What happened to the Mulholland "King of the Hill" RSR?

[LateBrakeU2]

Originally posted by Pat_in_L.A.
Anybody looks like a midget next to Dave. When my son was in elementary school, he used to remember Dave as "Abraham Lincoln". Others remembered him a the Peter Townsend look alike.

Well..almost anybody

It was painfull watching him fold that frame into his RX3 RS car.

[Pat_in_L.A.]

Originally posted by LateBrakeU2
Well..almost anybody

So didn't you and TK run formula cars? How did you tall guys pass tech inspection when it came time to pass the roll bar clearance requirements?

[LateBrakeU2]

Originally posted by Pat_in_L.A.
So didn't you and TK run formula cars? How did you tall guys pass tech inspection when it came time to pass the roll bar clearance requirements?

How they used to measure clearance was a string from the rear hoop to the front bulkhead.I used to just exhale and try to compress my spine and barely cleared.When I had(one of) my big one(s) in the old turn two at Laguna one result was my helmet being ground down to the foam core..yep fit just right!

In the Jim Russell school Van Diemans I would just pull the seat and put a pad against the tank(pretty sure Tommy had to also)..that worked until I split a seam on the pace lap and had to run the race in a pool of petrol.Molted lke a snake for two weeks after..I'd rather have two root canals than go through that again

[KevinP73]

Bought at a yard sale because of the Burt Reynolds content.

[CRE]

Originally posted by Jeff Hail
Seems the Pelican thread is not the only place we are known:

http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2007/06/28/street-racing-in-the-80s-mulholland-drive/

ahem, sounds like Dave B and me one rainy afternoon.

[CRE]

Originally posted by LateBrakeU2
Well..almost anybody

It was painfull watching him fold that frame into his RX3 RS car.

At least Dave W. was easy to find in the pits! Head and shoulders above everyone.

Yes, I met Dave W. in the RX-3 days where we ran against one another. Later he asked me to drive for him in the new SCCA Endurance Series for showroom stock cars. I was honored and drove a couple of years for him. We had a pretty cool team of mechanics and co-drivers.

After I left John Norris another CRE guy came on board. I often wondered if Dave knew he was replacing a CRE driver with another CRE drivers. Maybe he did and wanted another strong night driver. Norris and I loved the night stints. Most often posting our and the teams fastest time in the middle of the night or early morning hours. Go figure.


I left Wolin's team to run a Corvette with the Sanchez Brothers, Volvo's and Mazda's for John Overton along with Lance Stewart. That was a fun time in racing when a lot of aspiring race drivers, due to the two Endurance series sanctioned by IMSA and the SCCA., were given a chance to get some exposure and seat time.

Those series helped a lot of the guys move up such as Tommy Kendall, Max Jones, Andrew Pilgram, Parker Johnston, Mitch Wright, the Archer Brothers, Lance, John, hone their skills and to move onto winning some impressive races and championships.

And it was guys like Dave Wolin and John Overton to name just two who helped start many on their way.

[Banning]

A friend named Nick found this reference to King of the Mountain on the back of the Contents page from European Car magazine May 2006. I couldn't believe that they elevated that movie to the status of being the last real car movie of our time. I can believe Le Mans being in that category but not King of the Mountain.

I have heard that in Australia King of the Mountain has become a cult classic and the Australian race by the same title has been won repeatedly by Pete Brock.

I think that making a good movie about Mulholland is still possible, as long as there are enough of us left to make sure that it is accurate. That's why I am making the effort to make The Mulholland Experience more complete and the project with Victor very truthful and accurate. We want our stories to live on and be remembered as they happened, not as Hollywood would have it, like King of the Mountain. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that we are all happy that they made a movie about Mulholland racing. It's just that myself and a couple of my good Mulholland buddies really didn't appreciate the way that Charley was portrayed (played by Dennis Hopper). They were disrespectful, and incorrectly showed his character as being unstable, insane-like, aggressive, loud, obsessive, and in-polite. He wasn't like that at all. I had the opportunity to talk to him several times while he helped me with engine problems with my Camaro. Charley was mellow, nice, knowledgeable, helpful, polite and with a good demeanor. Also kind of quiet. His mellow attitude may have changed dramatically when he was driving/blazing thru Mulholland, but this is necessary in order to be called the undisputed King of the Hill. Rest in peace.

