I was thumbing through one of my old car mags today when i saw a picture of the Stone Woods and Cook black widow car and the thought occurred too me which car got turned into the black car? I know it got painted black some time in '64 when they switched from Olds power to a Hemi but which car was it? I've been reading threads here on the H.A.M.B. that say they had up to four cars and built new cars each year, so did they build keep both light blue cars and build a new car for the black car and the new dark blue car? I know the light blue Swindler 2 (B) car still exists because i've seen it at the 2014 Meltdown drags and the dark blue car is in the is owned by Mike Cook and is the Peterson museum but i've seen the black car and both light blue cars with the solid aluminum and '58 Ford grille. Swindler "A" Swinder "2" (B) Black Widow (Solid Alumium Grille) Black Widow ('58 Ford Grille)
here is what I recall and it will probably be wrong The first car, which had just been restored, is still around 2 second one was blue then I believe painted black was wrecked, a new Willy's was built and that one, with the bottom section cut off is still owned by a son of one of the original members.... EDIT the text below has been copied from Hot Rod Magazine story on the cars... There were actually several Swindlers during the period from 1961 to 1966 that Stone, Woods & Cook raced-the original Swindler was Tim Woods’ 41 Studebaker with a blown Olds V-8. Swindler II, the first Willys, was initially built to run in the A/Gas cl*** with a bored, stroked, and blown 448ci Olds V-8. It was a show-quality car with blue-and-white tuck-and-roll ’58 Thunderbird seats with matching door panels and headliner and a chromed rollbar. The first Swindler II was destroyed in a towing accident returning from the ’61 Nationals at Indy and replaced with another virtually identical Willys body. With its familiar light-blue paint, this is the version that gained S-W-C’s initial fame, and in 1963, Revell immortalized it by creating a plastic model kit in the Swindler’s image. After an NHRA weight-break change in the A/Gas cl***, the team built a second, lighter Willys in 1964 with a fibergl*** front end to take advantage of the new rules. They continued to run the Swindler II in B/Gas, at which time the cars were renamed Swindler A and Swindler B. At first, Swindler A was painted black; both cars were later resprayed in a darker candy blue. After a narrow victory against Big John Mazmanian at the ’64 Winternationals, both cars’ blown Olds engines were switched to blown Hemis. Swindler B was later traded to fibergl*** manufacturer Tex Collins of Cal Automotive for a load of lightweight parts, and the car eventually found its way into the hands of an East Coast street rodder. That car still exists and is currently being restored, according to Doug Cook’s son, Mike Cook Sr. The Swindler A was nearly 1,000 pounds lighter than the Swindler II, with a Spartan black naugahyde interior, a single fibergl*** bucket seat, Plexiglas windows, and a bigger 467ci blown Olds. After it was wrecked in a racing accident in 1966, S-W-C built a second Swindler A and continued to run it in A/Gas until 1967, by which time the G***er Wars were nearing their end. Newer, more aerodynamic body styles were replacing the archaic G***ers, and after a brief effort with an A/Gas ’67 Shelby GT350, S-W-C built a ’66 Mustang dubbed Dark Horse 2 (the original Dark Horse was the lesser-known ’33 Willys campaigned by S-W-C as a third car in the early ’60s). Late-model factory experimentals had begun to evolve into early Funny Cars, and Stone, Woods & Cook decided to move on. In 1967, the blown Hemi, Hydro transmission, and all four wheels and tires were removed from the rebuilt Swindler A Willys and transferred to Dark Horse 2 Mustang. Doug Cook was nearly killed driving this car at a race in Alton, Illinois, in September 1967 when it flipped at the top end doing about 180 mph. That crash led to Cookie’s retirement from racing.
I don’t know anything about the blue vs. black question, but regarding the Dark Horse ‘33 Willys it was G***er great Chuck Finders that built it. Finders originally put it together hoping to fill some of the many dates SWC had on the match race circuit, but that soon fizzled because Funny Cars became the big draw. The ‘33 was powered by one of the blown Olds power plants from Swindler A and B that had been replaced with hemis. Finders kept possession (bought the car? or maybe he already owned it outright?) and SWC went on to build Dark Horse II, a ‘67 Mustang with 392 power on fuel. I saw it run many times at Gary, Indiana’s US 30. Beautifully detailed like all their cars ( well, not the original Dark Horse) one memorable thing was the sequential taillights, they turned on when the car backed up after the burnout. T-Birds of the era had those sequential turn signals.
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