History of the "Customer Cars"

In 1974 Greenwood introduced the first wide body car at the Detroit Auto Show. This "mule" was the basis for his ongoing suspension and chassis development. Immediately dubbed the "Batmobile" by the press, this car was a rolling advertisement for Greenwood’s accomplishment and vision as a race car constructor. Serious racers lined-up to buy one of his "customer" cars, a group of twelve series-built coil-over designs for IMSA and SCCA.

There are a number of interesting features on the Greenwood customer cars that other racers could not always reproduce. Basically, you could figure out what John had done by simply looking through the Greenwood catalogue. John always used race-proven parts. So he would have people build parts for him and if they worked out, he sold them. You'll notice that his dual master cylinder and Hurst/Airheart brakes are a standard. Also, Emory Donaldson of FT Racing built the needle bearing A-arm bushings, steering arm parts, trailing arm bushings and the like. Just as an aside, Emory also assembled chassis #12.

It is important to also recognize that John Greenwood hired many highly skilled people who were just starting out in their careers. Bob Riley did a lot of the chassis and suspension pieces and Ron Fournier welded-up the first six chassis. A lot of John's fiberglass parts would be built by American Custom Industries (ACI) or others. Some of the fabrication for full customer cars would be contracted-out to John's specifications and then he would also do some of the work in his shops. No matter what he did, however, it was always meticulous. You don't get many better parts or designs.

One of the fine details you’ll notice on customer cars that differs from Greenwood's mule is that on the mule, originally, the headers exited the engine compartment under the front fender. Greenwood designed a cutout in the fender to help the bodywork clear the headers. Headers were designed with the tubes aligned in a flat plane to emerge in that opening. The fender cutout was duplicated in the molds for future cars but the header arrangement changed between the mule and the customer cars. The customer cars had two jack supports on both sides of the body (under the door) and the headers dumped out between them. The fenders with openings were still used but the cutout area was redundant.

The first three chassis were special. These were destined to be the "team" cars. They were acid dipped and welded by Ron Fournier. Only two were actually built as cars. The third never progressed past a complete chassis.

When I arrived (at the Greenwood shop to work), the widebody style had just been introduced. There were a number of customer cars after that; these were still full-frame cars. I guess I painted a few of them. The cars that really stick in my mind, however, are the two tubeframe cars. Now these cars generate a lot of comment. So I want you to understand that what I am saying is my opinion and I am not trying to say anything negative about anyone. But for my money, these were Bob Riley chassis and suspension designs.

Bob was still employed at Ford at this time. His shop (Protofab) was closely associated with Jack Rousch and they were turning out some pretty innovative stuff. As I recall, the blueprints were converted to reality by a small group, contracted to John, called AVC Engineering. AVC Engineering was really Charlie Selix (machine work); Bob Urban and Gary Pratt (welding/fabrication). Charlie had this really old lathe that he had acquired back in 1941 I think. He could machine anything. Charlie Pratt later went on to join up with Jim Miller to form Pratt & Miller Engineering, Wixom, MI.

I worked on the body work for both the original Greenwood car and the John Paul, Sr. car. The first one I did in John's shop and the second one I did directly for John Paul, in his shops. I remember when I was working on the body work for the first one, Bob Riley would give me advice. He would drop by to see what I was doing and he would say" radius that wheel well a bit more, or leave that part straight." Things like that. He was really a brilliant engineer and had a handle on a lot of different things.

The first car appeared in white with a "City of Chicago" skyline on the hood, as I recall. Now this was an obvious reflection of the Mancuso sponsorship. I know that it was photographed in a two-tone silver but I think the white body was the first paint scheme. The second car was sold directly from Protofab to John Paul, Sr. They recommended me to put the bodywork together so that's how I came to work on that car a year or so after I left Greenwood. The car was really well-prepared. They had the big CanAm all aluminum engines from the ex-Shadow team. They were built by John Muir in California and put out about 770 HP with the Kinsler injection system, according to the dyno sheets that came with them. I remember that they also came in these really trick crates with "eyes" painted on them (a Shadow team theme). I think Don Nichols was the Shadow team owner. That car made its debut at Road Atlanta in April of 1978. It moved along quite nicely.