[TooTall]

In the image above I see mention of the movie "No Mans Land". I think Dave B. can tell us something about that one. If I remember right, they used the TRE shop and Dave's Targa (the Tanga) in the film.

Also, in Oz, "King of the Mountain" refers to the driver who wins the Bathurst 1000 touring car race, the biggest race in Oz, like our Daytona 500. The Bathurst track runs up one side of Mt. Panorama and down the other. The downhill section is scarry fast! Do a Youtube search and you'll find plenty of clips. And the Pete Brock mentined above is not the Pete Brock of BRE/Shelby fame but the Australian touring car ace who was tragically killed last year in a classic car rally. Ironically, he was driving a replica Cobra Daytona coupe, the original of course being designed by the other Pete Brock. The Pete Brock of BRE fame is alive and well but did spend some time in the hospital earlier this year. He was photographing an off-road race and one of the cars went off course and hit him.

Oh, and it seems the Ferrari Chat forum has found us also....

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=157980

Ciao babies,
Kurt O.

[Banning]

Since we have mentioned Charley several times lately in this thread, here is an excerpt from The Mulholland Experience about Charley.


There was everybody else and then there was Charley Woit the
undisputed “King of the Hill.” Charley was an animated soft-spoken
character with more than a hint of craziness in his demeanor. He was a
top-notch mechanic at a shop on Crescent Heights and Third. Charley
drove with one hand on the wheel and the other wrapped around a
beer can, tossing the empties behind him. He started out his
Mulholland racing career in the early 1960’s. He modified and drove a
1951 GMC step-side pick-up truck. He had other cars also like a 1955
Ford station wagon, a Hillman Minx and another old souped-up truck.
He raced them all and was never reported to have lost a race, not one.


Tim Considine reflected on Charley’s mechanical expertise. “What
was so amazing about Charley was that he modified his cars so well.
They were little **** boxes, not racing cars. He didn’t have any
Corvettes when I knew him. He had these hot rods, fixed up, unlikely
cars. They were quick, really quick. I stopped and I looked at his cars,
the more I think about it, I think his car was a Ford. It was a 6 cylinder.
The radiator was in the back, you opened up the truck, and you could
see that he had sunk the radiator down. I then heard another one, a
Simca, I think. He moved the engine back to establish weight distribution.
He sat in the backseat and steered the car. He moved everything
back so he could drive from the backseat. That was the extent Charley
would go to be quick up there. He had very good car control. He used
every single inch of the road. Blind turn, the shoulder, it just didn’t
matter to him. It is okay if you can see around the corner, but it is not
okay around blind turns. I stuck to him on the back bumper of his car.
We would have fun, he was quick, it was good, bloody good, but I
didn’t take chances like he did. He would try to get around somebody.
He was crazed! He wasn’t just crazy he was very quick, and very good.


I used to tell him, ‘Charley get on a racetrack and forget about this ****.
It is where you can really do it, and everybody is going that same way.’
Charley was a true legend, even when I knew him in the early 60’s.
He was just amazing!”


