bucknum, and Adamowicz. Also in the mix was a Firebird
entered by Godsall and driven by Craig Fisher - and under the hood
was a 304-cubic-inch Chevrolet V-8 massaged by Al Bartz and fitted
with the Z-28 engine's cross-ram manifold. Known to few at the
time, certain Pontiacs sold in Canada were offered with Chevrolet
engines, so it was, in the strict sense of the SCCA rules, possible
for a Chevrolet-powered Pontiac to run in the Trans Am.
An astute mechanic and studious reader of the rules, Titus saw an
opportunity and struck a deal with Ward to buy the Camaro. The two
would continue together in the car's American racing career - which
was astonishingly short - but only after Ward's Chevrolet received
an entirely new Pontiac Firebird body.
Titus and Ward charged through this loophole, and by that season's
final race a month later at Pacific Raceways in Kent, Washington,
the Ward Camaro gridded as the TG Racing Pontiac Firebird. It was a
wild time around the TG shop during that month as Titus and crew
struggled to fit the Firebird's panels. Jerry's son, Rick (who
later also would become a driver/journalist), helped out and
recalls how difficult it was convert the car's exterior, which even
included the crafting of custom door hinges.
Though crucial to acceptance by the stewards, the new panels didn't
make the car any faster, so Titus swapped out the original motor
for an Al Bartz-built 302. One of the lesser known giants of engine
tuning, Bartz began his professional life with Hilborn Injection
and then Traco Engineering before opening his own shop in 1966. It
was once said that Bartz-powered cars all vied for first; everyone
else competed to be second - and that's how the race in Washington
was playing out. Titus had set a lap record with the "new" car and
was in the lead when engine failure sidelined him.
Titus now had to direct his energies toward building up a six-car
TG Racing team with new Firebirds (still with Chevy power; Pontiac
engineers had yet to solve problems with its 303 cubic inch V-8),
and during the off-season the Titus/Ward car became a sort of test
and development mule. Most notable of the car's updates was a new
steering system that was one of the first applications of so-called
"zero-bump-steer" technology.
The Titus/Ward friendship, however, led to one more outing in the
unique hybrid, which had been resold to Ward - the Daytona 24 hours
race in early February, 1969. Titus agreed to share driving duties
with Ward, so, supported by a skeleton crew and presumably few
spare parts, the duo took on some of the world's most accomplished
cars, including a Porsche team that had swept the Daytona podium in
1968.
Qualifying sixteenth, the team could only watch as the five Porsche
works 908Ls traded leads, followed by the Lolas, a couple of aging
Ford GT-40s, and a slew of 911s. By late Saturday night, mechanical
ills and accidents had plagued the leaders, and suddenly the Fords
headed the field. Sunday morning saw more of the top contenders
fall off the pace or drop out. Meanwhile, the Titus/Ward car had
soldiered on solidly until a rear-end failure threatened to end
their race in the middle of the night. Without a spare on hand the
team had to improvise, and according to Jon Ward's son, someone
cruised through the Daytona parking lot to find a Camaro so they
might "borrow" the rear end out of the car. A note reportedly was
left on the donor's windshield to the effect that the team would be
around later to settle the deal.
Given the race's high rate of attrition, and troubles for the
contending Lolas, it was entirely possible the Pontiac would have
taken an overall victory were it not for the delay to find and swap
in a replacement rear end. As it was, the Titus/Ward car finished
just six laps behind the second-place Lola and 35 laps in arrears
of the winning Penske Sunoco Lola of Donohue/Parsons/Bucknum. It
was undoubtedly a relieved group of sanctioning officials when the
cobbled-together American Pony Car failed to earn the top step.
After Daytona the car would never run again in an American series.
Daytona also would be the last time Jerry Titus won a race. Though
he enjoyed a good 1969 Trans Am season in the new Firebirds, the
1970 season did not start out wel...for more information please
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