Basketcase said:
is the altered S&M car an original? I agree on the Nash wheels,love the '69 Charger, hate the new, and for the other Charger's color....... 
Thanks for sharing.
Dave, the S&M car is indeed legit. It's the "Paper Tiger Too". Shown below is the text from the Hot Rod magazine write up on the car. If you google "Todd Werner and Sox and Martin" you'll find tons of info on this car and others that he owns.
Chuck West is the Curator of the collection - you guys may have seen him on "American Musclecar" on Speed. He owns that beautiful, yellow '70 'Cuda V-code that was always seen when they ran the credits - also worked for a couple of the magazines and ran the Paddock's FLA operation when they had that. I talked to him for about a half an hour yesterday; every five minutes he was having to tell somebody not to touch the cars. It was really unbelieveable. He said it's always like that and that it's hard to enjoy going to the shows with the cars because of it. It's a shame people are such idiots...
Someday I'll be cruising around in a Metropolitan...it would be a lot of fun with a healthy 340,
NASH 5-speed, and a narrowed 8.75"... :yesnod:
You know it gets a little boring around here without the occasional "F8 Flare-Up"...
:jester:
HOT ROD ARTICLE:
Factory-backed by the Plymouth Division in late 1964, Ronnie Sox and Buddy Martin were no strangers to A/FX racing-they had been at the heart of it since 1962. But Buddy remembers that they were not ready for what Mopar had brewed for 1965 when they arrived in Detroit for a preview of their new Plymouth race car.
"Frankly, that was unbelievable," Buddy says. "A lot of mouths dropped open when we saw that first car. We had just come to Chrysler, and we could see the potential of the program, so it was pretty exciting for us."
The factory had moved the front wheels and rear axle forward, creating among the first of the Funny Cars. Sox & Martin raced that car, named the Paper Tiger, five times a week. They received a second SS-legal race car, Paper Tiger Too, that spring.
"Right after Bristol in June, we moved the rear wheels forward, and I had Dick Branstner do the front end," Buddy says.
Both '65 models were sold to the Buckeye & Vernon team in Maryland. The first hardtop, weak from acid dipping, came to an end with them. The sedan, seen here, was sold in Detroit in 1969 and ran C/Altered before being parked in an alley.
"It ended up in that alley for 14 years until a guy named Chris Taddy bought it," says Mike Guffey, the collector who did more than anyone to put these wild Chryslers back on the map. "Danny Crites of Baltimore ended up with the first Sox & Martin Paper Tiger. He told me it was held together with tape and was so weak that they finally just cut out the suspension parts and junked the body. Once I was convinced that the original car was destroyed, I decided to try and buy the Paper Tiger Too, which wasn't for sale."
Mike was persistent and he ended up with the weathered Sox car. It was never acid-dipped and therefore structurally sound, but it went to the back burner.
"A guy I knew named Mike Flynn began making noise about wanting that car," Mike says. "So eventually, I sold it through Flynn to Todd Werner, though I didn'tknow it at the time. I suppose I should have kept that Sox car; it's a pretty important piece of history."
The car had its original fiberglass, Dana, unmodified firewall, and front suspension, plus parts from Mike. After bodywork by Eric Lindberg and paint by Heath Hite, it was delivered to Todd at the '08 All-Hemi Reunion in Ohio (see Jan. '09 Hot Rod).
Early Funny Cars have become celebrated icons of the '60s era. After a second year of Funny Car action in 1966, Sox & Martin returned to more sedate machinery and greater success in Super Stock, but the Paper Tiger Too is the sole survivor from their foray into match bash action. Thanks to all these guys, the Tiger Too has teeth again.
uke: 