Charley was quoted saying, “The fun was running “Sunset Sports”
in their Jaguars, MG’s, Corvettes and Porsches, and rubbing their noses
in the shame of losing to a maniac in a truck.” Charley was quite a
character. The legend of Crazy Charley grew. Everybody who ever
raced Charley will remember it for the rest of their lives. One such
veteran of the 60’s era, who became a successful racecar engineer, and a
professional racecar driver put it this way, “Crazy Charley, he raced a
pick-up truck that terrified everybody. Nobody wanted to get near him
cause you were likely to get run over a cliff. At the very least, you’d get
hit by the flying beer cans in his slipstream.” Charley continued
collecting his fellow racers carnage through out the 60’s. One such
victim was the very famous actor Steve McQueen. Charley was quoted
saying, “A lot of us had real crummy cars that we fixed up and then
went out and beat people like Steve McQueen who had real expensive
hot rods. It matters more how you drive the car than how much
money you had in the bank.” Tim Considine confirmed this story by
adding, “Charley blew off Steve McQueen up there. Steve was in his
Lusso Ferrari.” (Dick Guldstrand also remembered something about
that story. He could not give us the details, but he heard Charley
talking about it.) I heard from Charley that he never lost a race. The
scant times I saw him up on Mulholland, I was usually driving also.
I never saw anybody quicker that him. I played with him a few times
up there. He was quick, I was also quick, but he would push it through
those blind turns, so I couldn’t keep up with him. He was good and he
knew it. Charley was absolutely fearless to the point of being stupid.
He would just go around blind corners. He went flying off the hill
every now and then. He was scared from his terrible accidents up
there.”

[Banning]

Here is some more very interesting information concerning Charley(from The Mulholland Experience).


Racing was heavy on Wednesday and Friday nights. It was reported
that several dozen cars would run during the course of one evening.
The MRA members even had business cards printed up as a joke that
read “Mulholland International Raceway, any night from dusk til dawn.
This card admits one.” They would go down to cruise night on Ventura
Boulevard and hand out the cards to the drag racers and bate them up
the hill to run and crash.


In the late 60’s Mulholland Charley Woit acquired a used 1966
original low-performance big-block 427 fastback Corvette. He replaced
the front springs with cut-down station wagon coils. He also stiffened
up the rear suspension, so that if you pushed on the fender the car did
not budge. That was against the policy of the times.Most of the racers
liked a soft feel so the car could handle the bumps and have greater feel
in the corners.

Dick Guldstrand remembered Charley with fond
admiration, he set-up Charley’s Corvette. “We conversed a lot about it. Every once in awhile, he would bring it by for alignments and for
changes as we developed new parts that he wanted to try.We knew the
car quite well and we knew Charley very well.We set Charley’s car up
with all new Guldstrand parts.”With that blue ‘66 Vette, Charley
continued to dominate over all who even dared to challenge him. All
they saw was the dust from his huge tires tearing up the pavement and
his rear-end dancing all over Mulholland. Nobody could compete
against Charley on Mulholland Drive.

Stilts received a lasting memory
the first time he encountered Charley. Here is what Stilts recalled to us.
“The first time I ever saw Charley’s red Corvette was in 1971, when I
was on Laurel Canyon, coming up to Mulholland Drive. His car went
flying up and passed everybody. I got behind him and I turned right in
my Corvette. I thought this guy doesn’t know how to drive. I figured he
was a straight-liner. He doesn’t know how to take the turns with those
wide tires.We were going slowly on the eastern side of Laurel just past
the Fire Station. Charley gets about half way into that turn and his car
all of a sudden lifts up and goes over about four feet. By the time I got
to the other side of the turn, there is a straightaway, and I didn’t see
him. He was gone. I thought that is impossible. I went along trying to
find his taillights.When I got to the other side of Cahuenga Pass, he
was on the other side looking at me. That was the first time I ever met
Charley. I saw his car on Magnolia one time, and then I learned that
Charley was a legend. Charley was a rare sight. He would come up
once in a great while and make a run then turn around and disappear.
Another Charley story is when Charley was coming up Beverly Glen
and the cops were chasing a Porsche. Charley got tired of waiting and
passed both the police and the Porsche during the pursuit. That was
typical Charley behavior.”


World Driving Champion Mario Andretti drove Mulholland at
top-speed for a motion picture sequence. He is quoted as saying, “It is
the most demanding, dangerous road course that he had ever faced…
anytime, anywhere…”


At the end of the 60’s Charley still remained the undefeated
champion of Mulholland road racing. In the last part of that decade, a
major national magazine, Hot Rod Magazine, did a story about the
MRA operations. Shortly after that article was released to the public,
the LADP busted the racers in a raid up on Mulholland. The MRA was
forced to disband and split up.

