By
Kurt Ernst
—
Updated
in Muscle Cars, Restorations
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Big Willie Robinson’s Daytona, as it looked when acquired by Corey Owens. All photos courtesy Corey Owens.
Big Willie Robinson was a larger-than-life figure in the southern California drag racing scene of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Best known as the founder of the International Brotherhood of Street Racers, Robinson and his wife, Tomiko, campaigned a pair of his-and-hers 1969 Dodge Charger Daytonas known as the King Daytona and Queen Daytona. At some point in the early 1970s, a third Daytona joined the stable, and it soon became known as the Duke and duch*ess car. After a journey that’s taken this car from one end of the country to the other, a body shop in Minnesota has begun the restoration of the last surviving Big Willie Robinson Daytona.
Though the history of the King and Queen Daytonas is fairly well documented, less is known about the Duke and duch*ess car. Some have speculated that this car was used as a tow vehicle, but little photographic evidence (aside from an image of the car with a trailer hitch) exists to document this. It’s believed that the car was used for promotional appearances, but it was never featured in any advertising centered around Big Willie Robinson. There’s conclusive proof that the car was raced (including a cut in the firewall to accommodate the Clutchflite transmission, and a steel plate welded to the pinion snubber area, which had been dented from hard launches), but Robinson oddly denied this when the car was sold to Kentucky collector Gary French. In any event, the car’s competition days likely didn’t begin until after the demise of the King and Queen Daytonas.
The original 440-cu.in. V-8 engine.
As French relates, the King Daytona (originally orange) and the Queen Daytona (originally green) were both out of commission by April of 1973. The King Daytona’s acid-dipped body had grown too fragile for the kind of punishment dished out by a Keith Black-built racing Hemi V-8, and the Queen Daytona was reportedly damaged beyond repair in a racing crash. Common belief is that the King Daytona had been given to Robinson by Chrysler, while the Queen Daytona was sold at an “insider price” when a potential (but unnamed) celebrity owner backed out of a purchase deal. How or when Robinson acquired the third Daytona (which was sold new by Cherry Hill Dodge in Cherry Hill, New Jersey) remains a bit of a mystery, but current owner Corey Owens believes that Robinson bought it to help his brother out of a financial jam.
As delivered, this Daytona was sprayed in R4 red and equipped with a 440-cu.in. V-8, a four-barrel carburetor and an automatic transmission. Under Big Willie’s ownership, cream paint topped the red (except in the trunk and engine compartment, making it a functional “10 foot” racing paint job) and the car was lettered with the same Brotherhood of Street Racers door logo worn by the other Daytonas. As expected, sponsor decals covered the car’s flanks, and once the Queen Daytona was wrecked, this car received the hand-laid fiberglass hood that had appeared on the King Daytona in the movie Two-Lane Blacktop. Eyewitness reports from 1974-1978 seem to back up the belief that this Duke & duch*ess Daytona was raced with a Keith Black Hemi, likely pulled from either the King or Queen car.
At some point in the late 1970s, even the Duke and duch*ess car was retired from racing, leaving Robinson to run his heavily modified Plymouth Barracuda (which itself was largely built from a collection of cast-off Daytona parts). Forgotten, the Daytona was parked in Robinson’s backyard, its Keith Black Hemi pulled for another project. The original numbers-matching drivetrain was reinstalled in 1979, and after a few decades in the California sun, Robinson made the decision to part with the car in order to raise money for permits necessary to reopen Brotherhood Raceway. Mopar collector Gary French, who’d previously asked to buy the Duke and duch*ess Daytona, received a call from Robinson himself. A deal was inked, and somewhere around 2002, French took delivery of the car in California.
The restoration in process.
French took the car back to Kentucky with him and showed it at various Mopar events over the next four years. He then sold the Daytona in 2006, when it was acquired by jeans designer and car collector Donwan Harrell. Plans to restore the car never came to fruition, and in 2010 Harrell sold the car to its current owner, Corey Owens of Ogilvie Collision in Ogilvie, Minnesota. Though Owens has offered the Daytona for sale on the shop’s web page, Owens said it’s only for sale if someone is willing to pay the right amount of money for it and that he would be content to remain the car’s curator, which is why he’s in the process of restoring it to its former glory.
As Owens explained, the car is “unusable” in its current state, and he admits to wrestling with the “preserve or restore” argument. The decision for restoration was made largely by the car’s current condition, which Owens deemed too far gone for mere preservation. The plan is to recreate the car as it was in the mid-1970s, using its original numbers-matching drivetrain instead of the Keith Black Hemi. Though Owens has been in contact with the current owner of the massive aluminum-block racing engine, Owens said the seller wanted too much money to make its acquisition a viable proposition.
Owens said he plans to replicate the car’s original functional paint job, too, so look for red paint to show through the car’s cream finish overspray in the trunk and engine bay. The original fiberglass hood is now too fragile to use, so Owens recreated the piece from the steel hood of a 1970 Charger. One door was rusted beyond reasonable repair, so Owens replaced it with another from a 1969 Charger; he said he plans to preserve both pieces for display because of their historical significance. If all goes as planned, Owens will finish the car this winter, meaning it will debut on the show circuit in 2014.
The Daytona as it currently sits, awaiting paint.