[Banning]

Here is Dave B's story about Charley from The Mulholland Experience.



Yet with all their tricked-out cars and racing experience, they still
couldn’t touch “The King of the Hill,” Charley Woit. Charley was still
driving his now primered gray and red ’66 Corvette. He had a whole
new breed of victims to pick off and he ate them all alive.

David B.
thought he could take Charley, because of the weather, well he was
wrong. “We always tried to race him, but it would basically exhaust you
watching him disappear. Ron and I thought we had him one night
when it was pouring rain up there. Ron and I were just fooling around.
We were the only ones up there. I had my Mini Cooper, and Ron had
his Datsun 510.We were just bombing around having a great time
sliding around doing four-wheel drifts. Nobody was up there.We were
sitting at Beverly Glen, and out of nowhere we hear his big rumbling
roar.Who else could it be? He was running straight pipes and slicks.
We thought, ‘This is great we are going to be able to keep up with him
or beat him.’ After all, it was pouring rain. He just took off and left us
like we were standing still. He had full Blue Streak Slicks, thirteen-inch
in the back and ten-inch in the front. We tried other times to go upagainst him, but we knew that he would just dust our clocks.”


Charley earned rock star status because he was still a legend.
He was the oldest and most experienced driver out there, and he had
the biggest balls of them all and would never, under any circumstances,
let anyone pass him no matter what crummy modified vehicle he was
driving. Charley wasn’t just a saint to road racers everywhere. Charley
was quite human as well. He earned a scar across his face, which he
wore with pride, in a hellish end-over-end crash in his pick-up truck.
Charley just put himself back together along with his car and
continued racing all who were in his sights. Nothing would stop
Charley besides his ultimate fate.Without Charley’s knowledge, one
poor soul went chasing Charley in his Alfa GTV.

David B. tells the
story, because he witnessed it. “This poor guy, an African American fellow,
went chasing Charley in his gorgeous Alfa GTV. Charley was just
having a good time hauling ass from Beverly Glen to Laurel. Charley
flew by, and about twenty seconds that guy in the Alfa come bombing
after him. He said ‘oh no!’We knew that the guy was not letting off.We
could tell by the engine rumble, he let it all hang out and he slid right
off the edge and rolled it down the hill at the Coldwater Beverly Hills
side.We had never seen that guy before. It showed. He went all the way
down the hill, and then he actually climbed all the way up to the top of
the hill. He was complaining about his back killing him to the Fire
Department. The Fire Department guy asked him, ‘How did you get up
here?’ he responded ‘I crawled.’ He walked into the ambulance and he
died.We watched that from Bowmont.”

[Banning]

Last one for Charley, for now.



A writer for Hot Rod magazine in early 1974, Cory Farley, got the
rare chance to ride along and actually raced with the “King of the Hill,”
Charley Woit. This is the only account we could find when somebody
actually rode with Charley. He was never seen with any passengers by
anyone we interviewed that actually witnessed Charley drive. In his
own words, here are Cory Farley’s experiences. “The ‘G’ forces in the
turn threw me against the door and the howl of the engine was so loud
I didn’t even hear the sound of my head hitting the window. The car
slid sideways and the driver made a series of corrections as the stiffly
sprung Corvette skittered from high spot to high spot on the bumpy
surface. The outside wheel dropped onto the shoulder and the tach
shot to over 7000 RPM as the tire spun in the gravel. For an instant we
hung on the edge, mere feet from a sharp drop of 75 feet. Then the
differential locked up and we fired down the short straight. My headsnapped back and thudded painfully against the rollbar as I reacted too
slowly, then hit the bar again on the shift to third. A mailbox whipped
by within arm’s reach and the driver lifted his foot and coasted to a
stop. The Mazda behind us whined an octave higher then shut off, as it
too, passed the mailbox. The driver of the Mazda rolled down his window
with a grin. ‘Almost, wait ‘til I get my new tires.’”

[TRE Cup]

We've discussed No Man's Land in other threads here on Pelican.

It started with one of my Porsche buddies that works in the film industry. He called to chat one day and we discussed some movie in the works revolving around renting a lot of Porsches, drivers, etc. Most of the time this stuff never comes to fruition.

But about a month later up rolls this van and these guys spill out into the shop. They are excitedly pointing and discussing amongst themselves. The lead guy hands me his card and is talking about renting the shop for an upcoming movie involving Porsches, etc etc. Cool....
Ok- so we rent out the place between Xmas and New Year's for a week. And then they want to rent cars... Ok- so now we are calling clients looking to leave their car with us for a week- and actually paying them to be in the shop (for a change!).

Not as easy as you think ,despite our large client roster. At the time Red, black , and white were the predominant colors. Silver was too washed out looking on film. So we had to rack our brains to find different colors for the different "days" of filming. No problem in the end ; a lot of our clients came thru for us (and themselves)

The hours were long- it was dark when we came to the shop, and dark when we went home. I was hired as tech adviser- the script was written by Dick Wolf (Miami Vice) and he did not know much about cars. So it was fun to proof read , make suggestions here and there. Besides the drive up scene with my "tanga", my race car was in one of the over look scenes too. They left the TRE logos here and there as the mythical shop was called Technic (we alluded to TRE meaning Tecnic Racing Enterprises instead of Toad)
They bought some parts for some of the scenes, we ate very well, and it was generally quite boring just waiting around.

Charlie Shean was a professional , just like all the rest of the crew. He kept one of the light blue cabs that was "his" car in the movie (they had a spare as back up).

Overall a positive experience and somewhat of a contribution to the Porsche lore

[Jeremy Cottrell]

Yes, the food was good. Also, some of the parts that were filmed during the upstairs meeting are actually still on our shelves!! Some of those parts boxes were moved around during the "other" movie shot at TRE.

[TooTall]

Originally posted by Jeremy Cottrell
Yes, the food was good. Also, some of the parts that were filmed during the upstairs meeting are actually still on our shelves!! Some of those parts boxes were moved around during the "other" movie shot at TRE.

Jeremy,

I was just going to ask about that "other" movie, but this is a family forum. Here's a pic I found of Ricky's 914 at Riverside, April 1982. In the background you can just see Scott Call's Datsun 610.



Ciao babies,
Kurt O.

[Jeremy Cottrell]

Thanks Kurt. That pic brings back some serious childhood momories. Keep em coming!! Any shots of Laguna in 83 ??

[Jeremy Cottrell]

OK, another story about Rick's 6. My brothers wedding reception was held at our old house on Lankershim. The one that Scott and Tony lived in for awhile. Well, I have a friend Ron who was an avid Camaro driver, and ran Mulholland fairly well in it. So I asked Rick to take my friend for a ride in the 6. Rick accepted eagerly! When they got back down the hill Ron had a different look on his face. He told me that Rick had never even looked at the brake pedal up there, and he will never ever ever call a 914 a Volkswagen again. He has been racing a 914 in POC ever since.

[Jeremy Cottrell]

I think Rick would have approved of the cars' progress, 25 years later.

[TRE Cup]

Great find Kurt!
The (obviously) hand cut vinyl graphics were part of our pre time trial prep for each event. We protected the paint with contact shelf paper from the hardware store.
No mass quantity Fast Signs vinyl cutters around back then

Part of the ritual at the end of the day Sunday was a "peel and throw away" party where other club members would be amazed to see a show quality paint job under the all the sticky

[TooTall]

Thanks Dave & Jeremy,

I have more, much more! As I go through my slides I'm splitting out the TRE related stuff. I just found 40 (yes 40!) shots of Jim Torres 935 from Riverside. I'll scan them at hi-res and burn them to DVD for you guys. This stuff doesn't do much good sitting in boxes for 20+ years.

Now I'm going to ask a very dangerous question. Just thinking outloud here. Roughly speaking, what would it run to build a RS clone, maybe not an exact replica but something in the neighborhood.? I still remember that orange RS you had that I tried to buy from you.

Cheers,
Kurt O.